The Baseball Codes

by Jason Turbow

  The benefit hardly outweighed the detriment in Worthington’s eyes. It was illicit behavior, and by the time he arrived in Chicago, the pitcher was already practiced in his response. Shortly after learning of the system, the right-hander informed manager Al Lopez in a hotel lobby in Kansas City that he wanted nothing to do with it, that he “didn’t want to play for a team that cheats.”

  “As a player it was none of his business what we were doing,” said Lopez. “But I did say, ‘Show me in the rule books where it’s wrong.’ I told him I respected his religious beliefs. I said I hoped he would respect mine, and that my religious beliefs would not permit me to do anything I thought wrong.”

  “Al Lopez said that it wasn’t cheating …,” said Worthington. “I thought later, Well, if it’s okay to do it, why don’t they tell everyone?”

  Lopez sent Worthington to speak with general manager Hank Greenberg, which only made things worse. Greenberg, after all, freely admitted to his own preferences for receiving pilfered signs during his Hall of Fame playing days with Detroit. “Baseball is a game where you try to get away with anything you can,” he said. “You cut corners when you run the bases. If you trap a ball in the outfield, you swear you caught it. Everybody tries to cheat a little.”

  After less than a week with the White Sox, Worthington was fed up enough to quit, going home to Alabama and enrolling at Samford University. The team’s official explanation was that he left over a salary dispute. This was the first time the White Sox had been challenged about a system that had been in use for years. It had originally been implemented by Frank Lane, the team’s general manager four years before Greenberg came along, as a response to the abundant stories about other clubs’ use of similar schemes. According to Sam Esposito, a utility infielder with the Sox, it started when Lane brought his complaints to two of the team’s third basemen—future Hall of Famer George Kell and his backup, Bob Kennedy. Esposito said that the pair devised a system far more devious—not to mention effective—than the then standard practice of having a coach peer at the opposing catcher through binoculars from the bullpen, then manually signal the hitter by placing (or removing) a towel atop the fence.

  That type of system was easily identified. The way Esposito tells it, Kell and Kennedy’s plan to use the scoreboard light couldn’t have been more effective. “It was hump city …,” he said. “You’d be sitting in the bullpen or dugout, the pitcher would be winding up, in his motion, and our hitter would still be looking up at center field, waiting for the light to come on. Sherm Lollar loved the light, Walt Dropo loved it. Nellie Fox wouldn’t use it. Nellie was a slap hitter, and he was afraid if he knew it was a fastball that he’d muscle up on the pitch and end up hitting a long fly ball, one of those warning-track outs.”

  “I doubt if there is one club that hasn’t tried it at one time or another in recent years,” wrote White Sox owner Bill Veeck in his autobiography, Veeck—As in Wreck. “There is absolutely nothing in the rules against it.”

  Though most ballplayers admit that the stealing of signs is pervasive within the game and accept it as an unavoidable facet of a complex sport, even those who embrace the practice have a difficult time defending those who go beyond the field of play to do it. Any sign deciphered via a mechanical device (usually binoculars or hidden video feeds) is roundly denounced. Don Lee, a reliever with the Los Angeles Angels in the early 1960s, could stand up in some well-placed bullpens and, with his naked eye, read the catcher’s signs from beyond the outfield wall. When he relayed those signs to hitters by placing his hand (or not placing his hand) atop the fence, it was generally considered acceptable because he was picking them up unaided. (“Sounds impossible, but he was able to do it,” said his teammate, catcher Buck Rodgers. “I was there. I was a beneficiary.”) Stick a telescope in Lee’s hands, however, and he’d have a roster full of enemies in the opposing dugout the instant he was caught. “Bootling information to the batter through a hidden observer equipped with field glasses is a dastardly deed,” wrote Red Smith in 1950. “But the coach who can stand on the third-base line and, using only his own eyes and intelligence, tap the enemy’s line of communication, is justly admired for his acuteness.”

