Baseball - Tony La Russa had a sign stealing camera in the 80's. (Palin supporter)

[underpants]

Former Cy Young Award winner Jack McDowell on Friday accused Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa of having a camera-aided sign-stealing system installed when he was with the Chicago White Sox in the late 1980s.

McDowell, who made his major league debut for the White Sox in 1987 and pitched for 12 seasons in the majors, never played for La Russa, who was fired by the White Sox during the previous season. However, in an appearance on The Mac Attack on WFNZ in Charlotte, McDowell described a system that he said was put in place by La Russa.

"We had a system in the old Comiskey Park in the late 1980s," McDowell, who coaches at Queens University, told the radio station Friday. "The Gatorade sign out in center had a light; there was a toggle switch in the manager's office and [a] camera zoomed in on the catcher.

"I'm gonna whistle-blow this now because I'm getting tired of this crap. There was that -- Tony La Russa is the one who put it in. ... He's still in the game making half a million, you know? No one is going to go after that. It's just, this stuff is getting old where they target certain guys and let other people off the hook."

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28503160/jack-mcdowell-says-tony-la-russa-had-sign-stealing-system-white-sox-80s

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Wow,thought the story about

the Guy's in the Score Board using Binoculars stealing signs was bad,but,it is after all,big money. The Bookies sure as hell made some big bucks,they know every thing.

[Bleacher Creature]

2. Didn't La Russa also speak at a Glenn Beck rally?

This doesn't surprise me in the least, although the whole issue is kind of odd. I you steal signs without any grand plan, it's considered part of the game. But if you do it using technology (or trash can) and an organized system, the league will take action.

[tishaLA]

3. Heh. La Russa's response to this is priceless

he's very indignant, but somehow he never gets around to denying it:

<...>“My question is this: Was he ever on our team?” La Russa said. “He was never on our team.” <...>

Told that McDowell didn’t claim to have played for La Russa, the manager said: “He can talk all he wants. He doesn’t know how we played the game. He should talk to our teammates. That’s what he should do.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/17/tony-larussa-responds-to-jack-mcdowells-cheating-allegation/

[hughee99]

4. LaRussa was the White Sox mgr until 1986, while McDowell made his MLB debut in 1987.

While LaRussa is technically correct that McDowell never played for him, McDowell played with (and talked to) a whole bunch of LaRussa’s teammates.

It would be interesting to see if Oakland and St. Louis had such a system.

[Brother Buzz]

5. Leo Durocher employed a telescope in 1951

Durocher the Spymaster: How much did the Giants prosper from cheating in 1951

In the summer of 1951, the New York Giants under manager Leo Durocher began to employ an elaborate sign-stealing scheme. The Giants needed to overcome a 13.5-game deficit to the Brooklyn Dodgers to set up a historic playoff. The question is not whether the Giants stole signs, but what effect the sign-stealing had on the Giants' remarkable comeback.

Note: This article appears in the Fall 2012 edition of the "Baseball Research Journal."

Leo Durocher, who is said to have said “nice guys finish last”—also the title of his autobiography— plausibly could have asked, “who said cheaters never prosper?”

His power numbers were much better on the road than at home after July 20, 1951, despite the Giants’ scheme to steal signs at the Polo Grounds. I refer, of course, to the revelation by Joshua Prager—first in a 2001 Wall Street Journal article and then his book, The Echoing Green—that in 1951 the New York Giants employed an elaborate sign-stealing scheme. As detailed by Prager, Durocher installed coach Herman Franks in the manager’s office of the Giants’ clubhouse beyond center field in the Polo Grounds to steal opposing catchers’ signals. Franks would look through a telescope and relay the sign through an electrical-buzzer system to the Giants’ bullpen in deep right field, from where the sign would be flashed to the Giants’ hitters.1 The implication of this revelation is that Bobby Thomson might not have tagged Ralph Branca for arguably the most famous decisive home run in baseball history if not for spying, or at the very least that Thomson's date with history would not have come about. The Giants needed to overcome a 13 1/2-game deficit of August 11 to finish the 154-game season in a flatfooted tie with Brooklyn to set up the historic showdown. The question is not whether the Giants stole signs, but what effect the sign-stealing had on the Giants' remarkable comeback.

<more>

https://sabr.org/research/durocher-spymaster-how-much-did-giants-prosper-cheating-1951-finalist