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Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches To Steal Hand Signals From Yankees (macrumors.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: Investigators for Major League Baseball believe the Boston Red Sox, currently in first place in the American League East, have used the Apple Watch to illicitly steal hand signals from opposing teams, reports The New York Times. The Red Sox are believed to have stolen hand signals from opponents' catchers in games using video recording equipment and communicated the information with the Apple Watch. An inquiry into the Red Sox' practice started two weeks ago following a complaint from Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, who caught a member of the Red Sox training staff looking at his Apple Watch in the dugout and then relaying information to players. It's believed the information was used to determine the type of pitch that was going to be thrown. Baseball investigators corroborated the claim using video for instant replay and broadcasts before confronting the Red Sox. The team admitted that trainers received signals from video replay personnel and then shared them with some players.

"The Red Sox told league investigators said that team personnel scanning instant- replay video were electronically sending the pitch signs to the trainers, who were then passing the information to the players," reports The New York Times. [...] "The video provided to the commissioner's office by the Yankees was captured during the first two games of the series and included at least three clips. In the clips, the team's assistant athletic trainer, Jon Jochim, is seen looking at his Apple Watch and then passing information to outfielder Brock Holt and second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who was injured at the time but in uniform. In one instance, Pedroia is then seen passing the information to Young."

2 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"one if by land, two if by sea" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Another article I saw made it clear the rule violation would be the use of electronic devices in the dugout. The view of major league baseball is that sign stealing is part of the game, but electronic devices are banned to keep it from being too easy and getting out of hand.

  2. Re:"one if by land, two if by sea" by Cederic · · Score: 3, Informative

    don't tell me about the one variant that can finish in a day

    Average length of a baseball game: 3 hours
    Average length of a T20 cricket game: 3 hours

    Nothing is as boring as a cricket match

    Average 146 pitches per team per baseball game may sound higher than the minimum 120 balls per T20 cricket innings, but at an average of less than 10 hits per game baseball is actually a slower game than Test cricket, which is a five day game. In a T20 innings a team will put bat on ball for most deliveries, scoring off over half of them.

    Or consider baseball's home run rate. 1-5 per match? T20 cricket averages ten 'ball out of the ground' hits a match.

    People clearly enjoy baseball. That's cool. It's just silly though to claim that cricket is by comparison boring.