High-tech stealing of signs goes too far
Ferguson Jenkins, Dickie Noles, Rich Donnelly offer their opinions on baseball’s latest scandal
Willie Mays would be on second base and look in for the catcher’s signal.
If the Hall of Fame outfielder picked anything up, he would relay the information to the hitter.
“Mays used to do it a lot,” Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins recalled Thursday before speaking at the 59th annual Reading Hot Stovers banquet at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Reading. “Frank Robinson, too. Put your hands on your knees, a breaking ball. Hands up, fastball. Guys used to do that all the time.”
Stealing signs has been as much a part of the game of baseball as bats, balls and tobacco juice.
Now, it’s at the center of arguably the biggest scandal to rock the game since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox threw the World Series.
At a time when baseball execs normally are putting the finishing touches on their offseasons and counting down the days to spring training, the focus instead is on the fallout from Monday’s stunning announcement by commissioner Rob Manfred regarding the Houston Astros’ use of electronics for sign stealing in 2017.
Three managers — Houston’s AJ Hinch, Boston’s Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran of the New York Mets — have lost their jobs, as well as Astros general manager Jeff Lunhow.
The Red Sox remain under investigation for incidents in 2018 and rumors continue to swirl around the Astros using buzzers inside player jerseys to signal pitches.
“Our game got a black eye,” said Rich Donnelly, a longtime major league coach who is slated to be the bench coach at TripleA Syracuse, the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate, in 2020. “Three managers are gone. One general manager. It’s a black eye.”
All three of Thursday’s speakers who spent time in major league dugouts — former Phillies pitcher Dickie Noles, a member of the 1980 World Series champions, was the other — had opinions and stories regarding sign stealing.
Jenkins mentioned Peanuts Lowrey, a longtime major league player and coach known for his sign stealing acumen.
“He could pick up signs from the third base coach or manager,” said Jenkins, who played on teams with the Phillies and Cubs where Lowrey was a coach. “The indicator, the cap, the glove, the chin, the cheek and then work from there.”
Donnelly, who spent much time in his career as a third base coach, went over certain signals, as well as ways to prevent larceny.
“I practice my signs at third base all the time,” he said. “There are 17 places I can touch on my body without going to jail. I get in front of a mirror and I practice them all year. If you steal my signs, I shake your hand and tip my cap to you.”
Donnelly said the best sign stealer he ever saw was Gary Vasrho, who played under Donnelly in Pittsburgh and later played and coached for the Phillies and was a manager of the Reading Phillies.
“That’s an art,” he said. “That’s not cheating.”
Noles agreed that picking up the signs with the naked eye from second base or the dugout was one thing, using technology to get them was another.
“I think what the commissioner did was pretty punitive and probably could’ve been a little worse,” said Noles, now an Employee Assistance Professional for the Phillies. “I hate to see good baseball men have to suffer, but play the game the right way.”
In Noles’ mind, playing the game the right way includes taking care of sign stealing on the field.
Players may have second thoughts if they think relaying stolen signs could result in a knockdown pitch.
“You can stop that right away,” Noles said. “If that was going on back in that era, you’d get one at your head. Then you stopped it. I think that’s how it should be handled, but we don’t handle nothing on the field no more. You can’t run into a catcher, you can’t break up a double play and if you try to pitch inside the umpire is going to eject you.”
Donnelly, who was getting calls and texts from the Mets throughout Thursday’s interview, pointed out that Major League Baseball sent a memo in 2017 prohibiting the use of technology to steal signs. Still, it didn’t stop anything.
Now, however, the punishment has been set.
“If you look at society, everybody wants to get ahead any way they can,” Noles said. “I think it’s time that we start getting back to a better moral compass.”
Jenkins, who went 284-226 in his 19-year big league career, wasn’t quite as ready as the others to agree with the punishment.
“When you want to get the edge you try lots of things,” Jenkins said. “It was advance scouting. Now it’s advanced camera work.
“Punishing someone for trying to get ahead is drastic. Who thought of it before them? Somebody’s been doing it.”