Effectively Wild Episode 1459: The History of Sign-Stealing
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2019
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller talk to Paul Dickson, author of The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime, about, well, what the book’s subtitle says, including the origins of sign-sending, the earliest allegations of sign-stealing, historical precedents for the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme, the effects of sign-stealing, why so many players say they prefer not to know which pitch is coming, the frequent disagreements surrounding which types of sign-stealing are acceptable, the reluctance of the league to get involved in stopping or punishing sign-stealing, the future of policing sign-stealing, and more.
Audio intro: Damon Albarn, "The History of a Cheating Heart"
Audio outro: Brittany Howard, "History Repeats"
Link to Paul’s book about sign-stealing
Link to list of all of Paul’s books
Link to EW Secret Santa sign-up
Link to order The MVP Machine
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I carry this upon my back always |
| 0:09.0 | If you fall and I will put you back, I do |
| 0:19.0 | Love you but it's just a fact |
| 0:23.0 | The history of a cheap and hard is always |
| 0:31.0 | All than you know |
| 0:35.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 1459 of Effectively Wild |
| 0:40.0 | a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our patrons, |
| 0:43.0 | quarters I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joint by Sam Miller of ESPN. |
| 0:48.0 | Hello Sam. Hey Ben, we are doing an interview episode. |
| 0:51.0 | The whole thing is an interview. We are going to talk about the history of |
| 0:54.0 | Sign Stealing to provide some context for the sports current Sign Stealing scandal. |
| 0:58.0 | Draw some historical parallels, see what we can learn from past examples. |
| 1:02.0 | We will go right into that. You may know our guest today from any one of his more than 60 books. |
| 1:08.0 | Several of which are about baseball. His name is Paul Dixon. |
| 1:11.0 | And of course there's the Dixon baseball dictionary, |
| 1:14.0 | invaluable reference and baseball's greatest quotations and his biographies of Bill Beck and Leo D'Rosher. |
| 1:20.0 | But today he is here in his capacity as the author of the Hidden Language of baseball, |
| 1:25.0 | which is about Signs and Sign Stealing and came out in 2003. |
| 1:30.0 | But just recently was released in a new paperback edition this September. |
| 1:34.0 | And now may need another edition already. |
| 1:37.0 | Hi Paul, how are you? |
| 1:39.0 | Hi. |
... |
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