The Ethics of Stealing Signs in baseball

[JetCane]

I know this will get lost on the football board, so I'm putting it here for the benefit of the baseball posters. Good read.

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Sign language: the art of baseball communication: the secrecy of relaying messages among players, coaches and managers is vital to the game's lifeblood.

From: Baseball Digest | Date: 8/1/2003 | Author: Stone, Larry

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IT ALL LOOKS SO INNOCENT, AT TIMES even comical. Yet all the exaggerated gyrations, the clandestine touches and subtle movements that make up baseball's secret language of signs, open a door into a fascinating and complex culture (and controversial subculture) of the sport.

Except for the ball itself, the surreptitious communication from catcher to pitcher, from manager to base coach, from base coach to base runner, from infielder to outfielder (and various Other combinations and permutations of transmitted sign language that take place in the roughly 20 seconds between pitches) might be the most essential element for completion of a coherent ballgame.

"I don't think you could play without signs," said baseball historian Paul Dickson, author of the forthcoming book on signs, "The Hidden Language of Baseball."

"It would be chaotic. The manager would have no way to communicate. The pitcher would be doing anything he wanted. There would be no coordination, no battery as we know it."

That's not to say that signs are always conveyed smoothly. Mariners announcer Ron Fairly recalls one Dodgers teammate who, upon being flashed the squeeze-bunt sign while batting with a runner on third, gave third base coach Preston Gomez a puzzled look and called out, "This pitch?" Suffice it to say, the squeeze was hastily taken off.

Former first baseman Dick Stuart was so inept at picking up signs that Gomez once got his attention, moved his arms in a running motion, and pointed to second. "That was his steal sign," Fairly said.

The Dodgers once had a squeeze call that required the third base coach, Leo Durocher, calling the base runner by his last name. One day, Frank Howard reached third, and the play was on. Durocher edged over and said:

"OK, stay awake, Howard."

Howard looked at him quizzically and said, "Aw, Leo, you know you can call me Frank."

Nor does it mean signs are always happily received, or conveyed. Rangers designated hitter Cliff Johnson once got a take sign on 3-0 and was so peeved he shot the middle finger at third base coach Art Howe.

Mariners manager Jim Lefebvre felt compelled to replace third base coach Bob Didier in 1990, reportedly because Didier would sometimes ignore Lefebvre's signs and put down his own. Such subversion is anathema to the team unity fostered by signals, the importance of which can be measured by the lengths managers have gone to get their message across.

Billy Martin once called plays by phone, from his hospital bed, while convalescing from a punctured lung. Jack McKeon, ejected from a minor league game, returned in a mascot's uniform to relay signs to his team. (At least, that's the oft-told legend. McKeon denied the story, attributing it instead to another longtime baseball man, Steve Boros.)

Upon being ejected from a minor league game while managing Key West in the Florida State League, Don Zimmer climbed a light pole and flashed his signs from there. Giants manager Roger Craig recalled peeking out through a hole behind the dugout after an ejection, and noticing a tipoff by the opposing base runner that he was going to steal. Craig got the attention of the acting manager, told him to call a pitchout, and they nailed the runner.

Dickson estimates that more than 1,000 silent instructions are given during the course of a nine-inning game. Those can range from the most rudimentary of signs between catcher and pitcher--one finger for a fastball, two for a curve, three for a changeup, a system unchanged since Little League--to a series of complicated motions from the third base coach that can be more difficult to decipher than spy code.

Some coaches, such as Gomez, had different signs for every player on the team. Gene Mauch was notorious for his complicated signs. Some teams change the signs every series, or even use a different set every three innings. And some employ arcane systems that befuddle their own team just as much as the opponents.

The Red Sox in the 1970s had a system based on numerical values, requiring players to add and subtract the number of touches by a coach to determine the play. After outfielder Bernie Carbo was caught stealing one night, manager Darrell Johnson angrily confronted him, asking Carbo what he had seen to make him run.

"Two plus two," Carbo replied.

"That's four--the take sign," said Johnson. "The steal is five."

"Damn!" said Carbo. "I added wrong."

Yankees bench coach Zimmer, considered one of the greatest third base coaches ever, said his goal was to keep his signs as simple as possible.

"I don't care what the manager gave to me," he said. "They could be tough. My objective was to give them to the players with the easiest set of signs I could have. It's hard enough to hit off a 95 mph fastball without having to think, 'What was that?'"

Mariners second baseman Bret Boone admits, however, that no matter how attentive you are at the plate, "Everyone misses them now and then. You get caught up in the game, and sometimes you're vegging out and you don't get them."

Bobby Murcer, former All-Star outfielder, played for the Giants in 1975 under manager Wes Westrum, who was renowned for stealing signs. At the end of spring training, Westrum's third base coach, Joey Amalfitano, gathered the team to unveil the? signs for the season.

"He says, 'We're doing this, doing that, adding this, subtracting that, multiplying these two,'" Murcer recalled. "I said, 'Wait a minute, we're not going to be able to get those signs. They're way too complicated.'

