Last Updated on: 13th February 2018, 10:36 am
Let’s get today’s horrid Jays game out of our systems with a little bit of baseball history, shall we?
Here’s a fun piece on basebrawls from Baseball Prospectus. Number 5 in particular is one for the ages.
While we’re on the subject of baseball and since I mentioned the Jays, this whole mysterious sign stealing man in white thing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read the tripe for yourself right here.
I’m not going to say much about it since people much more qualified than I seem to have it covered from just about every possible angle, but I will say this. There are a lot of problems with this story. The cherry picked stats they’re using to try to prove something they ultimately don’t end up proving. The lack of video of this man in white in action which you’d think ESPN, as big an organization as it is, would be able to find quite easily. The lack of complaints save one or two before this was published. and then there’s this. Aaron Hill and Adam Lind didn’t have the best of years in 2010. Why didn’t sign stealing man help them out a little more? John McDonald, much as I love him, was not a 300 hitter last year. If the man in white was any good, shouldn’t he have been? Or are you telling me Johnny Mac is so awful that not even impossible levels of cheating can help him? And speaking of awful, are the Jays such a shit team that even though they knew what was coming at them and when during most if not all of their home games, they still couldn’t win the East, or at least the wild-card? All of these questions and we haven’t even touched the issue of whether a batter would be able to see a guy from that angle or how said guy relays things that quickly.
Do the Jays steal signs sometimes? I don’t know, but I imagine probably isn’t a totally wrong answer. But then again, who hasn’t isn’t a bad question either. Sign swiping has been going on in baseball since there have been signs in baseball. It’s part of the game. But to suggest that it’s happening in the way it’s supposedly happening here is completely fucking preposterous and takes a nice, warm steamer all over ESPN’s credibility.
