The Hidden Language of Baseball by Paul Dickson

Author:Paul Dickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

The New York Giants clubhouse in center field at the Polo Grounds was wired to the dugout. As signals were stolen, a button was pushed and a buzzer sounded in the dugout—one buzz for a fastball and two for a breaking pitch.

Half a dozen related stories prompted by the allegations against the Giants appeared in The Sporting News on April 4, 1962. Taken as a whole, they seemed to concede that this was just another chapter in an ongoing saga dating back to 1876—in fact, the stories ran under the heading DANIELS TRACES SIGNAL-SWIPING HISTORY TO yy6. The articles supported Hornsby's assertion that everyone did it. Marty Marion said he installed a scoreboard spy when he managed the White Sox in the mid-1950s. "I think Cleveland was pretty brazen about it," Marion added, "when Bob Feller would walk out to the bull pen carrying binoculars over his shoulder." Fred Haney, who had managed for ten years in the majors, told Jack McDonald: "There's such a thing as being too smart in this game. . . . If anybody used the scoreboard to spy on my club when I managed the Braves it never got to me, but I'd have welcomed it. Look, you can get the signals in advance and there wont be more than a couple of hitters on any club that it will help."16

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