In the much-revered 1988 Kevin Costner film “Bull Durham,” veteran minor league catcher “Crash” Davis mentors a raw, talented rookie pitcher (Tim Robbins) and gets him ready for major league stardom. One of the catcher’s most audacious teaching devices is that when the cocky and none-too-bright pitcher insists on shaking off his signs, “Crash” tells the batter what the next pitch is going to be. Resulst: a massive home run and an chastened pitcher. It’s funny in the film.
The Minnesota Twins apparently have no sense of humor. The team released minor league catcher Derek Bender yesterday for emulating “Crash.” Bender was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Twins’ Low-A affiliate, and in the second game of a doubleheader last week, Bender tipped off several hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, regarding the next pitch starter Ross Dunn was going to throw. Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning and won the game 6-0 to capture the Florida State League West division and eliminate the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention.
Lakeland’s coaches alerted Fort Myers coaches regarding Bender’s pitch tipping following the game, perhaps as a professional courtesy, perhaps to avoid being targets of Houston Astros-style accusations that the team was part of a sign-stealing plot. Unfortunately for Bender, it does not appear that he was emulating Costner’s wise and beneficent motivations for using the pitch-tipping tactic. For one thing, he is hardly a grizzled veteran: he was just drafted by the Twins this year, and playing his first minor league season. No, Bender had told teammates he wanted the season to be over.
I’m pretty sure it’s his baseball career that is over.
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Pointer: Curmie
Ethics Alarms 
Must be a Democrat! “It worked, didn’t it?”
Ah, the Florida State League. Humiliating for Florida. In its minor league heyday, Miami was the home of the Miami Marlins, the Orioles’ Triple A affiliate in the late, great, International League. About eight teams, as I remember, stretching up and down the east coast from Montreal all the way to Havana. The name was truly apt. The Marlins played in a great stadium with a fully cantilevered roof. Every seat was unobstructed.
Forgive my baseball ignorance, but why would a batter not assume that the catcher isn’t just trying to mess with his head by giving him bad advice?
He probably would assume that… at first. But if I’ve seen three or four pitches that have all been what the catcher said they were going to be, I might start believing what I’m being told, especially if I’ve got fewer than two strikes.
I considered that, but it also felt like a good way to set me up for a critical strike out. Do the batters have an opportunity to speak to each other between plays to let the next batter know about the traitorous catcher?
In sports, like all contests, listening to your opponent’s advice seems like bad advice. I
I heard about this last night listening to the baseball game (kind of sad that so little is left of the season).
The announcers were just incredulous at first that something like this could have happened, it is so antithetical to everything we like about competitive sports.
Then their comment was “Well, of course he has now been released by the Twins..”
Somehow I don’t think he would have a problem clearing waivers….
How could he not see what was coming when he did that?