La Russa responds to cheating allegation.
Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa fired back Friday at Jack McDowell after the former Cy Young winner alleged that La Russa used an elaborate sign-stealing system at Comiskey Park during his time with the Chicago White Sox.
“My question is this: Was he ever on our team?” said La Russa, who won three World Series, including one with the A’s (1989), “He was never on our team.”
McDowell made his Major League debut in 1987, a year after La Russa had been fired by the White Sox. But the pitcher, in a radio appearance Friday on WFNZ in Charlotte, North Carolina, described a system that he said was installed by La Russa. La Russa managed the White Sox from 1979-86 when they played at old Comiskey Park.
Told that McDowell didn’t claim to have played for La Russa, the manager said: “He can talk all he wants. He doesn’t know how we played the game. He should talk to our teammates.”
In his radio appearance, McDowell outlined a scheme that involved a camera, a switch in the manager’s office and a light on a Gatorade sign in old Comiskey Park’s center field.
“We had a system in the old Comiskey Park in the late 1980s,” McDowell said. “The Gatorade sign out in center had a light; there was a toggle switch in the manager’s office and camera zoomed in on the catcher.
“I’ve never said anything about the old system we had because once we got to new Comiskey , I didn’t know if there was one or not,” said McDowell, who won the Cy Young Award in 1993. “There were rumors that we had one, but it wasn’t as out there as the first one was where they forced the pitcher who was pitching the next day to go in there and flip on the toggle switch and stuff.”
Major League Baseball has been teeming with accusations of improper sign stealing since Monday, when commissioner Rob Manfred announced findings in an investigation of the Houston Astros. The league determined the Astros used video and a system of banging on trash cans to help them relay pitch calls to hitters during their 2017 season, which ended with a World Series title.
Astros manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended for a year, then fired by the team. Red Sox manager Alex Cora, then the Astros’ bench coach, and new Mets manager Carlos Beltran, a 2017 Houston player, have also lost their jobs.
“I’m gonna whistle-blow this now because I’m getting tired of this crap,” McDowell said, according to ESPN. “There was that — Tony La Russa is the one who put it in. He’s still in the game making half a million, you know? No one is going to go after that. It’s just, this stuff is getting old where they target certain guys and let other people off the hook.”
La Russa, who managed the A’s from 1986-95 and the Cardinals from 19962011, recently was hired in an advisory role by the Los Angeles Angels.