Another sign of the times?

Staggered by latest crisis, baseball must decide how technology fits into its future

Well into its winter break, baseball is in crisis. The game will survive, for it always does, but there aren’t many optimists about. There’s a reputation to be restored.

It is a sport played out through signs — from the catcher to the pitcher, for example, or from coaches delivering orders to hitters and baserunners. Signs can be stolen by observant opponents, foiling strategy in the process, but this long-accepted practice has evolved into malfeasance.

Three managers and a highranking executive have lost their jobs, with more wreckage surely to follow. Teams have taken the forbidden step of using electronics to aid their sign-stealing strategy, and the retribution has caused shock waves throughout the sport.

Oakland A’s pitcher Mike Fiers has become a central figure in the conversation. Some are applauding his crucial role in a Major League Baseball investigation that brought so much to light. Others are calling him a snitch, feeling he crossed the line. Everyone agrees that it’s a mess.

The investigation was triggered by a November piece in The Athletic, detailing the baseball crimes committed by the 2017 Houston Astros. Fiers was a member of that team, and he told the publication that the Astros used television’s centerfield camera images to identify catcher-to-pitcher signs, dissecting them on a secret monitor set up near their dugout.

In a crude but effective method to let the batter know what to expect, someone would bang on a dugout trash can if a breaking pitch was coming, and do nothing if it was a fastball.

With this nefarious tool at their disposal, the Astros won the World Series that season. And, according to the investigation, they also employed various illegal tactics in 2018 (reaching the American League Championship Series). Last season, the Astros lost to Washington in the World Series.

The Astros were a magnificently talented, charismatic team that could have reached great heights in a totally honest manner. To have done so while cheating — that changed everything.

On Monday, Major League Baseball suspended Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch for a year; the two men were subsequently fired by owner Jim Crane. In addition, the Astros were fined $5 million (the maximum under baseball’s rules) and will forfeit their first- and second-round draft picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts.

Next on the firing line was Boston manager Alex Cora, Houston’s bench coach in 2017 and referenced by MLB as a ringleader in the Astros’ scheme. The Red Sox also are being investigated for potential electronic sign-stealing in 2018, when they won the World Series under Cora, and he was fired Tuesday.

Then the hammer fell on recently hired Mets manager Carlos Beltran, a player under Hinch and Cora in 2017 and the only player mentioned by name in MLB’s report. Beltran had denied any wrongdoing when interviewed by MLB, but the Mets were troubled by the implication and parted ways with Beltran on Thursday — before he ever managed a game for the team.

How relevant was Fiers’ admission? Commissioner Rob Manfred released a nine-page statement explaining the initial sanctions, his stance on the matter, and how information was obtained. It began, “On November 12, 2019, former Houston Astros player Mike Fiers publicly alleged ...” It makes one wonder: If Fiers hadn’t spoken up, would any of this mess exist?

Fiers, who could not be reached for comment, has come under fire for sharing the secretive behavior of his former team. In the eyes of many, Fiers violated a fundamental tenet of the ballplayers’ code, best expressed by a sign posted in several bigleague clubhouses: “What you see here, what you hear here, what you say here, let it stay here.”

Tim Flannery was among those offended. “There are better ways to do it,” the Giants’ former third-base coach said. “If you’re gonna come out and cost people jobs and careers, and you’re feeling so bad about it, then give back your World Series share. Donate it to somebody.”

Another viewpoint comes from Corey Busch, who was a consultant to commissioner Bud Selig from 2000 to 2014 after working in the Giants’ front office during Bob Lurie’s ownership tenure.

“Did Fiers do the right thing? Absolutely,” Busch said. “It had to be said. Baseball has so many problems right now; the last thing it needs is people questioning whether it’s being played fairly.”

The use of technology, in the form of cameras being employed throughout the ballpark, came into play several years ago, but sign stealing has long been a part of the game.

Carl Erskine, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1948 to 1959, recalled the art of reading a man’s intentions.

“We’d study the other teams to see if guys were tipping their pitches,” Erskine, 93, said by phone from his home in Anderson, Ind. “The expression on his face, how his hand turned in the glove, that could be a sign a certain pitch was coming. We’d watch our own guys to make sure that didn’t happen. All that other stuff — flashing signs from second base, using tips from the base coaches — that’s been going on for a long time, in one way or another.”

On a fateful October day in 1951, as Erskine recalled with regret, innocence took leave.

Erskine was warming up in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ bullpen when the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit the socalled “Shot Heard ’Round the World” at the Polo Grounds to end the best-of-three National League playoff series. “The

Giants win the pennant!” broadcaster Russ Hodges shouted, over and over, in his iconic call.

A half-century later, some troubling details came forth. It was revealed that the Giants had stashed one of their coaches, Herman Franks, behind a darkened window in the home clubhouse above the center-field fence. Using a telescope to detect the catcher’s signs, he used a buzzer to alert players in the Giants’ bullpen almost directly below.

From there, flashing a white towel, signs could be relayed to a hitter “looking straight over the pitcher’s shoulder,” Erskine said. “Easy. You wouldn’t even have to turn your head.”

In those days, Erskine said, “There were no rules that spoke to stealing signs. And you know, when they interviewed Bobby Thomson so many years later, he was very coy. He said he ‘could have’ taken the sign, that it was right there for him, but he never really admitted that he took it.”

It is now baseball’s task to determine its relationship with technology. Several options are being discussed, and Manfred has left open the possibility of a minimalist landscape nearly devoid of cameras or other electronic devices — just shut everything off before the first pitch is thrown.

How strange: As technology brings such striking advances in efficiency around the world, baseball considers going back in time. It’s starting to sound a lot healthier than progress.