by Jason Turbow
That June, Cleveland played an exhibition game against Toledo, with Reynolds drawing the start for the minor leaguers. When Robinson came to the plate in the fifth inning, the pitcher made it clear how he felt about his springtime demotion, sending his first pitch over his former manager’s head. To remove any possible misinterpretation of the act, he then yelled, “Thanks for saying something to me before you sent me down to Triple A—I found out from a newspaper reporter!” Robinson’s response wasn’t standard fare for most management types: After grounding out, he walked to the mound and punched Reynolds twice, felling him with the second blow. Indians general manager Phil Seghi was on hand to see the fisticuffs but said that Robinson would not be punished, reasoning that “things like this happen in baseball from time to time.”
For Frank Robinson, of course, “from time to time” occurred with some degree of frequency. The previous season, 1975, was his first at Cleveland’s helm, and was marked by an acrimonious relationship with pitcher Gaylord Perry—a man who, like Robinson, lacked appreciation for those whose opinions diverged from his own. His solution was to trade Perry to Texas on June 13, which proved problematic in that, just two days later, the pitcher’s first start as a member of the Rangers came against none other than Robinson and the Indians. The target on the manager’s back couldn’t have been more clear.
Robinson, as smart as he was tough, pre-empted the showdown by removing himself from the lineup. “No way I was going to give Gaylord the satisfaction of knocking me down,” he said afterward. Perry responded, saying he was looking forward to the opportunity to “stick a ball in his fucking ear. Tell him I said so.” As it turned out, he never got the chance; Robinson held himself out of all three of Perry’s starts against his team through the end of the 1976 season, then retired.
• • •
Dick Bartell was a fiery shortstop, good enough to start for the National League in the first All-Star Game, in 1933. He was as scrappy a player as could be found on a baseball diamond, but he finally met his match in 1939—and the guy to give it to him didn’t even play the game. Bartell was going into his eleventh year in the league and his first with the Chicago Cubs; as he and teammate Dizzy Dean arrived at the ballpark one morning for spring training, Bartell spied an overweight man struggling to get through a turnstile. His ensuing snide comment—“What time does the blimp go up?”—ended up haunting him for the rest of the season.
The fat man was Ed Burns, a writer for the Chicago Tribune and one of the team’s official scorers. Though Bartell didn’t yet recognize Burns, Burns was familiar with his antagonist. He stopped, turned toward the infielder, pointed his finger, and delivered an ominous message: “You’ll hear from me all summer.” The writer’s meaning soon became clear.
“The season started and I was being charged with errors on plays where there was no error, like a double play we didn’t finish …,” said Bartell. “And anything that might have been called a hit for me, he’d charge the other team with an error. So the headline the next day in The Tribune would read: ‘Cubs Win. Bartell Makes Error No. 14.’” The error parade got to be such an institution that at that winter’s baseball writers’ dinner, a baby bootie was brought onstage with the pronouncement “A boot for Bartell.” Throughout the evening, a parade of shoes was presented to the audience, each slightly larger than the last, and all with the same statement: “Another boot for Bartell.” “It was,” recalled the shortstop, “the biggest hit I made all year.”
Bartell ended up batting .238 that season, forty-eight points below his career mark, and for the first time in eight seasons his fielding percentage was below the league average. Burns later apologized, said the shortstop, “for coming down so hard on me.” It didn’t make much difference—after just one season, Chicago traded Bartell to Detroit for Billy Rogell, a clearly declining shortstop who played a single lackluster season for the Cubs before retiring. Bartell played four more years and helped the Tigers to the AL pennant in 1940, introducing one final level of retaliation to the relationship.
PART THREE
CHEATING
15
Sign Stealing
It started with a thirteen-run sixth. Actually, it started with a five-run fifth, but nobody realized it until the score started ballooning an inning later. It was 1997, a sunshiny Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco. By the end of the game, it was 19–3 Expos, and the Giants—the team at the wrong end of that score—were angry, grumbling that the roster of their opponents was populated by thieves.
