When asked his thoughts on the allegations that state Yankees’ third baseball Alex Rodriguez used to tip pitches to opponents while a member of the Rangers, Red Sox DH David Ortiz said he didn’t want to believe that A-Rod would do such a thing.
However, if Big Papi ever found out that a teammate was tipping pitches to another team, he wouldn’t hold back any punches – literally.
“I would beat the crap out of him,” Ortiz said. “I mean, seriously. You’re my teammate. I mean, I don’t care if that’s your brother pitching out there. We’re trying to win the game. That’s not the right thing to do.”
The difficulty of succeeding at such a complicated ruse throughout a 162-game schedule left a number of players in serious doubt that this could be true.
“How can you hit it — you’re focusing on somebody giving you a sign, and then you’re focusing on the pitcher at the same time?” Ortiz wondered. “Sometimes there’s guys tipping their pitches out there, and I still won’t hit it because I can’t focus on that.
“If you have a position player giving you a sign of something that’s coming, it’s a distraction.
There’s not much time between the catcher giving signs, the pitcher coming to the plate, and the guy giving you signs. I might be too stupid to understand it, but that’s what I think.”
How can you not respect a man that says he would beat the crap out of a teammate if they were caught cheating? And how much would you pay to see Big Papi pummel A-Fraud in steel cage match?
Ortiz brings up a good point in that there isn’t a lot of time between when the pitcher gets a sign and when he delivers the ball, so therefore it might be near impossible for fielders to tip batters off about what pitch is coming. But if runners are on, some pitchers do take a fair amount of time to get set and it’s not like a batter would have to exert himself much to quickly look at the shortstop in order to get a sign. Like Ortiz, I hope that the allegations aren’t true, because the last thing baseball needs is players finding new ways to cheat.