"It was typical of Wes. He was so paranoid everyone was stealing his signs, because he could always steal everyone else's."

Mere moments after the first sign was relayed (most likely in the 1800s), rest assured that a new pastime cropped up--the obsessive efforts of the opposing team to steal those signs.

Those efforts, in turn, have spurred great moral debates, innumerable brushback pitches, frequent accusations of unfair play, and the development of a code of ethics that has stood the test of time.

Most baseball people will tell you that sign stealing that is accomplished through good, old-fashioned observation is perfectly acceptable. Sign stealing that requires the use of blatant espionage and electronic gadgetry (and baseball has a long, sordid history of such attempts) is not.

"Some people think when you steal signs, you're cheating," said Zimmer, who has more than 50 years in professional baseball. "If I'm on second base, and the other team is dumb enough to let me steal the signs, and I relay that to the hitter, that's just baseball.

"Now, if you're doing something illegal--someone sitting in the stands with binoculars or something--to me, that's not right."

And a corollary to the ethical code: Even the acceptable mode of sign-stealing must be pursued with extreme caution by the practitioner.

"It's like swimming in the water hole down by the creek," former Mariners pitcher Norm Charlton said. "There's a sign that says 'Swim at your own risk.' It would be dangerous to stick up a sign out there on the pitcher's mound that says 'Steal signs at your own risk,' but that's pretty much the way it is."

Just ask Mike Scioscia. In 1991, while with Cincinnati, Charlton suspected the Dodgers' Scioscia was stealing the signs of the Reds' catcher while baserunning at second base, then relaying them to Dodgers hitters. Charlton hit Scioscia on the arm with a pitch and was suspended for a week and fined heavily when he unabashedly told reporters why he had plunked Scioscia--and that he might do it again.

Twelve years later, Charlton's only regret is his public honesty that led to the suspension, not his actions.

"There's all kinds of elaborate things you can do to conceal your signs," he said. "(Jamie) Moyer's great at it. He's got first sign, second sign, third sign, a sign on odd days, even months, odd years, when it rains outside, when he drove his truck to the park. You're basically not going to steal his signs.

"I'm pretty much completely opposite. I'd rather my infielders know them. If the guy (running) on second base knows them, that's fine. If he wants to relay them to the guy hitting, there was an easy way to take care of that. One conversation with the catcher: You call for a slider away, I'll throw a fastball up and in. That pretty much cures the sign stealing."

The practice of "peeking" by a hitter--glancing back while at the plate to look at a catcher's signs or location--is regarded as an even stronger breach of etiquette, almost certain to be remedied by the pitcher, if caught.

"First of all, there's no one that can tell me I can't look back," Zimmer said. "But then that pitcher has the right to throw at me, if he wants."

Some hitters use wraparound sunglasses to hide their "peeking." Others are so subtle as to look not at the sign, but the catcher's shadow for an indication if he's setting up inside or outside.

"If you look at Ken Griffey Jr., every time he calls time after the pitcher comes set, it's one of two things," a major league coach said. "He either didn't get the sign from the guy on second correctly, or when he steps out, he looks back to see where the catcher was set up on that pitch."

It can be a costly endeavor. The late Al Cowens had his jaw shattered by White Sox pitcher Ed Farmer in 1980, after peeking back at the catcher. Cowens was looking for a breaking ball away, and got a fastball up and in.

"That (peeking) is just too blatant," said Dave Valle, a Mariners broadcaster and former catcher. "That's when you want to tell a guy, 'Hey, you're doing something that could be dangerous to your own health.'"

Said Charlton, "If I think they're stealing signs, and we go slider away, and throw a fastball in, and the guy gets hit in the wrist--of course, I'd never hit anyone on purpose--but if he has a broken wrist, and misses three months, that could cost you several million dollars. It's a team game, but you're paid on individual stats. The question is, is it worth it?"

Sign stealing, however, has proven to be a universal yearning, without regard to age, culture, or potential consequences. Former major leaguer Jeff Burroughs stole signs in the championship game of the 1993 Little League World Series, helping his son's Long Beach team to victory (the son, Sean, is now the San Diego Padres' third baseman).

The Cuban team was suspected of stealing signs from Team USA in the gold-medal game at the 2000 Olympics. Japanese great Sadaharu Oh was accused (and exonerated) of a sign-stealing scandal while managing the Daiei Hawks in 1998 that allegedly involved a television camera, a walkie-talkie and a megaphone.

Among those accused of stealing or relaying signs have been Bernie Brewer, the Milwaukee mascot who would slide into a giant beer stein after home runs at old County Stadium, and the guy who maintained the fountains at Kansas City's Kaufman Stadium.

Sign stealing can involve incredible minutiae. In his book, "Oh, Baby, I Love It!" Tim McCarver insists that Mauch, his 1972 Montreal manager, could tell who was covering second base on steal attempts by watching the interaction of the shortstop and second baseman, who communicated behind the shield of their gloves.

"Mauch couldn't actually see the open or closed mouth--he'd watch the vein in the infielder's neck," McCarver wrote. "If the vein contracted, his mouth was open, and that meant he was saying, 'You!' So Mauch knew the other guy would cover. He was never wrong."

