The HouChron often uses articles from other papers, either to save money or perhaps as a concession to how bad they think their own staff of writers is, not sure really. They printed this one on Sunday from the San Francisco paper, about how far back sign stealing goes.
" ..... Carl Erskine, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1948 to 1959, recalled the art of reading a man’s intentions. “We’d study the other teams to see if guys were tipping their pitches,” said Erskine, 93, in a phone interview with The Chronicle from his home in Anderson, Ind. “The expression on his face, how his hand turned in the glove, that could be a sign a certain pitch was coming. We’d watch our own guys to make sure that didn’t happen. All that other stuff — flashing signs from second base, using tips from the base coaches — that’s been going on for a long time, in one way or another.”
On a fateful October day in 1951, as Erskine recalled with regret, innocence took leave.
Erskine was warming up in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ bullpen when the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit the so-called “Shot Heard ’Round the World” at the Polo Grounds to end the best-of-three National League playoff series. “The Giants win the pennant!” broadcaster Russ Hodges shouted, over and over, in his iconic call.
A half-century later, some troubling details came forth. It was revealed that the Giants had stashed one of their coaches, Herman Franks, behind a darkened window in the home clubhouse, located behind and above the center-field fence. Using a telescope to detect the catcher’s signs, he used a buzzer to alert players in the Giants’ bullpen, located almost directly below. From there, flashing a white towel, signs could be relayed to a hitter “looking straight over the pitcher’s shoulder,” Erskine said. “Easy. You wouldn’t even have to turn your head.”
In those days, Erskine said, “There were no rules that spoke to stealing signs. And you know, when they interviewed Bobby Thomson so many years later, he was very coy. He said he ‘could have’ taken the sign, that it was right there for him, but he never really admitted that he took it.”
It is now baseball’s task to determine its relationship with technology. A number of options are being discussed, and Manfred has left open the possibility of a minimalist landscape nearly devoid of cameras or other electronic devices — just shut everything off before the first pitch is thrown. How strange: As technology brings such striking advances in efficiency around the world, baseball considers going back in time. It’s starting to sound a lot healthier than progress."
Bruce Jenkins is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist.