In news you probably didn’t expect to read today, or any day for that matter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced Wednesday that it is currently investigating Major League Baseball (MLB) team the St. Louis Cardinals for hacking, and, in particular, the allegation that they hacked fellow MLB team Houston Astros.

According to reports, FBI investigators are said to have uncovered evidence that employees of the St.Louis Cardinals hacked into a network of the Houston Astros that housed “special databases” the team had built.

The database is said to include private, internal discussions about trades, “proprietary statistics” and scouting reports, reports by Baseball “scouts” on potential team player acquisitions.

FBI officials believe the hacking was executed by “vengeful front-office employees for the Cardinals” who had an issue with Astros’ General Manager Jeff Luhnow, who had previously served in the role of an Executive with the Cardinals until 2011.

The New York Times notes that the attack would represent the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team hacked the network of another team.

The Baseball sports governing body Major League Baseball said in a statement that it was aware of the allegations and  “has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database.”

The St. Louis Cardinals confirmed the news, saying that “the team has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so. Given that this is an ongoing federal investigation, it is not appropriate for us to comment further.”

Had to happen eventually

Although it would apparently be a case of rogue employees with a vendetta at this stage, the idea of the sports equivalent of corporate spying or espionage, particularly in a sports business that involves billions of dollars, isn’t remotely surprising.

Indeed, it was always eventually going to happen, and perhaps the question is why did it take so long to happen, putting aside the fact sports administrators don’t usually have the skills to do such an undertaking.

The investigation remains ongoing.

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