The Baseball Codes

by Jason Turbow

  “They’re starting pitchers”: Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

  11 Retaliation

  “One of the best pitches”: New York Times, March 9, 1992.

  “I can promise you as long as I’m general manager”: Kansas City Star, April 4, 2004.

  “dirty baseball”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 23, 1994.

  “that slide wasn’t good, hard baseball”: Dallas Morning News, April 24, 1994.

  “I thought this was finished in Cleveland”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 7, 1994.

  “Well,” said Messersmith: New York Times, Aug. 20, 1985.

  “‘If you had eight hits in a row’”: Newsday, June 15, 2002.

  “If I have any advice”: New York Post, May 28, 2000.

  “It infuriated [Blyleven]”: Sporting News, June 17, 1991.

  “Thomas got his priorities mixed up”: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 12, 2006.

  “That’s for looking through my goddamn shaving kit”: Don Drysdale with Bob Verdi, Once a Bum, Always a Dodger: My Life in Baseball (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990).

  “‘Mr. Craig, I think that fellow’”: Playboy, Oct. 1988.

  “I will order it”: Russell Schneider, Frank Robinson: The Making of a Manager (New York: Penguin, 1980).

  Martin: “Goose, when you get in the game”: Richard “Goose” Gossage with Russ Pate, The Goose Is Loose: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 2000).

  “The message was, we will not tolerate”: Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1998.

  “learned from it”: Sports Illustrated, July 3, 2006.

  “If Padilla hits somebody”: Chicago Sun-Times, July 21, 2006.

  “I make it clear, I won’t wait”: New York Sun, July 26, 2006.

  “What’s your problem?”: Playboy, June 2003.

  “[Clemens] was obviously jacked up”: Ibid.

  found him sobbing: New Yorker, March 9, 2009.

  fighting “someone else’s battle”: New York Times, June 14, 2002.

  “If Jon Lieber hits Craig Biggio”: Chicago Tribune, May 7, 2000.

  “future Hall of Famer”: Toronto Globe and Mail, Oct. 3, 1987.

  “It was better when we didn’t have helmets”: Houston Chronicle, June 20, 1988.

  “I threw at him”: Cincinnati Post, Sept. 10, 1991.

  “What he said was a disgrace”: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 11, 1991.

  “stupid,” “dumb,” and “idiotic”: Ibid.

  “If I were a pitcher and I hit someone”: Ibid.

  when Mickey Lolich of the Tigers: Bill Freehan, Behind the Mask: An Inside Baseball Diary (New York: Popular Library, 1970).

  “I don’t want to talk about that”: Buster Olney, The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness (New York: HarperCollins, 2008 [reprint]).

  “On the record?”: Los Angeles Times, July 5, 2006.

  “I don’t have any bad blood with those guys”: Associated Press, June 3, 1998.

  “When I was about 15 feet from home plate”: Detroit Free Press, Aug. 18, 1997.

  “Know you!” shouted Lasorda: Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1997.

  12 The Wars

  “the Desert Storm of baseball fights”: Seattle Times, May 16, 1999.

  “It took baseball down 50 years”: Associated Press, Aug. 13, 1984.

  “We can’t be intimidated”: Ibid.

  “It was the wildest thing”: Scripps Howard News Service, May 18, 2000.

  “The donnybrook … was the best”: Richard “Goose” Gossage with Russ Pate, The Goose Is Loose: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 2000).

  After Atlanta finally closed out the 5–3 victory: Associated Press, Aug. 13, 1984.

  “with a capital ‘I’”: Ibid.

  “It would’ve been a lot simpler”: Sports Illustrated, Aug. 27, 1984.

  “The only problem”: Sports Illustrated, Oct. 20, 2008.

  “There will be another day”: St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 30, 2000.

  Afterward, he sneaked out a rear exit: Sports Illustrated, Oct. 20, 2008.

  “You can’t act like what happened never happened”: Boston Herald, July 23, 2002.

  “Players on that team are saying”: Boston Globe, April 27, 2005.

  “I have forgot more baseball”: Associated Press, April 28, 2005.

  “throw a punch at me right away”: Associated Press, March 28, 2006.

  “hits like a woman”: Boston Globe, March 28, 2006.

  Carl Crawford subsequently challenges: Sports Illustrated, Oct. 20, 2008.

  with seventeen knockouts: Boston Herald, June 6, 2008.

