Yankees seeing red
The sports world is all atwitter over news that the Red Sox employed a marvelously stupid scheme to steal signs from the New York Yankees using an Apple Watch. The plot seems more than a little desperate, the convoluted mechanics of it probably more trouble than it was worth.
But pardon Sox fans if they have trouble sitting through sanctimonious lectures on fair play from the Yankees, a team that a few years ago sent a pitcher to the mound with a giant glob of very sticky, very illegal pine tar on his neck for all to see.
Yes, the Red Sox broke the rules with this sign-stealing misadventure and they deserve to be sanctioned for their shamelessness if not for the theft itself. (Stealing signs isn’t illegal, but using an electronic device to do it is.)
But if you listen to the howling coming from New York (and the rest of the country, frankly, which loves to hate Boston sports teams) you’d think the Sox had committed an offense worthy of a war crimes tribunal at the Hague.
It certainly doesn’t help that the Sox play in the same market as the New England Patriots. Within minutes of The New York Times breaking the story Tuesday, comparisons to (sigh) Deflategate and Spygate were flying around the internet.
And it seems the Yanks, who before last night’s games were three and a half games behind the Red Sox, are more than a little paranoid these days; after his outing Friday the team reportedly complained to the league that Sox pitcher Doug Fister was wearing some kind of electronic earpiece. It was actually a mouth guard tucked behind his ear.
The Sox, meanwhile, have tried to turn the tables, filing a countercomplaint that alleges the Yankees have used a TV camera from the team’s cable network to do their own sign-stealing.
Heck, if we didn’t know better we’d think this entire controversy was ginned up to boost the ageold Boston/New York rivalry.
The Sox have apparently copped to the Apple Watch scheme, and the league is debating the appropriate punishment.
May we suggest a simple dope slap, then we can all move on?