By Yours Truly
Just when you thought these postseason series were going to lack for intrigue other than that on the field,
presto! We now have things from dirty play to espionage in the League Championship Series picture. Baseball as six parts the Dead End Kids and half a dozen parts the CIA.
Dodgers shortstop Manny Machado has been handed the Dead End Kids role, with a pair of Utley Rule-violating slides at second base in Game Three and a couple of nasty bumps on Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar in Game Four.
The Astros have been handed the spook role, with word that the Indians may have sent the Red Sox information about the Astros trying a little sign stealing during the division series sweep. While one and all around it so far seem to believe nobody’s found any corroborating evidence, it’s not as though the Astros or other teams—including the Red Sox—have been immune to accusations of subterfuge.
So much for savouring the Red Sox’s 8-2 dispatch of the Astros in Game Three of the ALCS Tuesday afternoon, or Jackie Bradley, Jr.’s game-busting eighth-inning grand salami. And, that skintight 2-1 Dodgers triumph in thirteen pitching-dominant innings in Game Four of the NLCS Tuesday night, ended when slumping Cody Bellinger shot an RBI single on a hard line into right.
But then if there’s one thing baseball fans tend to love more than the games themselves, it’s juiciness off the field or adjacent to it. Vin Scully used to love talking about the games within the games, but it usually referenced simple gamesmanship or parallel lines on the field or charming backstories. Dirty play and dirty pool just seem a lot sexier than that to Joe and Jan Fan—unless their teams are the actual or alleged victims, of course.
Machado isn’t exactly renowned as a completely clean player, even if a couple of past incidents involving him may not have been entirely his instigation. But when he slid in straight but hard with his arm up enough to possibly distract Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia from completing a double play, it ended up costing the Dodgers a fourth-inning Game Three rally when a review yielded interference and a double play call.
It was one of two such Machado slides and the one that got the negative field ruling, since on the first one Arcia hadn’t tried to throw on in a double play bid. But then in Game Four, on a routine tenth-inning ground out, Machado looked to too much of the world as though he kicked Aguilar’s foot with his back leg as he hit first base.
The benches and the bullpens emptied but nothing else happened and the game—dominated to a fare-thee-well by shutdown relief pitching on both sides and a one-all tie into the thirteenth inning—went on.
Machado’s ways on the bases, which seemed anomalous enough to those rubbing their eyes over his earlier proclamation that Johnny Hustle he ain’t, necessarily, almost overtook the discussion of Dodger center fielder Bellinger, a mid-Game Four insertion, robbing Lorenzo Cain of a hit with a dazzling, sprawling, wings-spread, tenth-inning catch, and winning the game with a no-doubt line single to right in the thirteenth . . . scoring Machado, who almost got picked off at second before coming home with the winner.
No less than the Brewers’ Most Valuable Player candidate, Christian Yelich, called Machado out after the game, which he otherwise called a great game. “It’s a dirty play,†Yelich said of the tenth-inning kick. “Dude, you just grounded one out. We’ve all grounded out. Just run through the bag like the rest of the world. There’s no place for it in the game . . . It’s unbelievable, really. He’s had a history. It happens once with him? It’s an accident. The fourth or fifth time? It’s intentional.â€
“You saw the replay, probably,†Machado told a reporter. “I was trying to get over him, and hit his foot. If that’s dirty, that’s dirty. I don’t know, call it what you want.†Which was just a slightly odd observation about a play involving a fielder to whom Machado says he feels familial.
“He’s a great guy. We go way back since the minor leagues,†Machado said of Aguilar. “So it’s just a friendly game, go out, try and compete here. We’re trying to win, he’s trying to do whatever he can to help his team over there, and we’re doing the same over here.†Machado and Aguilar did apologise to each other but Machado was fined by baseball for the extra kick.
Apparently, trying to do whatever you can to help your team win can be taken a little too far. If the Brewers think Machado did, imagine what some people think the Astros are doing, now that Kyle McLaughlin—who isn’t an official Astros employee but carried an Astros identification badge—was caught aiming his cell phone camera at the Indians dugout during Game Three of the Astros’ division series sweep.