  “little girls, trying to scratch”: Boston Globe, June 6, 2008.

  “With the way we hate them”: Sports Illustrated, Oct. 20, 2008.

  13 Hitters

  “The first time I could have crushed him”: Associated Press, June 1, 1996.

  “professional courtesy”: Ibid.

  “I have dozens of spike scars”: Ty Cobb, Memoirs of Twenty Years in Baseball, ed. William R. Cobb (Marietta, Ga.: William R. Cobb, 2002).

  “The next thing I know”: Bill Werber, Memories of a Ballplayer: Bill Werber and Baseball in the 1930s (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2000).

  “had it coming”: Scripps Howard News Service, May 30, 2001.

  “I remembered in Cobb’s book”: Centre Daily Times, July 26, 2003.

  “I had to hold the bag down”: Ibid.

  pulling “the cork out of the bottle”: Maury Wills and Mike Celizic, On the Run: The Never Dull and Often Shocking Life of Maury Wills (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991).

  “all sitting back on the bench”: Ibid.

  “did it deliberately”: Sport magazine, Oct. 1951.

  Robinson “even slowed down”: New York Times, April 7, 1997.

  “a crushing shoulder block”: New York Times, April 24, 1955.

  “[Manager Leo Durocher] used to tell us”: Sport magazine, Oct. 1951.

  “Like a streak of murderous slaughter”: Baseball Magazine, June 1913.

  “little Dago son of a bitch”: Sports Illustrated, June 2, 1979.

  “Of course Martin was throwing at Campy”: Ron Bergman, Mustache Gang (New York: Dell, 1973).

  “I think he had too much pine tar”: Orange County Register, May 23, 1988.

  14 Off the Field

  Finley waited until the A’s: Ron Bergman, Mustache Gang (New York: Dell, 1973).

  “Thanks for saying something to me”: New York Daily News, July 17, 1976.

  “things like this happen in baseball”: Ibid.

  “No way I was going to give Gaylord”: Russell Schneider, Frank Robinson: The Making of a Manager (New York: Penguin, 1980).

  “stick a ball in his fucking ear”: Ibid.

  “What time does the blimp go up?”: John Snyder, Cubs Journal: Year by Year and Day by Day with the Chicago Cubs Since 1876 (Cincinnati: Emmis Books, 2005).

  “You’ll hear from me all summer”: Dick Bartell, Norman L. Macht, and Fred Stein, Rowdy Richard: A Firsthand Account of the National League Baseball Wars of the 1930s and the Men Who Fought Them (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1987).

  “the biggest hit I made all year”: Ibid.

  “for coming down so hard on me”: Ibid.

  15 Sign Stealing

  Charlie Dressen: Sacramento Bee, May 25, 1997.

  “somebody’s going to get killed”: Montreal Gazette, May 8, 1997.

  “Maybe they were pissed”: Ibid. Expletives deleted by newspaper and reinstated by author.

  “Hey, if you’re dumb enough”: San Jose Mercury News, May 8, 1997.

  Yankees stars Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle: Frank Crosetti, in Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 8, 1959.

  “We were the best [sign-stealing] team”: Baseball Digest, Aug. 2002.

  Hank Greenberg proclaimed himself the “greatest hitter in the world”: Lawren
ce Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).

  “All right, Hank”: Ibid.

  “I guess we’ll never know, huh?”: Riverside Press Enterprise, May 9, 2005.

  “As I did it, I’m thinking”: San Diego Union-Tribune, May 8, 2005.

  “a semi–power hitter”: National Post, May 10, 2005.

  “I started watching the pitchers”: Baseball Digest, Aug. 2002.

  “Here comes curveball….”: Ibid.

  “probably called the pitch on half”: Ibid.

  Hitters would start every at-bat: San Diego Union-Tribune, June 18, 2001.

  The pitcher was so good: Associated Press, March 20, 1988.

  Roger Maris: St. Petersburg Times, May 8, 2001.

  “Jim, he’s whistling”: Mike Shannon, Tales from the Dugout: The Greatest True Baseball Stories Ever Told (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997).

  “Haywood Sullivan came down”: Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 29, 1997.

  Toronto “had every pitch”: Ibid.

