TORONTO –- This much we know: Jose Bautista engaged in a verbal confrontation over sign stealing with a member of the Chicago White Sox bullpen last season, and one of their relievers threatened to hit him with a pitch.
As for the mysterious signal man in the white shirt and the rest of the allegations levelled against the star right-fielder and the Toronto Blue Jays in an article by ESPN The Magazine? Well, as the slogan on the former conspiracy TV show X-Files used to go, “The truth is out there.”
And the Blue Jays insist rather vehemently it’s not in the ESPN story.
“This is bogus, this is fictitious, this is made up,” Bautista said in an interview with sportsnet.ca.
Added an unusually emotional and blunt general manager Alex Anthopoulos: “I think this is one instance where they’re wrong. They don’t have their facts, I don’t think they did the homework they needed to do.”
The online report cites four unnamed relievers from an undisclosed team claiming they saw a man wearing a white shirt sitting in the centre-field stands at Rogers Centre who was relaying what pitches were coming to Blue Jays hitters during a game last spring.
One of the relievers in the story yelled at Bautista from the right-field bullpen about sign stealing, and he said that happened during a four-game set versus the White Sox last April 12-15. Bautista went 3-for-12 with seven walks during the series, his batting average fluctuating as low as .161 and as high as .194.
“I walked over and I asked them what the commotion was about and they said what is quoted in the article, and I obviously gave them the same answer I’m giving you right now – it hasn’t happened, it will not happen,” Bautista said calmly while seated in front his locker.
“I did get upset because one of them did tell me that they were going to try to hit me or something.”
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Bautista said the reliever who yelled at him remains with the White Sox, making Matt Thornton, Sergio Santos and Tony Pena possible candidates, although he declined to reveal who it was.
The all-star slugger added that if the players had concerns about sign-stealing, they should have been brought to him and the Blue Jays, or their manager or GM, and not the media.
“Even though the players are unnamed, I seem to have an idea of who that might be, I’m not going to say who I think it is, because I do not have proof,” said Bautista. “They should have addressed whatever concern they have directly with us or with the team. If I have something to ask them, I will go straight up and ask them.”
Anthopoulos said no team has come to him with any sort of accusations and a Major League Baseball spokesman said the commissioner’s office has received no formal complaints from any club.
“To do something like this would take a whole lot of work by this organization to keep everybody quiet,” said Anthopoulos. “I just wish people would look at the common sense component first and say ‘Is this really realistic?’
“Baseball is a small fraternity,” he added. “I don’t think it’s too hard to find a former coach, a former player, a former front office executive, a former clubhouse guy, a former field guy. Not one person. Instead, let’s find four players on some other team claiming that they saw the guy in the white shirt and that they saw the UFO flying across the sky, and let’s write a huge story and make a big stink about it.”
The allegations are the second made against the Blue Jays this season.
Last month, Yankees catcher Russell Martin said they were stealing signs from second base and subsequently, manager Joe Girardi insinuated that there might be something more amiss.
“There are ballparks that you need to protect your signs,” Girardi said when asked about his catchers using multiple signs even with no one on base. “I don’t really want to get into it because I’m not 100 percent sure about anything, but we need to protect our signs.”
The ESPN Magazine piece only deepened the suspicion.
“Ridiculous, I feel like laughing it off, saying how stupid it is,” said Bautista. “At the same time it’s kind of upsetting because of the allegations. It’s obviously something that never happened, will never happen, it’s not part of the game, we don’t play the game that way. … It’s uncalled for and seriously unfounded.”
The dark art of sign stealing is far from a new one in baseball.
The famous saying “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,” certainly applies to the sport and the feeling if a signal gets intercepted on the field of play, that’s fair game.
As White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said to reporters Wednesday: “If they’re stealing signs, you got a dumb catcher.”
However, spy work from outside the field of play is considered the crossing of a red line.
But even that is not new.
In 2006, the Cardinals suggested the White Sox had a camera under the centre-field scoreboard that signalled what was coming to their hitters. They vehemently denied it.
Either way, the burden of proof rests on the accuser, and Guillen said he would be disappointed if his players were the sources for the story.
“As long as you don’t see it and not 100 per cent sure, you can’t be accusing people for that,” he said. “I don’t think so. You have to be 100 per cent sure to say, ‘Listen, this thing is happening here.’ Because when you assume something happens, then you’re not sure what’s going on. That’s the one everyone says, they assume they have the signs. That’s what I read and see on TV. Assuming don’t mean anything. You have to be 100 per cent sure and see what happens.”
Perhaps there is a man in white shirt out there, skulking around with Dr. Richard Kimble’s one-armed man from “The Fugitive.” Or maybe a handful of players put two and two together and came up with five.
Either way, the Blue Jays have again been branded, and they’ll have to live with the fallout.
“In my mind it’s a non-story, kind of like the allegations of steroids last year,” said Bautista. “I’m kind of intrigued to see what the next thing is going to be next week because it seems they’re picking one thing and then going on to another.”
