McDowell says La Russa OKd stealing of signs
Former pitcher Jack McDowell accused Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa of orchestrating an illegal signstealing scheme while managing the White Sox in the 1980s.
In an interview with radio station WFNZAM in Charlotte, N.C., McDowell said the White Sox used a camera to get catchers’ signs and flash a light on a Gatorade sign beyond the outfield, which supposedly indicated to hitters which pitches were coming.
McDowell never played for La Russa, who took over the A’s in the middle of the 1986 season, shortly after he was fired in Chicago. McDowell didn’t make his bigleague debut with the White Sox until September 1987.
La Russa did not immediately respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment.
“We had a system at old Comiskey Park in the late ’80s,” McDowell told the radio station.
“Gatorade sign out in rightcenter had a light. There was a toggle switch in the manager’s office and a camera zoomed in on the catcher, OK? I’m going to whistleblow this because I’m getting tired of this crap. There was that. Tony La Russa was the one who put it in. He was also head of the first team of all the people doing steroids, yet he’s still in the game making half a million. No one’s going to go after that. The stuff ’s getting old where they target certain guys and let other people off the hook.”
McDowell, who pitched at Stanford and now coaches at
Queens University of Charlotte, said White Sox pitchers scheduled to start the next day “had to go in there and flip on the toggle switch.”
La Russa managed for 33 seasons, had 2,728 wins (third all time) and won World Series with the 1989 A’s and 2006 and 2011 Cardinals. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014 and currently is a senior adviser with the Angels.
La Russa managed during the peak of the steroid era, and two of his key players in Oakland, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, the Bash Brothers, admitted to taking performanceenhancing drugs.
McDowell’s comments come amid baseball’s signstealing scandal and the removal of three managers in the past week for their roles in the Astros illegally stealing signs during their 2017 championship season.
The Astros fired manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow after both were suspended for a year by Major League Baseball following its investigation. Red Sox manager Alex Cora, the Astros’ bench coach in 2017, and Mets manager Carlos Beltran, the Astros’ designated hitter that year, also lost their jobs for their roles in the scheme.
McDowell pitched for four teams and won 127 games over 12 years and the 1993 Cy Young Award.
“You know how it used to be taken care of ?” McDowell asked. “If they were stealing signs from second base, you just had the catcher call a breaking ball and throw your fastball up someone’s neck and just say, ‘Oh, you’re going to keep trying to pick up signs, guys? What’s it going to be?’
“There’s ways to go around this. Players could police it back in the day, but now, if you throw a ball 6 inches inside, you’re almost thrown out of the game immediately, everyone wants to fight. Back in the day, it was like, ‘You want to steal signs, yeah, that helmet better be working right now.’ ”