San Francisco’s thinking stemmed from the belief that it likely takes more than skill or luck to send seventeen men to the plate against three pitchers in a single inning. There was no disputing the numbers: Montreal had six players with three or more hits on the day, and in the sixth inning alone, five Expos picked up two hits apiece, including a pair of Mike Lansing homers. Montreal opened its epic frame with eight consecutive hits, two shy of the big-league record, and it was a half-hour before the third out was recorded.
San Francisco’s frustration boiled over when manager Dusty Baker spied Montreal’s F. P. Santangelo—at second base for the second time in the inning—acting strangely after ten runs had already scored. One pitch later, the guy at the plate was drilled by reliever Julian Tavarez. Two batters later, the inning was over. “They were killing us,” said Baker. “F.P. was looking one way and crossing over, hands on, hands off, pointing with one arm. I just said, ‘That’s enough. If you are doing it, knock it off—you’re already killing us.’”
What Baker was referring to was the suspicion that Santangelo and other members of the Expos had decoded the signs put down by Giants catcher Marcus Jensen for the parade of San Francisco pitchers. From second base a runner has an unimpeded sightline to the catcher’s hands. Should the runner be quick to decipher what he sees, he can—with a series of indicators that may or may not come across as “looking one way and crossing over, hands on, hands off”—notify the hitter about what to expect. Skilled relayers can offer up specifics like fastball or curveball, but it doesn’t take much, not even the ability to decode signs, to indicate whether the catcher is setting up inside or outside.
If the runner is correct, the batter’s advantage can be profound. Brooklyn Dodgers manager Charlie Dressen, who was as proud of his ability to steal signs from the opposing dugout as he was of his ability to manage a ball club, said that the information he fed his players resulted in nine extra victories a year.
Baker sent a word of warning to the Expos through San Francisco third-base coach Sonny Jackson, who was positioned near the visitors’ dugout. Jackson tracked down Santangelo as the game ended and informed him that he and his teammates would be well served to avoid such tactics in the future. More precisely, he said that “somebody’s going to get killed” if Montreal kept it up. The player’s response was similarly lacking in timidity. “I just told him I don’t fucking tip off fucking pitches and neither does this team,” Santangelo told reporters after the game. “Maybe they were pissed because they were getting their asses kicked.”
The Giants’ asses had been kicked two nights in a row, in fact, since the Expos had cruised to a 10–3 victory in the previous game. It was while watching videotape of the first beating that Baker grew convinced something was amiss, so he was especially vigilant the following day. When Henry Rodriguez hit a fifth-inning grand slam on a low-and-away 1-2 pitch, alarm bells went off in Baker’s head. Former Red Sox pitcher Al Nipper described the sentiment like this: “When you’re throwing a bastard breaking ball down and away, and that guy hasn’t been touching that pitch but all of a sudden he’s wearing you out and hanging in on that pitch and driving it to right-center, something’s wrong with the picture.” The Expos trailed 3–1 at the time, then scored eighteen straight before the Giants could record four more outs.
Baker knew all about sign stealing from his playing days, had even practiced it some, and the Expos weren’t the first club he’d called out as a manager. During a 1993 ga
me in Atlanta, he accused Jimy Williams of untoward behavior after watching the Braves’ third-base coach pacing up and down the line and peering persistently into the San Francisco dugout.
For days after the drubbing by Montreal, accusations, denials, veiled threats, and not-so-veiled threats flew back and forth between the Giants and the Expos. Among the bluster, the two primary adversaries in the battle laid out some of the basics for this particular unwritten rule.
Santangelo, in the midst of a denial: “Hey, if you’re dumb enough to let me see your signs, why shouldn’t I take advantage of it?”
Baker: “Stealing signs is part of the game—that’s not the problem. The problem is, if you get caught, quit. That’s the deal. If you get caught you have to stop.”
Signs have been stolen in major-league baseball for as long as there have been signs to steal, and players and managers generally accept that opponents will try to gain every possible advantage. It’s why signals from the catcher to the pitcher, from the dugout to the field, and from the third-base coach to the hitter can be so complex. And as Santangelo said, if the team from which they’re being stolen isn’t doing enough to protect them, whose fault is that?
“[Sign stealing has] been there since the beginning of time, and it should be,” said Sparky Anderson. “If you can’t hide your signs, you’ve got problems.” First baseman Mike Hegan put it this way: “Everything is okay in baseball as long as you don’t get caught.”
