Cheating. It’s a word with negative connotation. It’s also a word that is synonymous with sports.
This past week, Yankees’ skipper Joe Girardi suggested that the Blue Jays may be stealing signs by means outside of the playing field. This accusation was shrugged off by the Jays, but it still begs the question: Should stealing signs be a part of the game of baseball?
In many ways, that’s sort of a loaded question. One’s opinion on the subject means very little. You see, cheating has and always will be a part of sports and stealing signs is probably one of baseball’s oldest forms of thievery. Traditionalists want to get rid of the designated hitter, but we never — or rarely ever — here anyone complain that stealing signs is ruining the game. As a matter of fact, the art of stealing signs starts well before one becomes a professional baseball player. Once players graduate from Little League and move on to levels where leadoffs are allowed, they are taught by coaches, high school or otherwise, how to steal signs from second base — I wouldn’t be surprised if this does indeed go on in Little League, but my experience came after. Once a team has the signs figured out, they use a simple system for letting the hitter know what pitch is coming, such as the runner on second base putting his hands out to his side or down toward the ground. From the dugout, it would be something like using the batter’s first name for fastball and last name for an offspeed pitch.
“Come on Joe! Put a good swing on it!”
This means a fastball is on the way.
Some players even develop a keen sense of stealing the coaches signs from the dugout. I personally played with a few of these types. They’d have the signs by the second inning. The point being, we as a baseball society — and as sports society as a whole — are training our players to cheat — or, always look for the edge — at a very young age. However, it’s never described as cheating, but rather taking advantage of the other team’s oversights. Figuring out the catcher’s signs, looking to see if the pitcher is tipping his pitches, etc. It’s all been part of the game for a very, very long time.
What Girardi is suggesting is that the Jays were using an outside source to steal the signs. Presumably a camera placed in center field or something to that affect. This, as Girardi suggests, breaks the “unwritten rules” of the game. Then again, it was a Yankee, Alex Rodriguez, who, back in 2007 in Toronto, intentionally yelled at third baseman Howie Clark in order to distract him from catching a pop-up. Clark let the ball drop. A-Rod’s teammate, Johnny Damon, when asked about the play, responded,
“I wasn’t sure that was allowed. If it is, maybe we’ll keep on doing it.” – ESPN.com
On Thursday, July 7th of this season, The Washington Nationals got out to an 8-0 lead over the Chicago Cubs by the fourth inning. Based on the “unwritten rules” a team with a big lead must stop doing things like stealing bases, taking the extra base on a base hit or waiving runners home on what might be a close play at the plate. The Cubs ended up scoring 10 runs and the Nats only crossed the plate once more, losing 10-9 in nine innings. In my opinion, “unwitten rules” are pretty much worthless.
Professional players, coaches and front office personnel will always try to get the edge over the next guy. Whether it’s a college football team’s “special treatment” of a stud quarterback or an NFL team allegedly piping in fake crowd nose when their team is on defense or MLB front offices turning their backs on drug use. Sports at the higher levels are all a business and winnings breeds fans and fans mean money. This doesn’t make such actions right, but they tend to go on nonetheless. With that in consideration, it wouldn’t surprise me if teams were using outside means to try and steal signs.
The game of baseball is more accessible visually than ever before. At every game there are numerous cameras, covering numerous angels. Some cameras are for broadcast purposes, others for the team to use for their own mechanical analysis. A step further is pitch f/x and instant stats that show batter and pitcher tendencies. This information is as close as the dugout, video as close as a walk to the clubhouse. Heck, all I have to do is go to Fan Graphs, search A.J. Burnett, click on splits, scroll down and I can tell you that he throws his slider 73 percent of the time he has an 0-2 count on the hitter.
Players will continue to try and steal signs, they’ll continue to try and find when a pitcher is tipping his pitches and they’ll continue to use whatever knowledge they can gather to make sure they don’t get beat by the opposing pitcher. Unless baseball suddenly makes stealing signs illegal, it will continue to be a part of the game, as it always has been at just about every level.
