MLB in 2020 will not play enough games for it to be a season. At least fans could boo the Astros.

The MLB season in recent years has been six months of regular season, plus almost another month of tournament games.

Dividing 162 games by 6 = 27. So, if the season starts June 1 because of the plague, that would mean about 108 games would be played. There's talk of playing doubleheaders to pad it out but that's problematic, especially if the reason is to collect TV advertising dollars.

3.5 hour games are boring enough but can you imagine 3.5 + .5 + 3.5? Who the heck is going to watch? Maybe if you record and fast forward past the commercials and dead spots between pitches, which has been my recommendation for years and that was for single games.

Will there be a trading deadline? If so, there then will be teams tanking. There's still enough delayed residual hysteria about the Houston Astros cheating by stealing opposing team's catcher's signs during games in Houston to possibly continue to distract fans from the policy that undermines the basic integrity of MLB a thousand times more: tanking, i.e., trading your best players, the ones used to sell tickets since the end of the previous season, with at least one third of the regular season to go. That's like being more concerned about a paper cut than cancer. You pretty much have to be a moron to have a perspective that perverted.

MLB will hurry to and through the tournament to have a champion emerge but what value will that championship have?

MVP and Cy Young awards? Their value would be even less. And that's assuming a regular season of more than 100 games. What if play starts in July? August? Hey, play might start after the trading deadline. Then teams could tank before they start to play.

And when play starts, fans can boo the Astros for undermining the basic integrity of the game because the Astros had subverted the inalienable right of grown men to communicate vital secrets by wiggling their fingers in a sequence that could be interpreted on the fly by the cheaters ... with electronic speed so to speak.

Showing posts with label Signs.

Branca intended brushback of Thomson who homered to win the 1951 pennant.

"I tried to brush him back a bit but I didn't get the ball in tight enough." said Branca, able suddenly after ten Octobers to label a pitch imperfect. "I always figured he just outguessed me." ...

When these years later Branca told Maglie that his fastball to Thomson was meant to set up a curve, the Giant pitcher snapped: "Dago, if you wanted him to hit the curve, why didn't you throw him a fucking curve?"

Pages 314 and 327, "The Echoing Green", a 2006 book by Joshua Prager
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Rube Walker (died December 12, 1992, age 66) SABR bio:

In Brooklyn, Walker backed up future Hall of Famer Roy Campanella and, after Campy was injured, Walker was behind the plate for Games Two and Three of the playoff series against the New York Giants. The series ended with the famous Bobby Thomson home run off Ralph Branca in the bottom of the ninth of the decisive third game, and years later Rube said that pitch was supposed to be a brushback, but “Branca didn’t get the ball far enough inside.”1

1 New York Daily News, December 15, 1992.
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Branca's catcher was quoted as describing the pitch as a brushback in what was probably an obituary published about thirty years after Branca is quoted in the one and only spot in the Prager book it's mentioned. That this was not investigated further by Prager is odd at best, maybe because it essentially turns his verbose morality play into soap opera.

Victim Branca intended to intimidate Thomson, who turned that intent against the intimidator. Ironic.

So finally there is corroboration in one spot from the pitcher and the catcher that the home run pitch was supposed to have been a brushback.

October 3, 1951: The Giants win the pennant!
SABR article was written by Scott Ferkovich

(Dodgers up 4-2 bottom 9, one out, runners on second and third.)

The Giants were managed by Leo Durocher ...

Next up, Bobby Thomson. To face him, Dressen brought in Ralph Branca. The Brooklyn righty had been the starter in Game One, giving up a homer to Thomson but pitching well in a 3-1 loss.

Gordon McClendon was calling the game on radio for the Liberty Broadcasting System. “Boy, I’m telling you!” he declared. “What they’re going to say about this one I don’t know!”2 Branca somehow sneaked a fastball down the middle for strike one. “A ball I should have swung at,” Thomson, a fastball hitter, admitted later.3

At 3:58 pm, Branca’s second pitch, another fastball, came in high and tight. Thomson swung, his uppercut driving the ball deep toward the corner in left. Pafko, dashing toward the high wall, ran out of room. The ball landed in the first row, just above the 315 ft. sign for a three-run home run. Game over. The Polo Grounds shook as the euphoric crowd erupted. Joe King wrote in The Sporting News, “(Thomson’s homer) touched off scenes in this place which never before had been witnessed in connection with the winning of a pennant.”4

3 Ray Robinson, The Home Run Heard ‘Round the World (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2011).

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Thomson had homered off Branca two days before ... in Brooklyn. Branca lost BOTH games that Brooklyn lost of those three extra games to decide the pennant. BOTH losses were on game winning home runs by Thomson: 4th inning road, 9th inning home.