Hall of Famers like Paul Molitor and Robin Yount were notorious for their sign-stealing prowess with the Brewers. Yankees stars Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle were delighted when an alert runner would flash tips. Alex Rodriguez and Ted Williams were both respected for their ability to see and decode their opponents’ signs from the base paths. Cal Ripken, Jr., was once reprimanded by Blue Jays pitcher Woody Williams for stealing signs from second base. Jim Price, who played for the Detroit Tigers from 1967 to 1971, said that Al Kaline was his only teammate during that time who didn’t want to know what was coming.
When Chris Speier came to the Giants as a twenty-year-old in 1971, Willie Mays pulled him aside for a lecture. “Listen, we get everybody’s signs and we relay those signs,” he informed the rookie, “so you better start thinking about it and doing it.” Legend has it that Mays was alerted to the pitch for every one of the four home runs he hit against the Braves on April 30, 1961, thanks to Giants coach Wes Westrum, who had broken Milwaukee’s code and was signaling the slugger with a towel. Mays in turn taught his secrets to Bobby Bonds, and Bonds passed them on to the next generation of Giants youngsters, like Gary Matthews. “We were the best [sign-stealing] team I’d ever seen at the time,” said pitcher Steve Stone of the 1971 squad. Westrum, he said, “would have all the [opponent’s] pitches down” within three innings.
Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg proclaimed himself the “greatest hitter in the world” when he knew what was coming. Tigers manager Del Baker would signal him vocally from the third-base coach’s box with a system of “all right”s and “come on”s—“All right, Hank, you can do it” indicated that a fastball was on the way, whereas “Come, on Hank” meant curve. If it was a teammate signaling from second base, Greenberg liked to keep things simple. “He told me, if it’s a fastball, just turn your head toward right field,” said Hall of Famer George Kell, Greenberg’s teammate in Detroit in 1946. “If it wasn’t a fastball I’d look straight at him. And he loved to jump on that fastball.”
Of course, the hitter has to be confident that the baserunner has the signs and isn’t just fidgeting on the base paths. One way for the runner to communicate this is to touch the brim of his helmet should he pick up information to relay. “Then [the hitter] would brim back,” said Mark Grace, “which meant, ‘You got ’em, I want ’em.’”
If a member of the defense suspects that a baserunner is trying to signal the hitter, a range of action can be taken. The mildest response is simply to change the signs; a more aggressive approach involves verbal dissuasion. “I’d just go up to them and say, ‘Come on, now, you’ve got to be a little bit more discreet—it’s too obvious,’” said shortstop Shawon Dunston. “They just give you a dumb look, but the next time the behavior changes. You’ve got to get every edge and I don’t have a problem with that, but don’t be too obvious. And be prepared to get drilled if you get caught. Period. That’s how it is.”
If the warning works, there’s rarely reason to escalate things. Some pitchers, however, like to ensure that their message has been received. In 1993, when Blue Jays pitcher Jack Morris was clued in to the sign-tipping efforts of a baserunner at second, he spun on his heel, walked toward his opponent, and, pointing toward the plate, said, “I’m throwing a fastball and it’s going at him. Make sure you tell him that.” Then he delivered the pitch, as promised, knocking the hitter down. At that point, Morris made a second trip toward the runner. “Did you tell him?” he yelled. “Did you?”
Morris’s approach wasted no effort on subtlety. A less obvious—though no less effective, and often more dangerous—technique involves a pitch in which the catcher signals for a curveball away but the pitcher delivers a fastball high and inside. It can be prearranged during a mound conference or through a switch signal (an indicator from the catcher, such as a bare hand over the mitt after the signs have been delivered) that tells the pitcher to throw the opposite of whatever was just called. Sometimes pitchers simply mix it up on their own. “That tactic lit them up pretty good,” said 1967 NL Cy Young Award winner Mike McCormick. “It was a cat-and-mouse game. You could tell by the hitter’s reaction what he was expecting—a curveball and a fastball are significantly different, because hitters are waiting for the curve to break. You throw a fastball up and in and you could see some pretty good eyes.”
