In 2013, the Louisville Cardinals beat the Michigan Wolverines to win the NCAA Championship. It was on CBS, and the game is still on YouTube. It was televised, and if you did not see it, you can still take time to watch the game if you still want.

What’s weird about that is supposedly that game never happened.

Due to a recruitment scandal, Louisville needed to vacate their wins, and Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino was fired by the university thereby ending a storied career in disgrace. There is article after article about it, and there are many references to the scandal and the game.

And yet, the game supposedly never happened. It never happened despite it being well documented. That extensive documentation proves the old axiom you cannot rewrite history to be true. You can’t post hoc say Louisville didn’t win a game when you can still watch it and read about it.

Therein lies the problem with stripping championships. They happened, and no matter what you do, those games still happened. The Louisville Cardinals won the 2013 NCAA Championship much like the 2017 Houston Astros won the World Series.

As we know, the Astros cheated to do it. They cheated in a similar fashion to how the New York Giants did in 1951 when they won the pennant when Bobby Thompson hit the “Shot Heard Round the World.” That game, much like the seven game 2017 World Series, happened.

To date, that game and the 1951 pennant has not been vacated. No, not even with the reports of the New York Giants extensive sign stealing scheme. Like with the Astros, there were rumors it was happening, but there would be no Mike Fiers whistle blowing until 51 years later when first base coach Herman Franks came forward.

Unlike the Astros players initial response, the other Giants players, Thompson included, admitted to it. However, akin to Jose Altuve and the buzzer rumors surrounding his own famous pennant clinching homer, Thompson denied getting the sign in the famed homer off of Ralph Branca.

The fact is the Shot Heard Round the World remains a part of history. The same can be said about the Astros 2017 World Series. Really, it is more than just that series, it was an entire season.

Where do you stop. Does Altuve gets stripped of his MVP award? How about Justin Verlander‘s ALCS MVP and George Springer‘s World Series MVP awards? With Cody Bellinger‘s statements and Aaron Judge deleting his congratulatory tweet, that seems like it might be palatable. What next?

Do you take away the Astros offensive stats? Is that really going to unring the bell? Look at it from a Mets perspective. Matt Harvey is still a free agent struggling to return from TOS, Seth Lugo is still in the bullpen, and Chris Flexen is still pitching in Korea.

Again, no matter how much you want to pretend the Astros 2017 World Series title never happened, it did, and there are long standing ramifications. That includes players like Clayton Kershaw never winning a World Series ring. Much like the Michigan Wolverines, the Dodgers aren’t going to be named the World Series champions post hoc.

No matter how much we want it to not have happened, the Astros won that World Series, and really you can’t change history. Even if you strip it away, it still exists. If you attach an asterisk to it, it still exists. There is nothing you can do to make it not happen because it did.

So no, don’t strip it away.

However, there are reasonable things Major League Baseball could do. They could tell the Astros they need to remove the pennants and similar denotations of their World Series. After all, while you can’t make it unhappen, you can put barriers in place to stop the Astros from celebrating that World Series.

It’s not great, but it’s something, but that is what you are left with because you can’t say nothing happened because it did.