If Thomson knew what was coming, it makes you wonder why he didn't swing at the first pitch...

Then a brushback? Did the Giants steal that information, and if so, why the heck wasn't Thomson backing away?
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Two pitches from Ralph Branca to Bobby Thomson in that final 1951 confrontation:
- Thomson takes one right down Broadway for strike one.
- Branca intends to brushback Thomson but makes such a terrible pitch that Thomson hits it for a pennant winning home run instead.

Hardly the stuff of legend. Or moral outrage.

Showing posts with label Signs.

New York Giants stole signs in 1951 AND 1954 to win pennants; Mays MVP.

Ralph Branca victim, Bobby Thomson villain?

Wednesday, October 3, 1951

Attendance: 34,320

Venue: Polo Grounds V

Game Duration: 2:28

Day Game, on grass

New York Giants 5, Brooklyn Dodgers 4

		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
	Brooklyn Dodgers	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	4	8	0
	New York Giants	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	4	5	8	0
WP: Larry Jansen (23-11) • LP: Ralph Branca (13-12)
Winning Run scored with 1 out

Starting Lineups

Dodgers

1	Carl Furillo	RF
2	Pee Wee Reese	SS
3	Duke Snider	CF
4	Jackie Robinson	2B
5	Andy Pafko	LF
6	Gil Hodges	1B
7	Billy Cox	3B
8	Rube Walker	C
9	Don Newcombe	P

Giants

1	Eddie Stanky	2B
2	Al Dark	SS
3	Don Mueller	RF
4	Monte Irvin	LF
5	Whitey Lockman	1B
6	Bobby Thomson	3B
7	Willie Mays	CF
8	Wes Westrum	C
9	Sal Maglie	P

HR: Bobby Thomson (32, off Ralph Branca, 9th inn, 2 on, 1 out to Deep LF).

Pitching	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA	BF	GSc	IR	IS	WPA	aLI	RE24
Don Newcombe	8.1	7	4	4	2	2	0	3.31	32	53			0.058	1.43	1.1
Ralph Branca, BS (3), L (13-12)	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	3.26	1		2	2	-0.711	4.74	-1.9
Team Totals	8.1	8	5	5	2	2	1	5.40	33	53	2	2	-0.653	1.53	-0.7

Those are the basic facts.

Bobby Thomson was batting 6th, behind Whitey Lockman and in front of rookie Willie Mays. Had a lefty pitcher started for the Dodgers, maybe Preacher Roe, Thomson would probably have batted 3rd as he had done in recent games against lefties.

Monte Irvin made the only Giant out in the 9th. Irvin was one of the Giants who did not want to know what pitch was supposed to be coming.

July 20, 1951 the New York Giants started violating informal rules and stole the opposing catcher's signs to the pitcher in games played at home in the Polo Grounds in Manhattan.

1951 New York Giants sign stealing: a peak at coach Herman Franks and more. Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Herman Franks died March 30, 2009 at age 95.

Bobby Thomson died August 16, 2010 at age 86.

Ralph Branca died November 23, 2016 at age 90.

Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca, who had just relieved starter Don Newcombe, to win the pennant in the third of three extra games played in 1951 between the Giants and Dodgers after they finished in a tie. Roy Campanella caught for the Dodgers in the first game but Rube Walker caught games 2 and 3.
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Ralph Branca: July 10, 1953: Selected off waivers by the Detroit Tigers from the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1954 Branca learned about the sign stealing from his Detroit roommate, fellow pitcher Ted Gray 1946, 1948-1955. Gray had never played for the Giants but learned it from fellow Mississippi player Earl Rapp, who appeared in only 13 Giants games, all in 1951: 7/17-8/24. Branca confirmed with Giant catcher Sal Yvars soon after learning. Yvars died 12/10/2008.

1962 The 1951 Giants sign stealing was generally known, at least in baseball circles.

1990 Sal Yvars started talking about it at public baseball events. He was not believed.

2000 An article was published in the Wall Street Journal by Joshua Prager that had the most details and which put the issue publicly in the face of the person most victimized, Ralph Branca.

By 2008 Branca had taken the view which we've seen by less direct victims of the same cheating by the Houston Astros 2017-2019: outrage! "Despicable" Branca called the sign stealing.

"The Echoing Green" a 2006 book by Joshua Prager:

pages 290-1:
Branca lay quiet as Gray spoke of signs, buzzer wire, a spyglass and bullpen, struck dumb as Gray recounted what Rapp had avowed: on October 3, 1951, the Giants copped the finger signals to both Branca fastballs. "It was a shock," says Branca. "I had to just ponder it." ...