Baseball government was handed a photograph of McLaughlin aiming the cell camera on the day of Game Three between the Astros and the Red Sox. Various reports say baseball government had “beefed-up†security at Minute Maid Park just in case. MLB itself has decided the actual or alleged Astros intelligence agency isn't all that serious yet. And even if you could make a case that everyone in baseball does things like that or close to it to get a little edge, there seems to be a building consensus that the Astros are the team who makes the most teams nervous about such skulduggery.
In 1951 the New York Giants launched a stupefying comeback from a double-digit deficit in the pennant race to force a three-game playoff with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The one that ended with Bobby Thomson hitting the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, a game, set, and pennant-winning three-run homer with Willie Mays on deck. The one that somehow remains still so mythological that, when Travis Ishikawa won the 2014 Giants the NLCS and the pennant with a game-ending three-run homer,
a popular video mash almost immediately erupted of Ishikawa hitting the bomb with Russ Hodges’ fabled screaming call of the Thomson bomb patched onto it.
It turned out that ’51 Giants manager Leo Durocher and his coaches installed an elaborate for the time scheme in which one coach would train a high-powered hand-held telescope upon opposing catchers and relay the signs by under-field buzzer to the Giants bullpen, who’d then flash the Giants hitters the sign.
Thomson denied for the rest of his life that he’d accepted a stolen sign when he swung on Ralph Branca’s fastball. Branca himself—who forged a charming friendship with Thomson in later years—begrudged the Giants that pennant but couldn’t convince himself entirely that Thomson may have been helped to cheat. “He still had to hit the ball,†said Branca, who bore the humiliation of having thrown the fatal pitch with uncommon grace as his life forward otherwise happily.
Joshua Prager unearthed, affirmed, and exposed the ’51 Giants’ spy operation, first in
The Wall Street Journal and then in
The Echoing Green. The Astros’ alleged espionage may or may not inspire a similarly researched and written book, but it took too much of the conversation away from the Red Sox’s staggering Game Three triumph Tuesday night.
Steve Pearce hits a one-out, tiebreaking home run in the sixth? Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi pitches six mostly dominant innings with only a first-inning RBI single (Marwin Gonzalez) and a fifth-inning RBI double (Alex Bregman) against him?
Controversial Astros relief pitcher Roberto Osuna—who pitched lights-out for them after his acquisition, a deal made when he was still on suspension over domestic violence accusations—hitting Brock Holt to load the bases and pinch hitter Mitch Moreland with the bases loaded to nudge home Pearce?
Jackie Bradley, Jr., whose three-run double in Game Two showed him beginning to erode a postseason slump following a hard regular season’s futility, bats after Moreland and turns on Osuna’s best fastball sending it into the right field seats?
How much fun is all that compared to another baseball Spygate? And never mind the irony of the Red Sox learning from the Indians that the Astros may have had a furtive camera trained on their signmakers, over a year after former Red Sox manager John Farrell was caught trying to use an AppleWatch to steal Yankee signs in a regular-season contest.
Plumb any reporting on the issue and it comes up that the Astros are the team who puts the fear of Wollensak (the type of hand telescope the ’51 Giants used) into the opposition. Some reports say the Athletics thought Astro players clapping in the dugout before each pitch were actually communicating stolen signs to their hitters. (MLB is said to be investigating that.) Others say Astro players use things such as banging trash cans to send hitters pilfered signs. Still others say McLaughlin was training a camera’s eye on the Red Sox to try discovering whether the Red Sox used a video monitor improperly.
Still others further may admit when pressed that, since we’re not talking about political or rival governmental spying and just baseball games, though it’s always mad fun to remind yourself that there isn’t a government on earth allergic to spying even on its allies, that the worst thing about any Astro espionage is that the Astros just might be better at it than others.
Remember Branca’s postulate. They can know what’s coming but still not be able to hit the ball at will. No level of Astro subterfuge could have kept Bradley from putting Game Four out of further reach and tying up the ALCS at two games each. And boys will still be boys, including the side of them that, even in the era of safe spaces and #MeToo, refuses to stop them from playing secret agent.
----------------------------------
@Polly Ticks @Machiavelli @AllThatJazzZ @Applewood @AmericanaPrime @Bigun @catfish1957 @corbe @Cyber Liberty @DCPatriot @dfwgator @Freya @GrouchoTex @Mom MD @musiclady@mystery-ak@Right_in_Virginia@Sanguine@Slip18 @Suppressed@TomSea@truth_seeker@WarmPotato