“After that, you ask the hitter, ‘You still want the signs?’” said Ron Fairly. “No one ever says yes.”
Trying to hold a 4–2, ninth-inning lead over Minnesota in 2005, Indians closer Bob Wickman came upon an uncomfortable realization: Michael Cuddyer had been at second base for two consecutive batters, which to the pitcher was an eternity. About two weeks earlier, Wickman had blown a save in Anaheim when Garrett Anderson hit a low outside pitch for a bloop single to drive in Darrin Erstad from second. The stout right-hander was convinced that the only reason Anderson made contact was that the pitch had been tipped by the baserunner. (When faced with Wickman’s accusation, Erstad just smiled. “I guess we’ll never know, huh?” he said.)
Wickman had no inside knowledge that Cuddyer or the Twins had done anything untoward, but he wasn’t about to be burned twice by the same tactic. Rather than take a chance, the pitcher opted for an unorthodox approach. If Cuddyer was on third base, reasoned Wickman, his view to the catcher would be significantly hampered. So Wickman invented the intentional balk. Before his first pitch to the inning’s fourth hitter, Shannon Stewart, the right-hander lifted his left leg as he wound up, then froze. After a long beat, he returned to his starting position. “As I did it, I’m thinking to myself, ‘There it is, dude, call it,’” said Wickman. Plate umpire Rick Reed did just that, and sent Cuddyer to third. Wickman’s decision was based on perverse logic—given Cleveland’s two-run lead, Cuddyer’s run didn’t matter, but Stewart’s did. Stewart, said Wickman, was “a semi–power hitter, and he possibly could have hit one out on me if he knew what pitch was coming.” It was the first balk of Wickman’s thirteen-year career.
Of course, the pitcher nearly shot himself in the ERA by subsequently walking Stewart, who promptly stole second, giving him the same vantage point from which Wickman had just balked Cuddyer. The pitcher, however, managed to strike out Matt LeCroy on a full count to earn his sixth save of the season. “Some guys couldn’t believe it, but to me as the closer my job is to finish the game without giving up the lead,” Wickman said. “There are so many things that come into play. I’d have no problem doing it again if a guy’s standing there too long.”
Wickman is in the majority of pitchers, who
se primary consideration when it comes to signs is preventing them from being stolen by other teams. There’s another category, however—guys like New York Yankees starter Bob Turley, who in the 1950s was more concerned with stealing them himself. The pitcher was frequently used as first-base coach by manager Casey Stengel on days he wasn’t scheduled to pitch, for the simple reason that there was nobody on the team who could steal signals as effectively. It was a trick Turley learned with the St. Louis Browns at the beginning of his career, as he tried to stay involved in games in which he wasn’t participating. “I started watching the pitchers, trying to pick up little habits and movements, and match them to the pitches they threw,” he said. “Pitchers want consistency in what they do; it’s a key to success, but it also creates patterns you can pick up.” Whenever his seat in the dugout afforded him a clear view of the opposing catcher, his prowess became even more potent.
Shortly after being traded to New York following the 1953 season, Turley was sitting on the Yankees’ bench, talking softly to himself about each pitch that was about to be thrown: “Here comes curveball…. Here comes fastball….” Mickey Mantle overheard him, and inquired about what it was exactly that Turley was doing. Once Mantle found out, word quickly spread among the team’s hitters about Turley’s skills, and it wasn’t long before many of them—Gil McDougald, Elston Howard, and Johnny Blanchard included—enlisted him to assist in their at-bats. Turley once estimated he “probably called the pitch on half the home runs [Mantle] hit.”
Turley’s relay system was simple—he’d whistle whenever a pitch was different from the last one. Hitters would start every at-bat looking for a curveball, and if a fastball was coming, so was Turley’s whistle. He’d then stay silent until something else was called. The pitcher was so good that when he went on the disabled list in 1961, manager Ralph Houk wouldn’t let him go home, instead keeping him with the team to decipher pitches. (Roger Maris, in fact, hit his sixty-first home run of 1961 on a pitch he knew was coming because third-base coach Frank Crosetti, doing his best Turley imitation after watching the pitcher for years, whistled in advance of a fastball.)