  Even Al Worthington was willing to admit as much. “Sign stealing is as old as baseball,” he said. “You watch a coach from the dugout and you try to figure out the signs he’s giving to the batter. But it’s the coach’s job to hide them from you…. There’s nothing wrong with that. But to spy with binoculars … that’s cheating.”

  Numerous methods have been used to communicate illicitly pilfered signs, with indicators ranging from the digital clock at Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium (“You know the two vertical dots which separate the hour from the minutes?” asked groundskeeper George Toma. “One dot for a fastball, two for a curve”) to dummy TV cameras reportedly placed in center-field wells at places like Candlestick Park and Dodger Stadium that would signal hitters with phony “on air” lights. The practice is nearly as old as the game itself.

  At the turn of the twentieth century, spyglass espionage was all the rage in baseball. Teams would regularly place operatives not just inside the scoreboards of stadiums but in apartments across the street. Signals would be relayed by waving towels, opening and closing windows and curtains in accordance with the upcoming pitch, hanging feet or arms out of scoreboard openings, and even using mirrors to reflect signals to the batter.

  One of the most notorious early cases involved the Philadelphia Phillies, who in 1900 attempted to bypass the risk of having their spy discovered by positioning their third-string catcher, Morgan Murphy, in Baker Bowl’s center-field clubhouse, where he used binoculars aimed through a spy hole to read the catcher’s signs. To notify the team, Murphy used a Morse-code key that was wired to a receiver buried under the third-base coaching box, so when coach Pearce Chiles stood in just the right spot he could feel vibrations through the sole of his shoe—one dash for fastball, two for curve, three for changeup—and would signal the batter appropriately.

  It took some time, but opponents finally got wise. In the season’s final month, Reds shortstop Tommy Corcoran tried to figure out why Philadelphia continually battered pitcher Ted Breitenstein when the rest of the league had such trouble against him. The Phillies had already aroused widespread suspicion because their record at home (36-20) was the league’s best, whereas they weren’t even close to .500 (24-35) on the road. Some accounts, such as the one offered by Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson in his 1912 book, Pitching in a Pinch, have Chiles drawing attention to himself by standing with his foot in a puddle left after a recent rainstorm. Others say the coach was noticed for simply failing to ever move from the same spot on the field. A few have Corcoran tripping over an exposed cable. No matter how it happened, the shortstop, fed up, invaded Chiles’s coaching box and began digging, first with his cleats, then dropping to his hands and knees to scoop dirt away by the fistful. Curious players crowded around, as did umpire Tim Hurst. Most of them were certain that Corcoran had lost his mind—until he pulled from the hole a small wooden box attached to underground wires. The evidence seemed irrefutable, but the Philadelphia front office issued blanket denials, identifying the device as leftover detritus from a circus that had used the stadium several months earlier. At the very least, it was enough to spur the Phillies’ opponents to keep a watchful eye on them, even on the road.

  One of those opponents was the Brooklyn Superbas, who, while hosting the Phillies just before the end of the season, again caught Murphy stealing signs with binoculars—this time from a Brooklyn apartment across the street from the ballpark—then signaling Chiles with a rolled-up newspaper.

  Corcoran soon discovered that the Phillies weren’t the only club practicing such schemes. There was also a system in Pittsburgh, in which the Pirates’ sign stealer signaled pitches from inside the fence via a letter “O” painted into an advertisement on the field side of the wall. Inside the “O” was a crossbar; when it pointed up, a fastball was c
oming, and horizontal meant curve.

  For Corcoran, having his team’s signs stolen was troublesome enough, but the true indignity came when it was discovered that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were in cahoots, having agreed not only to keep mum about each other’s systems, but to refrain from using them when their teams met. Philadelphia went so far as to have Murphy sit on the bench as a show of goodwill when facing the Pirates.