(Branca) wanted confirmation, and so phoned now the one Giant he called friend, "He said," remembers Yvars, "'Sal, did this really happen?' ... given now again the opportunity to come clean, "I did." says Yvars, "from A to Z." ... told Branca not only of Franks but of his own post in right field. "I said." remembers Yvars, "Ralph, I was the messenger.'" ...

"I made the decision not to speak about it," says Branca. "I think I matured. I didn't want to be a crybaby. Anything I would say about that situation they would label me a sore loser." ...

Page 333:
It had been thirty-six years since Yvars confirmed for Branca that New York had spied his final fastballs of 1951. In all that time, the backup catcher had not gone public, ... But on August 27, 1990, at a benefit for spinal-cord-injury research, a reporter was among the audience. "Leo sent Herman Franks to sit by one of the windows in that center-field clubhouse in the Polo Grounds with a telescope," Phil Mushnick quoted Yvars. "He'd buzz me the signal, then I'd signal our batter." Thus came word in the New York Post ... a pennant was upset. And thus was a very first 1951 Giant on record about a secret...

Says Yvars, "I wanted to tell the truth." He adds, "No one believed it. Who would believe it?"

Who indeed? (Not Mushnick, says the reporter.) For a pennant was sacred and a catcher profane...

Yvars soon came clean again, a guest of Ed Randall on cable television in 1991. His teammates boiled. "I saw him." says Thomson. "I said, 'tell me, Sal, do you think there's another guy on this ball club who would have done what you've done talking about signs?'" Another soon would, Mays confessing to Erskine at a golf tournament in Indiana...

The public, though, paid Yvars little mind.
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Giant manager Leo Durocher died October 7, 1991 at age 86.

Read more about Erskine below.

Bobby Thomson: February 1, 1954: Traded by the New York Giants with Sam Calderone to the Milwaukee Braves for Johnny Antonelli, Billy Klaus, Don Liddle, Ebba St. Claire and $50,000.

The New York Giants won their last two pennants in 1951 and 1954. In 1954 the Giants defeated Cleveland to win their first World Series since 1933. Page 292 in the Prager book:

August 6 (1954) ... And sure enough, for the first time since 1951, the home team had this season pressed the long-dormant push-botton ... had spied signals from the clubhouse. "As the year progressed and we felt we had a decent ball club, " says (Giant) pitcher Corwin, "it was there for those who wanted them." (Since moving alone into first place on June 15, New York was 25-7 at home.) Cautioned by Thomson, (Braves) catcher Crandall safeguarded his signs, New York scoring just nine runs in three games. Milwaukee swept the series, 7.5 games back.
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Boo Willie Mays for 1951 sign stealing? No New York Giant punished. Manager Leo Durocher in Hall of Fame. Sunday, February 23, 2020

Al Corwin was a relief pitcher with the New York Giants 1951-1955. Carl Erskine was a starting pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers 1949-1957, LA Dodgers 1958-1959; 122-78, .610, ERA 4.00.

Joshua Prager book "The Echoing Green":
page 88:
The team largely stopped shouting signals from the bench, relaying them instead from the far less conspicuous bullpen. The bullpen came to know which Giant batters depended on signs. ("The guys who could hit the longball wanted to know," remembers Corwin. "Willie loved it.") ...

page 333:
1991 ... Mays confessed to Erskine at a golf tournament in Indiana. ("He pulled me over," says the Dodger pitcher. " 'You know, Carl, we stole your signs.' ")
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In 2000 when the Wall Street Journal article by Joshua Prager came out documenting the 1951 sign stealing based on statements by Sal Yvars, we had Yvars as our guest at our monthly baseball meeting here in Westchester County, NY. This was two weeks before the publication of the article, so we had a bit if a scoop. Both Ralph Branca and Sal Yvars had grown up in Westchester.

Three issues:

1. After the meeting people were hanging around and I asked Yvars if the Giants stole the signs against the Yankees in the World Series, which started the day after the Thomson home run off Branca. Yvars said no, because there were too many people around. I thought that odd. How many more could there possible be but that's what he said.

2. Now that it appears that the Giants repeated their sign stealing the very next time that they had a contending team, that same question applies: did the Giants steal the signs against the 1954 Cleveland Indians when the Giants had an upset four game sweep against the 111 win Indians?

