That there is also a dark side to technological advances was evident when Major League Baseball was greatly embarrassed a few years ago by the Houston Astros’ sign stealing scandal. Indeed, the 2018 champion allegedly owed her success in part to cheating. So it has been up to the league since then to stay ahead of the malicious teams in a technological arms race.

Sign stealing

As soon as an Astros batter stepped into the batter’s box during that triumph, he pricked up his ears to see if drumming on an overturned garbage can could be heard from the dugout. Indeed, if that was the case, he could expect an off-speed pitch. Indeed, a spy in the far field at that point had had just enough time to decipher the catcher’s sign toward the mound and pass it to the dugout.

Although the Astros were by no means the only ones to use such tactics – the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, to name but two, were also emphatically associated with them – but it certainly didn’t hurt the Texas organization. Whether it actually got them the title can never be said with absolute certainty, but for many fans there will still be a small asterisk behind that title.

Where teams used to have to perform the craziest antics to first decipher the signs and then also get them to the batter in time – there would even have been people with sniper rifles in the stands to get a better view of the catcher’s hands through the visor – these days, of course, this has become a lot easier, and more importantly, faster.

PitchCom

To eliminate such practices in the future, Pitch Com was introduced. This is a system that allows catcher and pitcher to communicate with each other without it being possible for others to listen in. In any case, that’s the idea, because who knows, by now clever hackers may already be breaking into this means of communication as well.

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Not everyone is happy about this. For example, Max Scherzer thinks it’s all just nonsense. ‘Stealing each other’s signs is just part of the sport,’ said the former Astros pitcher. He even enjoyed working out ways with his catcher to outsmart the opponent. However, the chances that you will get the same answer from a pitcher who has been swept away by cheating Astros seems slim. In some cases, even careers were affected by this cheating, and so perhaps people like Scherzer should get used to the fact that this will be the future of the sport.