If you think you only have to worry about protecting your information online, you haven’t been watching professional sports much lately. There’s not a game that goes by without a conversation between a coach and player or a bunch of players or several coaches, all covering their mouths.
Sure, that’s not nearly as foolproof as two-factor authentication, but it’s better than unintentionally giving your opposition a look at your plans for the next at-bat, series of downs, or potential buzzer-beating game-winner, right? [related]
While the most common way to gain an advantage on your opponents—particularly in baseball—was figuring out their signals, these days there’s a lot more to it than that.
“Today’s scandals revolve around technology — from teams using Apple Watches or high-definition cameras to steal signs to rogue ‘data scouts’ giving bookmakers real-time information from ballparks” according to a recent Associated Press article.
“It’s hard to gauge how widespread these [baseball cheating] practices are, but players and managers are paranoid about tech-driven cheating, with teams hurling accusations at one another as recently as this year’s American League Championship Series,” the article says.
There were even accusations of sign-stealing in the Little League World Series this year, a practice I didn’t know was illegal until it happened. I have no problem with one team stealing another’s signs because it means they’re tuned into every moment of the game and looking for an advantage.
Technology is responsible for the ever-increasing use of the shift in baseball, allowing fielders to position themselves where hitters are most likely to hit the ball. While that can make for some frustration if you’re a fan of the team that’s losing an out to a shift, I don’t consider it cheating and say it’s fine.
But obviously there are lines that can’t be crossed. This isn’t a morality discussion and I’m certainly not going to delve into whether Major League Baseball players who used steroids were cheating and should be looked at with a furrowed brow when they come up for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
No, this type of baseball cheating is specifically about using technology to gain an advantage over your opponent on a Major League Baseball diamond. I’ll be honest: it doesn’t bother me in the least. Again, if your team can’t figure out a way to protect its information, it deserves to have it compromised.
Baseball Cheating: An Enduring Tradition
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora has been called the best sign stealer in the game and it’s perhaps one of the reasons the team won a record 108 games in 2018 on the way to a World Series championship. Along the way, the Sox beat the Houston Astros, for whom Cora coached in 2017.
You have to think he was able to pick up on tendencies and signals from the players with whom he formed a close bond the previous year as that team won the World Series—and that the information Cora gathered helped the Red Sox beat the Astros in the playoffs in 2018.
I’m fine with iPads in Major League dugouts, I’d be all for robot umpires to make sure more balls and strikes are called correctly—even if it meant the Sox got a few less close calls.
One area where I think technology has been a hindrance in sports is on instant replay. Too often, the replay officials who are looking over these plays in painstaking detail get the calls wrong anyway or don’t find enough information to reverse an on-field error.
Would you rather have one team spying on and picking up on the tendencies of another team, or have one team betting on—or, even worse, against—its own squad, like we had with the Chicago Black Sox scandal and more recently Pete Rose?
By the way, I still think both Rose and White Sox legend Shoeless Joe Jackson belong in Cooperstown, but that’s a debate for another day.
I’m curious what the systems integrators who are complicit in helping these teams gain advantages over their opponents based on how robust their networks and cadre of technology is think about the increase in high-tech baseball cheating.