McCarver figures he got a half-dozen extra hits that year by guiding the ball to the area vacated by the coveting fielder.

Sometimes the scope and magnitude of sign-stealing is vast. In a 2001 Wall Street Journal article that electrified the baseball world, it was revealed that the 1951 New York Giants, who overcame a 13 and a half game deficit to win the National League pennant, were aided by a telescope in their center field clubhouse that picked up signs, which were then signaled by buzzer to the bullpen and relayed to the batter.

(Dickson, who did exhaustive research on the '51 Giants for his book, concludes that while the sign stealing was absolutely real, Bobby Thomson was not given the sign that resulted in his legendary "Shot Heard 'Round The World," a pennant-winning homer off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca.)

The era from 1940 through the 1960s was filled with such spy-novel espionage. In 1948, Cleveland Indians rookie Al Rosen, just called up from the minors, was pulled aside by one of the team's veterans before one of his first big league at-bats at old Cleveland Stadium.

Rosen was advised to check the center field scoreboard while at the plate --specifically, where the innings were listed. If he saw an arm hanging out of one of the vacant slots it meant a curveball was coming.

"Bob Porterfield's pitching for the Yankees," recalled Rosen, now 79 and semi-retired in Palm Springs, California. "I look up and see an arm hanging out of the scoreboard. Sure enough, he threw a curve, and I got a base hit.

"I thought, 'No wonder they're so good here in the big leagues.'"

What Rosen later learned--to his moral distress--was that the Indians had devised an elaborate sign-stealing scheme that year, masterminded by their star pitcher, Bob Feller.

Feller later admitted the Indians used the telescopic sight he had employed in World War II as a gunnery mate on the USS Alabama. Feller kept the device when he was discharged, and the Indians put it to use in their scoreboard, trained on the opposing catcher.

"I didn't like it at all," Rosen said. "I realized it was just the wrong thing. It's one thing if base runners pick up the sign, or if you steal them from the bench. But when you started doing all the other stuff that's out-and-out cheating, I don't like that. None of my clubs (when he later became general manager of the Yankees, Astros and Giants) would ever do anything like that."

Rosen gritted his teeth and went along with it. But in 1960, a Chicago White Sox pitcher named Al Worthington took a moral stand that nearly cost him his career.

That year, the White Sox devised a sign-stealing system that involved hiding an employee in the Comiskey Park scoreboard, outfitted with a pair of binoculars.

He used the binoculars to pick up the signs from the opposing catcher, then relayed them to the White Sox hitters by virtue of various lights rigged into the scoreboard, each one indicating a certain pitch.

Worthington--a devout Christian who had pitched for seven years for the Giants and Red Sox before joining the White Sox--was so offended that he actually quit baseball after the season and went home to college, missing the next two years. He resumed his major league career in 1963 with the Reds.

"It was the right thing for me to do," said Worthington, now 73 and retired near Birmingham, Alabama. "We had a man hidden in the scoreboard. There were hundreds of lights in there. When a certain light came in, that meant one pitch. If it wasn't cheating, then it would be out in front."

Worthington said he expressed his disapproval to Sox manager Al Lopez but was told that he was expected to abide by the sign-stealing system--"and I wouldn't." Club Owner Bill Veeck told him he should listen to the manager.

"At the end of the season, I left his office, went to the airport, and I already knew what I had to do," said Worthington. "January came, and I had to make a decision: Go to college, or go back (to the White Sox). I chose to go to college."

In detailing the incident in his classic autobiography, "Veeck as in Wreck," Veeck defends his team's scoreboard manipulation as common practice.

"I doubt if there is one club that hasn't tried it at one time or another in recent years," he wrote. "There is absolutely nothing in the rules against it."

That latter statement is still true, according to Ralph Nelson, the major leagues' vice president of umpiring. The only official sanction he knows is a league-wide bulletin filed in the late 1980s that prohibits of the use of walkie-talkies and other electronic devices in the dugouts.

"There's some unwritten rules about it, a little code of honor," Nelson said. "In the past, there have been complaints, and the league presidents used to investigate that stuff. Everyone understands it's illegal, but there's nothing I've seen written."

By all accounts, the blatant spying from scoreboards and stands isn't done much anymore, though the sophistication of video and television equipment has opened a potent new avenue for stealing signs.

"With the technology of the centerfield camera, zoomed in all the time on the catcher, you can steal those signs like nothing," Mariners coach Rene Lachemann said. "But the thing is, I've had players who didn't even want to know what was coming, unless they were 100 percent sure. And even then, there were guys who still didn't want any part of it."

Clearly, the efforts of teams to gain an edge by stealing opponents' signs will never cease. Even Worthington has no problems with that, if it's done in an open and clean manner--honor among thieves, in other words.

"If the coach can pick it up," he said, "it's part of the game."

COPYRIGHT 2003 Century Publishing

[Thai Jet]

Thanks JC. There's some pretty funny stuff in this article.