Louisiana Voice

Because I’m retired and don’t have a job to go to anymore, staying home came easy during the coronavirus shutdown. The biggest adjustment in my life was the forced cold-turkey withdrawal from the greatest game ever—baseball.

After getting only a taste of LSU baseball and before the major league teams could break their spring training camps, everything was shut down.

Before we get any further into my rant, let me expound a bid on my theory about the greatness of baseball. I love football, too, but not at the same level as baseball. Basketball takes a back seat to tennis in my love of sports, but ranks light years ahead of golf.

But while football contains many elements of strategy and even some finesse, it is largely a physical game. Lightweights need not apply—except as placekickers.

Basketball obviously gives tremendous advantage to height, former NBA star Spud Webb (5’7”, 133 pounds) notwithstanding.

But baseball? Baseball is more hand-eye coordination than brawn, as much mental as physical. It doesn’t care about your size. Look at Dustin Pedroia, Nellie Fox, Pee Wee Reese, Freddie Patek, Bobby Shantz, Hack Wilson, Phil Rizzuto, Joe Morgan, Mookie Betts Jose Altuve, et al, none of whom stood more than 5’9”. And one need only look at Yogi Berra to understand that physique is of little consideration when it comes to All-Star players. Some aeronautics expert once said the design of the bumblebee made it impossible to fly. Any pro scout today checking out a player built like Yogi would write in his report, “That dog won’t hunt.”

If you have the time and inclination to do so, check out how many combined All-Star games those guys played in and how many championship teams they played on.

Apparently, one thing that baseball does care about is gambling and stealing signs. If you ask me (and no one has and, in all likelihood, won’t), all that concern seems a little misplaced to me.

Take Pete Rose, for example. Rose, not the most personable player and more than a little self-promoting, was banned from baseball and from admittance into the Baseball Hall of Fame (currently occupied by far more unsavory characters) for gambling.

Banned from the Hall of Fame despite holding the major league record for games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), hits (4,256) and singles (3,215). Rose, who played every position except pitcher at one time or another, batted leadoff which reduced his chances to drive in runs dramatically, so he never had a 100-RBI season (his high of 82 came in 1969). Despite that, he holds the record for most RBI of any player without a season of 100 or more (1,314).

Rose has admitted that he bet on baseball games and other sports during his playing career and while managing the Cincinnati Red. He even admitted to betting on Reds games but emphatically denies ever betting against the Reds. You think maybe Babe Ruth had a spotless record when it came to gambling? Just sayin’.

A fine line of distinction, to be sure, but a little hypocritical on baseball’s part—much in the same vein as the lifetime ban of Shoeless Joe Jackson of the 1919 Black Sox World Series scandal.

Jackson just happened to have set a World Series record with 12 base hits in the series for the White Sox that year, a record that stood until 1964, and he led both teams in several statistical categories, including a .375 batting average. He committed no errors in the series against Cincinnati and threw out a runner at the plate, Jackson and his seven teammates were acquitted of wrongdoing by a Chicago jury but baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis nevertheless banned Jackson and his seven teammates. Jackson’s stellar play has lent credence to a century-old doubts over his guilt. (Jackson, by the way, played in 1910 with the minor league New Orleans Pelicans.)

Having most likely wrongfully convicted Jackson, made an example of Rose, and belatedly instituted drug testing after the home run barrages of Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds, baseball needed another cause celebre to drown out the sound of cash registers ringing up grotesque overcharges for beer, popcorn and peanuts in the concession stands.

It settled on garbage can-banging.

That’s really scraping the bottom of the garbage can.

The entire garbage can scandal had its epicenter in Houston but it reverberated all the way to Boston and when the smoke had cleared, two managers, A.J. Hinch of the Houston Astros and Alex Cora of the Boston Red Sox, along with Houston General Manager Jeff Luhnow were served up as sacrificial lambs to the baseball gods.

Hinch, with Cora as his bench coach, led the Astros to 112 wins and the World Series title in seven thrilling games over the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017.

A year later, Cora, as the rookie manager of the Red Sox, would lead Boston to an eye-popping 119 victories en route to the 2018 World Series title over…..the Dodgers.

Two years later, they were both out, banished for at least a year—a year in which no one, it turned out, participated in the game. (Can you say karma?)

Their sin? A system of banging on garbage cans in Houston as a method of relaying the upcoming pitch to Astros batters.

Are you kidding me? Banging on garbage cans as a means of cheating? As a way of letting batters know what pitch was coming, fast ball, curve, slider, change-up, cutter?

Give me a freaking break!

So, now it’s a sin in baseball to steal signs? Well, if it’s done by a camera in centerfield and relayed to the designated can-banger, apparently so.

Next, they’re going to crack down on stealing bases. Hidden ball trick? Nope, can’t do that, either. Fake throw to second by the catcher in the hopes of luring a runner too far off third? That’s deceptive, definitely cheating.

The NFL will have follow suit by banning fake field goals and fake punts, misdirection plays, fake runs, fake blitzes, and triple-option pass plays.

I has the pleasure of owning and coaching a sandlot baseball team back in the ‘60s and early 70s (actually, I just made out the lineup card and let the players play; they knew far more about baseball than I).

One of the sacred principles of the game was that if a baserunner made it to second, he would have a straight line of vision into the catcher’s mitt 127.3 feet away. His job was to look in and try to pick up the catcher’s signal and to relay to the batter a sign telling him what pitch was coming. (That was also the time when the catcher would usually visit with the pitcher to change the sequence of signs or what the indicator was to the actual sign of the next pitch. Yep, a deceptive system was developed to flash a sequence of false signs until the pitcher saw the indicator—definitely cheating.

Same thing for the third-base coach, who would go through a set of meaningless signs to the baserunner at first or the batter before he would give the indicator setting up the actual sign for the baserunner to steal, or the batter to take, bunt or for a hit-and-run. Again, cheating with those deceptive signs. Outlaw ‘em all! In fact, let’s let the catcher just call the next pitch to the pitcher verbally and the third-base coach yell “Steal” to the runner or “Take” or “Bunt” to the batter. Make the game honest, stripped of all deception. And strategy. And fun.

My grandson plays tournament ball and I coached his coach when he was 14-15-years-old league in summer ball in Denham Springs many years ago. He went on to play for LSU and also enjoyed a brief stint in the majors.

He and I had this garbage-can discussion recently and we’re in complete agreement: you look for an edge and if you can pick up what the next pitch is, you let your batter know with some sort of signal. He teaches that to the kids he coaches, my grandson included. “If you’re on second and you see it’s going to be a fastball, drop your arms loose at your side,” I heard him instruct his team one night. “If it’s a curve, take your cap off and put it back on or touch the bill of the cap or touch the front of your jersey. Have a system established to let your teammate know what’s coming.”

That’s baseball, folks. You steal bases, you steal signs to learn what an upcoming pitch will be or to learn if a baserunner is stealing or if a squeeze bunt is on.

What’s the difference if the sign is picked up by the human eye or the camera eye? What’s the difference between a runner on second letting his arms hand loose to signal a fast ball or someone banging on a garbage can?

Banning these two managers from baseball for a year for stealing signs strikes at the very core of this great sport and is illustrative of how far we’ve come in the area of self-shaming.

It’s past time to apply the brakes and put some sanity back into the game. Stealing signs and banging on garbage cans does not hurt the integrity of baseball. But it does add to the critical mental part, the strategy, of the game—the game within a game.