  The practice faded in and out of use over the ensuing decades. In one noteworthy instance, the 1948 Indians turned to a military-grade gun sight brought back from World War II by pitcher and anti-aircraft gunner Bob Feller that was sixty times stronger than the naked eye. Cleveland had fallen into a late-August swoon that saw it drop from first place to third, four and a half games behind Boston, in a span of less than two weeks. With twenty-six games to play, the team was growing desperate, so a spy station was placed in the scoreboard of Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. Among the people manning the scope were Feller himself, fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Lemon, and groundskeeper Emil Bossard’s two sons, Marshall and Harold. Theirs was the system that would one day drive Frank Lane, the White Sox GM, to implement his own practice at Comiskey Park and subsequently drive Al Worthington from the game.

  For Cleveland third baseman Al Rosen, the stretch of games in which the Indians first put their system to the test proved monumental, not least because, aside from a handful of games in which he had appeared the previous season, it served as his big-league debut. Just before Rosen stepped to the plate for one of his five at-bats on the year, player-manager Lou Boudreau offered instruction on what to look for against Yankees right-hander Bob Porterfield. “He said, ‘You see that scoreboard out there?’” said Rosen. “I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Look up where it says Runs, Hits, and Errors. If you see an arm hanging out of there it’s the signal for curveball.’ Well, that arm came down and Bob Porterfield did throw me a curveball, which I hit into left-center field for a two-base hit. I thought, ‘Boy, this is easy. No wonder you guys are so good here in the big leagues.’”

  “I myself called a grand-slam homer for Joe Gordon on a 3-and-0 count against the Red Sox,” said Feller. “As soon as it landed, [Boston manager] Joe McCarthy came out on the top step of the dugout and looked at the scoreboard. He knew he had been had.”

  Aided by Feller’s scope, the Indians stormed back into the pennant race, winning nineteen of their final twenty-four games—all but four of which were at home—to force a one-game playoff with the Red Sox. Cleveland won that, too, even though it was in Boston, and went on to meet the Boston Braves in the World Series. Whether Cleveland cheated in the Fall Classic, with the eyes of the baseball world upon them, is largely conjecture, but the team’s acknowledged activities from earlier in the season put a slight tarnish on its October accomplishments. Indians outfielder Larry Doby had to spend the rest of his days insisting that his pivotal home run in Game 4 was legitimate, unaided by stolen signs. Cleveland ended up winning in six.

  With that kind of success, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to curtail the practice. Baseball fans perked up their ears in 1950, when Red Sox manager Steve O’Neill publicly aired his suspicions. Rather than lie low, however, the Indians rubbed it in his face, calling him to home plate before a game in August for a formal presentation of a gift box. Among the inflammatory items O’Neill found inside was a set of toy binoculars.

  Looking back on it all, Rosen came to the realization that Cleveland’s system was not something to which he should have adhered, even as a green rookie; that it was, as he called it, “out and out cheating.” His conclusion was partly informed by ethical considerations, but personal safety was also a factor. “I decided I’d rather use my own instincts at the plate rather than have somebody tell me what’s coming,” he said. “If there was a take-off [last-moment sign switch] or something of that nature, I thought the danger was much greater than it would be if I was using my own judgment.”

  • • •

  Without question, the game’s most infamous sign-relay system—which inspired countless newspaper accounts and its own book-length examination—was the one used at the Polo Grounds in 1951, which allowed the Giants to storm back to take the pennant from Brooklyn, culminating with Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World.”

  The windows of the stadium’s center-field clubhouses faced the diamond, giving a spotter a perfect sightline to the plate. The positioning was so favorable that even visiting teams used the setup to their advantage. Gene Mauch recalled that, as a little-used infielder with the Cubs in 1948, he’d pick up signs with binoculars and signal Chicago’s hitters with a large can of peach nectar that he’d move back and forth across the sill—to the left for one type of pitch, to the right for another.

  A beverage can, however, wasn’t nearly sophisticated enough for Giants manager Leo Durocher, who installed a switch in the home clubhouse that triggered a buzzer in the bullpen. The system was simple and effective—no matter how hard people looked for an illicit signal coming from behind the center-field window, they wouldn’t see a thing.