  In 1973, Nolan Ryan responded: Nolan Ryan, Throwing Heat (New York: Doubleday Religious Publishing, 1988).

  Once he pinpointed the trouble: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 3, 2002.

  When Babe Ruth first came: Babe Ruth as told to Bob Considine, The Babe Ruth Story (New York: Penguin, 1992 [reprint]).

  “When Andy Benes pitched”: Todd Jones, in Sporting News, Aug. 23, 2004.

  In 1986, Toronto slugger George Bell: Sports Illustrated, April 15, 1991.

  “If he saw our catcher signal”: New York Times, April 25, 1952.

  “Frank, Billy said he wants”: Sports Illustrated, April 15, 1991.

  16 Don’t Peek

  “What are you doing?”: Sports Illustrated, April 4, 1988.

  “Okay,” he said. “What pitch do you want?”: Ibid.

  “Did you see me swing?”: Toronto Star, March 7, 1988.

  “You do that,” said Mark Grace: Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, June 13, 2004.

  “I hit .350”: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 12, 1991.

  “I have to say he was throwing at me”: Toronto Globe and Mail, May 11, 1979.

  “[Cowens] thinks I’m guilty”: Ibid.

  “It’s a fine line out there”: Chicago Tribune, Sept. 17, 1989.

  17 Sign Stealing (Stadiums)

  “As a player it was none of his business”: Saturday Evening Post, May 2, 1964.

  “Baseball is a game”: Ibid.

  “It was hump city”: Bob Cairns, Pen Men (Boston: World Publications, 1995).

  “I doubt there is one club”: Bill Veeck with Ed Linn, Veeck—As in Wreck (New York: Putnam, 1962).

  “Sounds impossible”: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 12, 1991.

  “Bootling information to the batter”: Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2003.

  “You know the two vertical dots”: Jerusalem Post, May 6, 1997.

  Philadelphia went so far as to have Murphy: Paul Dickson, The Hidden Language of Baseball (New York: Walker, 2005).

  In one noteworthy instance, the 1948 Indians: Newhouse News Service, Sept. 24, 1999.

  “I myself called a grand-slam homer”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 24, 1999.

  Among the inflammatory items O’Neill found: New York Times, Aug. 27, 1950.

  “out and out cheating”: Baseball Digest, Aug. 1, 2003.

  “It was easy to spot them”: Sports Illustrated, April 15, 1991.

  18 If You’re Not Cheating, You’re Not Trying

  “We do not play baseball”: Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series: An Inquiry into the Game (New York: Doubleday, 1982).

  “Some of that stuff”: Copley News Service, June 9, 2003.

  “Our television announcers are aware”: Houston Chronicle, June 8, 2003.

  “George,” Piniella responded: Ibid.

  “There is a culture of deception”: Copley News Service, June 9, 2003.

  “Everyone cheats”: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Nov. 5, 2003.

  Tigers star Norm Cash: Baseball Digest, Sept. 2001.

  Or take the time in 1941: Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005).

  “I’ve been in baseball since 1914”: True magazine, 1961.

  “If you know how to cheat”: Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2001.

  It’s why the Yankees allegedly made: New York Times, June 17, 1990.

  “Anything short of murder”: Seattle Times, Sept. 19, 1999.

  “Pitchers have always cheated”: Allentown Morning Call, Aug. 13, 1987.

  “He stuck [the pine tar] on”: Dick Dobbins, The Grand Minor League: An Oral History of the Old Pacific Coast League (Riverside, N.J.: Andrews McMeel, 1999).

  “the whole Yankee staff”: San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 7, 1983.

  “No player shall intentionally”: 2008 Official Rules of Major League Baseball (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2008).

  “The advantage to K-Y Jelly”: Chicago Tribune, Feb. 24, 1985.

  Dodgers manager Charlie Dressen: Palm Beach Post, Aug. 24, 1997.

  Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis: Donald Hall with Dock Ellis, Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).

  In the 1980s, several of Billy Martin’s pitchers: Newsday, July 27, 2003.

  “During a game I’d just reach back”: Ibid.

  A’s closer John Wyatt: New York Times, June 25, 1979.

  Phonney Martin: Baseball Magazine, July 1931.

  White Sox star Ed Walsh: Vero Beach Press Journal, March 3, 2000.

  “Yes it was”: New York Times, March 14, 1989.

