In 1962, Mets pitcher Jay Hook said the pennant-winning ’61 Reds stole signs through their scoreboard. But don’t call him a whistleblower, exactly.By Yours Truly
https://calltothepen.com/2020/02/20/new-york-mets-jay-hook-wont-call-himself-sign-stealing-whistleblower/
It might surprise his critics now, but Mike Fiers actually isn’t the first incumbent baseball player to blow the whistle on a pennant- or World Series-winning team’s off-field-based technological sign-stealing. Almost six decades ago, another pitcher blew the whistle on a pennant winner's espionage. Except that he won’t exactly call himself a whistleblower.
“A writer asked me some questions, and I answered,†says Jay Hook, who pitched for the 1961 Cincinnati Reds before joining the embryonic New York Mets as an expansion draft pick, by telephone from his northern Michigan farm. “I didn’t seek him out.â€
The story by multiple writers hit the United Press International wire in March 1962. It said the ’61 Reds, who won the pennant by four games over the Los Angeles Dodgers, had personnel crawling into Crosley Field’s walk-in, hand-operated scoreboard in left-center field. Inside, they’d train binoculars toward the batting area and pick up opposing catchers’ signs, then call them to the Reds’ dugout by telephone for relay to the batter’s box.
When Paul Dickson wrote his 2003 history of sign-stealing gamesmanship,
The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime (a second edition was published last September), he cited that UPI story and a quote from Hook saying he went public about the Reds’ espionage because “I want to protect the Mets against that sort of thing. I think it’s wrong.â€
A friendly 83-year-old man who looks about two decades younger, Hook doesn’t remember saying those words exactly. “There must have been some questions about the Reds,†he says now, his amiable conversation punctuated with frequent chuckles. “That’s what was put in the papers, but I’m not sure I said that. I did say to that writer that I didn’t want to get in the middle of that story.â€
Fiers’ whistleblowing has brought him six parts high praise for heroism in breaking the code of the clubhouse to expose the Astros’ extralegal sign-stealing and half a dozen parts high fury for being what some call in polite terms a rat fink bastard. Hook says he didn’t face anything such as that kind of venom after the UPI story hit the ground running.
Dickson cited another wire story in which Cincinnati Reds pitcher-turned-scout Brooks Lawrence denied flatly that the ’61 Reds were up to any scoreboard espionage, and manager Fred Hutchinson was quoted as saying, “That’s Hook’s story. He’s stuck with it.†Hook doesn’t quite remember Hutchinson saying that. But he does remember a conversation he had with Hutchinson during spring 1962.
“The Reds had some comments about it,†he says. “I went and talked to Fred Hutchinson about it after that story. He probably said, if I remember right, I think he said something like things like this come about, and we’ll have some comments about it, and you’ll have some comments about it, but don’t worry about it.â€
Around the same time, an Associated Press story by eventual J.G. Spink award winner Joe Reichler became the first known published story to suggest the 1951 New York Giants had what was eventually proven true in deep detail, a sign-stealing operation based in the Polo Grounds’ clubhouse behind center field to enable their staggering comeback from thirteen games out of first place to forcing the fabled pennant playoff with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Then-commissioner Ford C. Frick took none of the action today’s fans and numerous players demand of the Astros’ 2017 World Series title, refusing to vacate the ’51 Giants’ pennant. (The Giants lost the World Series to the New York Yankees in six games.)
Giants manager Leo Durocher instigated the scheme by having coach Herman Franks take reserve infielder Hank Schenz‘s hand-held Wollensak spyglass to that clubhouse behind center. Franks would get the opposing signs through it, then buzz the Giants bullpen with the stolen sign, and reserve catcher Sal Yvars most likely would send the batters who wanted the signs a flicker of light to indicate what was coming.
The entire plan was finally revealed in deep detail by
Wall Street Journal writer Joshua Prager, first
in his paper and then in his book,
The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, and the Shot Heard ‘Round the World. Hook says he had no idea when he became a Met, playing in the Polo Grounds, that the ’51 Giants had executed such an elaborate-for-its-era scheme.
Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg eventually admitted in his posthumously-published memoir that the pennant-winning 1940 Detroit Tigers were sign-stealing from the seats behind the outfield via pitcher Tommy Bridges‘ hunting rifle’s telescopic sight. Eddie Robinson, first baseman for the 1948 Cleveland Indians, admitted in his own memoir that those Indians committed similar espionage through the Municipal Stadium scoreboard.
The Tigers lost their World Series to the Reds; the Indians beat the Boston Braves in their Series. Neither of their memoirs, published during Bud Selig’s reign as commissioner, provoked thoughts in Selig about vacating their titles, either.
“I really wasn’t aware of the schemes that I’ve seen published,†Hook says. “As a pitcher, when a runner got on second base, we would change the signs. We were aware that people tried to steal the signs but that was part of the game if a runner was on second. You had to be careful. When [UPI] approached me, I knew what had happened [with the Reds] but I didn’t know all that other stuff.â€
Hook’s place in Mets history is secured by his having started and won the first-ever Mets victory, a 9-1 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates that ended their life-opening nine-game losing streak. “I still get seven, eight, nine letters a month with cards in them,†he says, “and after that whole period of time it’s amazing people would still remember.â€
He didn’t pitch much for the ’61 Reds after suffering a bout with the mumps that April, and he didn’t get to pitch in the World Series. (The Reds lost to the Yankees in five.) He had his occasional moments, from a respectable 1960 season in Cincinnati to a remarkable 1963 duel as a Met, near on September 2, 1963.
The boyish-looking righthander faced the Reds in the Polo Grounds. He went the distance against his former teammate Jim Maloney and lost, 1-0, with Maloney striking out thirteen while Hook settled for five strikeouts and keeping Hall of Famer Frank Robinson hitless. The game’s only run came in the top of the first, when Pete Rose leading off hit the first pitch into the seats. It was three decades since that had last happened in a major league game.
A graduate of Northwestern University, with a bachelor’s in engineering and a Master’s in thermodynamics (he chuckles when I call it, mistakenly, thermonuclear physics), Hook ended his baseball career after the 1964 season. He went to work for Chrysler in product development, subsequently moving to a similar job at Rockwell International, then to Masco Corporation and others, before retiring early, becoming a professor at his alma mater, and buying the farm where he and his wife, Joan, still live.
Hook once described to
New York Times writer Robert Lipsyte the exact science behind a curve ball’s movement and behavior. Lipsyte’s article, “Why a Curve Ball Curves,†eventually provided the title for a
Popular Mechanics anthology about the sciences of sports. Once, after Hook was knocked out of a Mets game early and talked to Lipsyte in the clubhouse, Mets manager Casey Stengel happened by and cracked, to Hook’s continuing amusement, “You know, if only Hook could do what he knows!â€
The former pitcher says he didn’t think about anything like the ’61 Reds or anyone else taking sign stealing from on-field gamesmanship to off-field cheating until one of his daughters called to say, “Dad, you’re in
Sports Illustrated.†(The Hooks are parents of four, grandparents of thirteen, and step-grandparents of two.) She told her father he was mentioned in
an article about sign-stealing history that mentioned the 1961 Reds.
“You know, I really have not spent a lot of time trying to evaluate the significance. I know the significance of it,†says Hook, who acknowledges he follows high school baseball mostly unless he catches the Show on television. “Back in the day of Babe Ruth and others, people were always trying to get a leg up, somehow. That’s probably where it began. But I felt bad for the guys who might have lost their jobs†because of the Astros’ sophisticated espionage. “That’s too bad.â€
That was one time Hook didn’t chuckle.
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