Beat the Clock

Clare and I have been talking a lot about MLB’s sign-stealing scandal.  “It would’ve been nice if someone had told me the changeup was coming,” mused my daughter.  But let me say right here I didn’t raise a cheat, and my kid will probably try and rip the plaque off the wall in Cooperstown of any PEDs’ user elected to the Hall of Fame.

The two of us agree that a pitcher tipping pitches is a pitcher tipping pitches, and not the opposition stealing signs.  Furthermore, we agree that a runner at second base or anyone noticing something from the dugout is also on the up-and-up; the sin occurs once you start using binoculars and/or electronics.  The bat bashing against the trash can is just a silly symphony revived.

To me (or my eyes, if you will), the more elaborate the scheme, the less likely it is to work.  Somebody has to relay the information to the dugout, where someone else has to relay the information to the batter, all this in real time.  This will never work against any pitcher who works fast, and I wonder how often it works against a deliberate pitcher like Jose Quintana.  Maybe Astros’ telecasts are archived, and someone will go through them to pick out instances of the scheme succeeding.

Which brings us to the question of how effective the sign-stealing routine the Giants had back in 1951 for home games at the Polo Grounds.  Somebody in the clubhouse, located 480-plus feet from home plate, pressed a buzzer that sent the information (was that one buzz or two?) to the Giants’ bullpen, also 400-plus feet from the batter.  Supposedly, a player in the bullpen then played around with a baseball to signal to the batter what kind of pitch was coming.

So, somebody using binoculars had to pick up a catcher’s sign from nearly 500 feet away, buzz the info to the bullpen, where a player tried not to look like a juggler who walked in off the street while signaling to the batter standing over 400 feet away, all this in real time.  How could such a setup have worked on a consistent basis?  It’s worth noting that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred reported in his findings that the Astros stopped using their hi-tech system—except for the trash-can banging, that is—because “players no longer believed it was effective.”

But if Bobby Thomson hit his pennant-winning homerun off Ralph Branca because he was alerted by some buzzing and jugging, it wasn’t just “The Shot Heard ’Round the World.”  It was the longest of long shots and a performance for the ages.