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MLB 2020: A New Hope

Re: MLB 2020: A New Hope

RaceBoarder said:
With Wiffle Balls :p
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when mookie was young, but not real young; we would play pick up on little league fields. one of the rules was if you hit a homer over the fence your team lost bats and the half inning was over. had to keep the ball on the ground and if you got it in the air you had better hope it fell :p
 
Re: MLB 2020: A New Hope

Sat next to Pirates class A RF Cal Mitchell on the plane this afternoon, on his way to spring training. Fairly highly ranked prospect, was a 2nd round pick. Pretty neat.
 
Re: MLB 2020: A New Hope

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/sports/baseball/astros-cheating-apologies.html

The Astros’ owner, Jim Crane, said weeks ago that his players would apologize in spring training, and they did. But first Crane held a clunky news conference in which he tried to absolve them of blame for the scandal that has roiled the sport and tainted the club’s only World Series title.

“Our players should not be punished for these actions,” Crane said, echoing last month’s explosive report from Commissioner Rob Manfred. “These are a great group of guys who did not receive proper guidance from their leaders.”

A new flavor of the Nuremberg defense? :rolleyes::eek:
 
Re: MLB 2020: A New Hope

This is from "Veeck as in Wreck", Chapter 10 - The Name of the Game is Gamesmanship:
...Throughout the history of baseball, going back to the first time Abner Doubleday crawled out of a cave and lit a fire, information has been passed on to the hitter by less intellectual and less sportsmanlike means.
McGraw used to station a man with a pair of binoculars in the window of the Polo Grounds clubhouse, which was in that cutout in deep center field. The clubhouse man had only to lower or raise the shutter to signal the upcoming pitch.
In most parks, the clubhouse is under the stands, and the man with the binoculars is out in the scoreboard. Two years ago we had Dizzy Trout out in the scoreboard at Comiskey Park. One of our pitchers, Red Worthington, a very religious man, left the club and quit baseball because he thought we were playing unfair. And yet I doubt if there is one club that hasn’t tried it at one time or another in recent years. There is absolutely nothing in the rules against it.
Cleveland had a long tradition of scoreboard espionage, with rather indifferent success. As we returned home for the final month of 1948, following a disastrous road trip that had dropped us out of the lead, we were in third place, 4-1/2 games off the lead with only 21 games left. With figures like that, there is nothing to do, normally, except watch the Magic Numbers go by. Desperate measures were called for. Boudreau and some of the boys decided to take another shot at sign-stealing—and this time with more modern methods. Instead of binoculars, they bought a spotting scope, the kind of portable telescope used on rifle ranges. The spotting scope put the scoreboard observer right in the catcher’s lap.
Our man in the scoreboard was Marshall Bossard, son of Emil. Occasionally, he was spelled by another of the Bossard boys, Harold.
The sign was passed on by covering one of the scoreboard openings with either a white or a dark card, depending on whether the pitch was going to be a fast ball or a curve.
Now, understand that the sign isn’t passed on with every pitch. If it were, the opposition would spot it in about two minutes. Nor would it be possible to pass on every pitch even if you wanted to. A big-league catcher usually gives his signs in a fairly complex pattern with any number of built-in switches. The first thing the spotter has to do is to break the code and stay alert for every switch. This is why I say that sign-stealing, even when it is done from the scoreboard, is part of the real byplay of baseball, part of the battle of wits. Once he has broken the code, the spotter has to pick a few key moments in the game to pass the sign on. And he has to be right 100 percent of the time. As soon as your team has the slightest misgiving about the accuracy of the signs, you can fold up the spotting scope, throw away the binoculars and go home.
But here’s where the next complication arises. If the sign-stealing is effective, the opposition is going to suspect what is happening. They are going to be sure of it as soon as a hitter steps into a pitch he has no right to expect and belts it halfway into the stands. In one game against the Yankees, Joe Page threw a curve ball to Joe Gordon on a 3–0 pitch. Gordon hit it into the bleachers and before the ball had landed, everybody from the Yankee bench was out on the field, pointing up to the scoreboard and screaming. Now the opposition has a mission in life. They are going to do their best to cross you up and make it hurt.
Marshall Bossard was great. He picked his spots masterfully and he never missed.
Not all batters want to know what is coming. Generally, the power hitter, the man who takes a big swing, wants the sign. The punch hitter, the man who wants to be ready on every pitch, doesn’t.
In Cleveland, Boudreau himself didn’t want the signs. Neither did Dale Mitchell. Doby went by fits and starts. He’d take the signs on pitchers he had trouble with but he didn’t want them on pitchers he felt he could hit. Keltner, Gordon and Robinson, our other home-run hitters, were happy to get them. And they hit a couple in this way to win us a few of those games. Especially Keltner and Gordon.
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Cleveland hasn't won a World Series since.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the baseball gods.
 
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