  After falling thirteen and a half games behind Brooklyn as of August 11, the Giants went on a tear, winning sixteen straight and then going 20-5 in September to end the season tied with the Dodgers. A three-game playoff was won by the Giants on Thomson’s home run; although he’s acknowledged the sign-stealing scheme, the slugger has long denied—if sometimes halfheartedly—that he was tipped off to the pitch he hit out.

  Thomson and the Giants might be a bad example, though, because not every team that stole signals in such a manner enjoyed as much success. Take Mauch’s Cubs, a perennial second-division club despite sustained efforts at espionage. In 1959, Chicago finished in fifth place even though the team had a spy in the Wrigley Field scoreboard for much of the season. He was traveling secretary Don Biebel, who, armed with binoculars, signaled hitters by sticking his shoe into an open frame used to post scores. Even through the losing, however, the Cubs still managed to arouse suspicion. Most skeptical were the Giants, whose ace, Sam Jones—the runner-up in that year’s Cy Young voting—got lit up every time he pitched in Chicago. (Against the rest of the league that year, Jones was 21-12, with a 2.54 ERA, and struck out a hitter every 1.25 innings; at Wrigley Field, he was 0-3 with an 8.53 ERA, and struck out a hitter every six innings.) It wasn’t long before San Francisco players identified the cause of the discrepancy.

  “We just got wise and looked up, and sure enough in the scoreboard there was a big empty square,” said pitcher Mike McCormick. “Same scoreboard they have today, where they hand-place the numbers. There was somebody sitting up there in an empty square—one foot in the window was a fastball, two feet was a curveball, no feet was a changeup. You let a major-league hitter know what’s coming, and he might not hit it all the time, but it certainly makes him a better hitter.”

  Jones was particularly affected by the Cubs’ system, said Biebel, because he had trouble handling anything but the simplest signs, which kept Giants manager Bill Rigney from stymieing would-be thieves with a more complicated system. Instead, he dealt with the matter in a different way: six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound outfielder Hank Sauer, who was sent to the scoreboard to get some answers.

  “Between innings I saw [first-base coach Wes] Westrum and Sauer and Bill Rigney get over in the corner of the dugout, and they were chatting,” said Biebel. “Sauer went out of the dugout and up the ramp, and I told the groundskeeper who was in the scoreboard with me, ‘You better lock this thing up—I think we’re going to have some company.’ About ten or fifteen minutes later, here comes Sauer along the back fence of the bleachers. He walks all the way out there and he starts pounding on our little door, shouting, ‘Let me in!’ He pounded for a while, but when he finally knew he wasn’t going to get in, he turned around and left.”

  Biebel was good for more than stealing signs, of course. He was also proficient in catching opponents who were doing it. In 1960, Braves pitchers Bob Buhl and Joey Jay we
re dressed in street clothes and stationed in the Wrigley Field bleachers with a pair of binoculars, lounging in the sun as if they had just popped in from a North Side apartment. The pair vigorously waved their scorecards whenever a breaking ball was on its way, and Biebel caught them immediately. “It was easy to spot them,” he said. “I knew who they were. You have a good view in that scoreboard, and back then the bleachers were pretty empty.” Biebel informed the dugout of his discovery, and ushers soon escorted the pair from their seats.

  Though it’s neither safe nor fair to assert that the sign stealers are the bad guys in this tale and that those who stop them are the good guys, for just a moment assume that’s the case. It’s a contrivance that enables this story to come full circle, because one member of the San Francisco Giants the day that Sauer went banging on the door of the Wrigley Field scoreboard was an oft-used reliever named Al Worthington, who the next season would play briefly for the White Sox. And we all know what happened after that.

  18

  If You’re Not Cheating, You’re Not Trying

  We do not play baseball. We play professional baseball. Amateurs play games. We are paid to win games. There are rules, and there are consequences if you break them. If you are a pro, then you often don’t decide whether to cheat based on if it’s “right or wrong.” You base it on whether or not you can get away with it, and what the penalty might be. A guy who cheats in a friendly game of cards is a cheater. A pro who throws a spitball to support his family is a competitor.