The Astros, sign-stealing, and baseball's cheating etiquette
Jeva Lange
Illustrated | AP Photo/File, AP Photo/Chris Park, natasaadzic/iStock
November 15, 2019
Baseball is a no-nonsense game. Three strikes and you're out. Don't get caught off base. Even a "home run" is unambiguous; it doesn't matter if you've ever seen a baseball game in your life, you still know what the phrase means.
Just because much of baseball is cut-and-dry, though, does not mean it is also black and white. Clubs and players have long exploited the sport's unwritten rules (and sometimes the written ones, too) for even the tiniest advantage. The evolving scandal over the Houston Astros' electronic sign stealing is just the most recent controversy to result in handwringing about the integrity of the game. What makes the Astros actions unsurprising, if no less reprehensible, is that cheating is as much a part of baseball's identity as getaway days and the seventh-inning stretch. From sign stealing to spitballs to PEDs and pine tar, baseball has long been a game rooted in the question of how much can you get away with.
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While there has always been cheating in baseball, the electronic era has made it simpler and sneakier, from the Boston Red Sox using Apple Watches to facilitate sign stealing to the St. Louis Cardinals hacking the Astros' private player database. Then, earlier this week, The Athletic reported what many fans had already suspected: the 2017 World Series-winning Astros had stolen signs using a center field camera. The Oakland Athletics' Mike Fiers, who pitched for the 2017 Astros before being traded to the Detroit Tigers, went on record to confirm the conspiracy, which allegedly involved the outfield footage being piped to a special monitor in the Astros' clubhouse, where the anticipated pitches would then be conveyed to the team's batters by banging on a garbage can. "That's not playing the game the right way," Fiers told The Athletic.
But sign stealing in and of itself is playing the game the right way — technically. There is no rule, for example, against a runner on second base signaling to the batter what pitch to expect; policing such a policy in the first place would be nearly impossible. As a result, sign stealing is a sort of gray area; it's allowed, but done stealthily and rarely admitted to. "If you're an ethical fan, you want your team to play by the rules and play in a way that is sportsmanlike," is how sports ethicist Shawn Klein put it to The Washington Post. "But you also want them to toe the line as well and know the rules and use the rules to their advantage ... Sometimes that's going to cross the line."
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Poster Comment:
When Leo Durocher, manager for the Chicago Cubs, would get into an argument with the Ump, he would kick chalk from the baseline on the Ump's pants since the lime would burn holes in his pants. LOL