3. The amazing performance of Willie Mays in only his second complete big league season now has some doubt cast on its legitimacy, although his 1954 splits show no indication that he benefited from knowing the pitches in his home park. Mays played only 34 games in 1952 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army because of the Korean War. Others drafted included pitchers Dodger Don Newcombe and Yankee Whitey Ford. Mays emerged in 1954 as the biggest star in the National League, leading in batting average and voted NL MVP. If Mays loved the knowing the pitches in 1951, he must have loved it in 1954, too.

Showing posts with label Signs.

Boo Willie Mays for 1951 sign stealing? No New York Giant punished. Manager Leo Durocher in Hall of Fame.

Say what? Say hey. Mays circumspect on the issue? How would circumspect play today?

Willie Mays: should he be vilified for 1951 sign stealing? Wednesday, February 19, 2020

I know, it's jolting to even consider but 20 year old New York Giant rookie Willie Mays was part of the Giants cheating to win the 1951 NL pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers of Jackie Robinson.

Why is Jose Altuve vilified but not Bobby Thomson? Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Hank Aaron played with Bobby Thomson but wants Astros cheaters banned for life. Sunday, February 9, 2020 ...

So before threatening Altuve, Bregman, Correa, Springer ... pause and consider whether you want to go after Willie Mays, the Say Hey Kid of the 1950s. It's not too late to ban Mays for life.
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Since the hysterical and apoplectic reaction to the 2017-2019 Houston Astros sign stealing continues unabated, it seemed appropriate to try again to shock people by again pointing out that Willie Mays was in about as similar a situation in 1951 as one could imagine.

Leo Durocher managed the Brooklyn Dodgers 1939-1946, 72 games in 1948; New York Giants 79 games in 1948, 1949-1955, Cubs 1966-90 games in 1972, Astros 31 games in 1972-1973.

Durocher the Spymaster: How much did the Giants prosper from cheating in 1951? By Bryan Soderholm-Difatte

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

In the summer of 1951, the New York Giants under manager Leo Durocher began to employ an elaborate sign-stealing scheme...

... the revelation by Joshua Prager—first in a 2001 Wall Street Journal article and then his book, The Echoing Green ...

After (Don) Mueller tagged Dodgers’ pitching for three round-trippers in the September 1 game, Brooklyn coach Cookie Lavagetto told manager Charlie Dressen: “You notice when we come here, we never fool anybody? We throw a guy a change of pace, he seems to know what’s coming?”9 The next day, Mueller—who had hit only 18 home runs in his entire career to that point, and would hit only 42 more over the next six years and retire with 65 for his career—hit two more. His five home runs in consecutive games tied the major league record ...

9. Prager cites Lavagetto saying this to Peter Golenbock in his (1984) book, BUMS: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: Contemporary Books, 2000).

Rookie phenom Willie Mays did not play as well on the road as at home during that time, but there is nothing in his comparative before-and-after statistics to indicate Mays exploited the Polo Grounds’ advantage.12

12.James S. Hirsh in his recent authorized biography, Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, wrote that “Willie Mays is circumspect on the issue.” (New York: Scribner, 2010), 136.
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Circumspect?
Al Corwin was a relief pitcher with the New York Giants 1951-1955. Carl Erskine was a starting pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers 1949-1957, LA Dodgers 1958-1959; 122-78, .610, ERA 4.00.

Joshua Prager book "The Echoing Green":
page 88:
The team largely stopped shouting signals from the bench, relaying them instead from the far less conspicuous bullpen. The bullpen came to know which Giant batters depended on signs. ("The guys who could hit the longball wanted to know," remembers Corwin. "Willie loved it.") ...

page 333:
1991 ... Mays confessed to Erskine at a golf tournament in Indiana. ("He pulled me over," says the Dodger pitcher. " 'You know, Carl, we stole your signs.' ")
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Leo Durocher

Born: July 27, 1905 in West Springfield, MA us

Died: October 7, 1991 (Aged 86-072d) in Palm Springs, CA

Hall of Fame: Inducted as Manager in 1994. (Voted by Veteran's Committee)

SABR bio by Jeffrey Marlett

On the very day (Jackie) Robinson (1947) was to be introduced, Commissioner Albert B. “Happy” Chandler suspended (Dodger manager) Durocher from baseball for a year. Chandler claimed that Durocher had once again associated with known gamblers...

According to author Joshua Prager, Leo ... his (1951) rudimentary telescope-and-bell system rigged in the Polo Grounds offices 483 feet away from home plate ...
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Some perspective, please.

Bellinger and Judge: whelp of a beaten cur. Wednesday, February 19, 2020 5:13 PM

Aaron Judge, shake hands with Jose Altuve. Wednesday, February 19, 2020 6:15 PM

Showing posts with label Signs.