  “the [decade] of the spitter”: San Antonio Express News, Aug. 25, 2002.

  only 30 percent of 120 players: New York Times, April 24, 1955.

  “Restore the spitter?”: Ibid.

  After Yogi Berra grabbed the wrong container: New York Times, April 3, 1977.

  “He looked up, rubbed his knee”: New York Times, July 26, 1973.

  “Just about everything he throws”: New York Times, April 12, 1973.

  “gutless”: Ibid.

  “fastballs and sliders”: Ibid.

  “off-speed stuff”: Ibid.

  Thurman Munson asked to see the ball: New York Times, July 1, 1973.

  “I just want to lead the league”: Gaylord Perry with Bob Sudyk, Me & the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1974).

  “Perry’s big right hand”: New York Times, July 1, 1973.

  It didn’t take long—all of six innings: New York Times, April 7, 1974.

  “It’s a hard slider”: Light, Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball.

  “But he doesn’t throw it any less”: New York Times, June 25, 1979.

  “When Rod Carew was inducted”: San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 1991.

  to inadvertently prick Kunkel: Light, Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball.

  “The evidence at that point”: Myrtle Beach Sun-News, Oct. 28, 2006.

  “You might as well get the whole kit”: Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series.

  “Sometimes you can be so frustrated”: Myrtle Beach Sun-News, Oct. 28, 2006.

  “It’s a huge difference”: Detroit News, May 4, 1999.

  a sharpened belt buckle: New York Times, June 25, 1979.

  A pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers: Palm Beach Post, Aug. 24, 1997.

  “It looked believable”: Newsday, July 27, 2003.

  “more than three and fewer than 10”: Washington Post, Aug. 5, 1987.

  “Rick Rhoden and Tommy John”: Washington Post, Aug. 6, 1987.

  “On occasion I’ve pitched”: Nolan Ryan, Throwing Heat (New York: Doubleday Religious Publishing, 1998).

  “If you covered the rubber up with dirt”: Whitey Ford with Phil Pepe, Slick (New York: Dell Paperback, 1988).

  “I played with a guy”: Nick Peters, Tales from the San Francisco Giants Dugout (Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing, 20
03).

  Lighter bats equal faster swings: L. P. Fallon and J. A. Sherwood, “A Study of the Barrel Construction of Baseball Bats,” Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport, Kyoto, Japan, Sept. 2002.

  “Very funny”: Montreal Gazette, Aug. 4, 1987.

  mixed soap flakes into the downslope: Burt Solomon, Where They Ain’t: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

  The Orioles even went so far: Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1990.

  “I think the majority of teams”: Seattle Times, Sept. 19, 1999.

  “I’m shocked and dumfounded”: Toronto Globe and Mail, April 29, 1981.

  19 Caught Brown-Handed

  “an example of bullshit baseball”: World Series Game 2, post-game press conference, Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006.

  “There was a time”: Ibid.

  “I said, ‘I don’t like this’”: Ibid.

  “Tony’s been through a lot himself”: Detroit Free Press, Oct. 24, 2006.

  threatened to “undress” Nationals pitchers: Washington Post, June 23, 2005.

  “There’s etiquette and there’s lack of etiquette”: Ibid.

  “Pine tar is accepted practice for pitchers”: Mark Thomas, MLB.com, June 15, 2005.

  “I don’t put anything on the baseball”: World Series Game 2, post-game press conference.

  “Better grip means better spin”: New York Times, July 5, 1987.

  Davey Johnson grew suspicious: Darryl Strawberry with Art Rust, Darryl! (New York: Bantam Dell, 1992).

  “I don’t think he was cheating”: Chicago Tribune, Oct. 9, 1988.

  “It was a big clump of dirt”: World Series Game 2, post-game press conference.

  “I don’t believe”: Ibid.

  “get down in the tunnel”: Ibid.

  “If it wasn’t illegal”: Ibid.

  “What they’re doing”: Ibid.

  “Pine tar in North Carolina is clean”: San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 2006.

  20 Don’t Talk About a No-Hitter in Progress

  “There’s no way he can’t know”: Rex Barney with Norman L. Macht, Rex Barney’s Thank You for 50 Years in Baseball from Brooklyn to Baltimore (Centreville, Md.: Cornell Maritime/Tidewater, 1993).