- At least fifteen minutes taking notes on episode 1459 of Effectively Wild
- History of sign stealing
- Speaker: Paul Dixon, who has written at least 60 books
- The Hidden Language of Baseball is his book on sign-stealing
- Signs used in baseball as early as first professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings
- Analog between baseball and Civil War
- First war where the soldiers relied heavily on signs
- Torches and flags
- At the same time, how can they steal the signs of the opposing team?
- Tells- the idea that someone would allude to what will happen through a certain tick or movement
- 1990s- sign-stealing begin to take on connotation of personal disrespect
- Sign-stealing considered more questionable during lopsided games (unwritten rule against running up the score?)
- Considered universally unacceptable: batter peeking backward at the catcher
- Any first principle to determine when/if sign-stealing can be acceptable?
- Most likely not; values and judgements emerge on the fly
- Brings VP Humphrey into the booth; shows how they are stealing signs on national TV; excuses it as normal and widespread
- MLB now monitoring bullpen phones to make sure they are not being used to relay sign-related info
- 1900 Phillies- first electronic sign-stealing technique?
- Sending stolen signals using buzzers?
- Every team in 2017 had elaborate schemes of changing their finger signs
- With all the dummy signs, how can the teams decode?
- Teams might have only been able to steal the simplest ones, e.g., one finger down for a fastball
- Getting bored of this for the moment.
- Intro article on baseball analytics
- I continue to be overwhelmed by the information. Is it a good idea just to choose one team and go through their season game by game, trying to pick out trends?