“Cheating started when they threw the first pitch in the first game.” – Rogers Hornsby, My War with Baseball (1962)
While the above quote from the game’s greatest second baseman shouldn’t be assimilated at face value, there is some truth to the icon’s hyperbolic assertion. Since bat first connected with ball, the players involved with the action have, and always will, do whatever it takes to win. Pitchers have doctored balls, and batters have corked bats. Some have injected steroids to gain advantage, and others have consumed amphetamine stimulants with the same target in mind. Even those on the outskirts of the diamond have been known to push the barriers. Groundskeepers have tampered with the foul lines in an effort to help their home team generate more successful bunts. On any given night, one or both ball clubs are liable to steal a sign or two from their opponent.
The bottom line is this: Whenever money is involved, and personal legacies are on the line in a public, competitive-based setting, people will do whatever it takes to garner victories. Whether one agrees with this or not, when these constraints are in place, rules will forever be bent.
Despite this rather unpalatable truth, an optimistic penner can find beauty in the bamboozling. As an active being, it’s far better to sense the sphere with awe than disgust, so that’s what I’ll be doing in this blog. With a litany of bilking-related cases to pull from, I’ve decided to dedicate a piece to my favorite. That being said, I present to you the subject of the story, the 1973 Milwaukee Brewers.
On paper, up to this point in their life as a professional ball club, the Brewers franchise wasn’t much to write home about. Coming off of 4 consecutive losing seasons in their first 4 years of MLB play, Milwaukee entered the year with low expectations, but a reasonable buzz. Milwaukee’s starting first baseman, 29-year-old George Scott, was in the prime of his career and had clubbed 20+ HR in back-to-back seasons. Two-thirds of the outfield were a pair of solid ballplayers, Dave May and John Briggs.
On the bump, 27-year-old Jim Colborn was slated to pitch as a full-time starter for the first time in his career, following four seasons of bullpen-dominant work. Filling out the rest of the rotation were a handful of young, hungry arms, eager to make a name for themselves.
With a few notable players and more uncelebrated faces, Milwaukee kicked off the 1973 season by playing .500 ball in the month of April. Following a rough May, the Brewers found their stride in June, going 18-10 in the opening summer month. Heading into July, the Wisconsin-based ball club sat one game above .500, and for the first time ever, looked like they had a solid chance to finish with a winning record. However, there was one opposing manager who may have uncovered the primary reason behind why the usually abysmal Brewers were on pace for a respectable season.
On July 6th, 1973, the Texas Rangers came to town for a 4-game series with their American League counterpart. After snagging Game 1, the Rangers dropped three straight to Milwaukee. The trio of consecutive losses kicked off with a 17-2 beatdown, a game in which the Brewers had 9 extra-base hits, with four of them being home runs. The following day, the teams played two, and the Brewers won both (6-4, 7-3), and upped their record to 42-41. In the third inning of the final match, after Milwaukee jumped out to a 4-0 lead, an on-location Brewers employee, who was stationed in the outfield stands near Bernie Brewer, the team’s mascot, was asked to leave the premises.
For those in the unknown, County Stadium had built a chalet (See below) for the mascot to bop around in. Whenever someone on the hometown team slugs a homer, Bernie takes a trip down the connecting slide before crashing into the massive imitation beer stein. As part of the long ball festivities, there was a worker who stays inside of the stein with an abundance of balloons and releases them whenever Bernie comes crashing down.
Anyways, early in the contest, members in the Rangers dugout noticed that the balloon man in the beer bottle had changed homes and relocated to the chalet. On top of shifting places, the young worker happened to be in possession of a pair of binoculars and, according to the opposition, was using them to steal signs. Not only did the umpires ask him to leave, but the game judges also went at his sidekick Bernie and forced him to remove the set of white gloves that he was sporting. Nonetheless, Texas, with all of the bickering, was unable to climb back in the contest.
After his team had just allowed 30 runs in two days, Rangers coach Whitey Herzog went to the Associated Press (AP) to explain what he and his staff had seen, which led to the removal of said employee. From Herzog’s point of view, the Brewer laborer with the binoculars, all the way up from the chalet, had his sights set on the Texas catcher. Once he spotted the fingers, he would then relay the indication to Bernie, who, while donning his easy-to-see white gloves, revealed the sign to the hometown hitters. To make matters worse, Herzog noted that Bernie would take the gloves off when the Brewers were on defense and place them back on when they grabbed their bats. This anecdote makes this whole fiasco that much funnier.
“He’d clap like hell whenever we called a breaking pitch,” said Herzog in the AP article. “He called the right pitch six times in a row…Can you imagine that has to cheat to beat us?” While suffering in defeat, the iconic skipper expressed his creative side as he stewed over the alleged scandal. “Maybe we should put a Texas Ranger or something out there in our park and have him shoot a gun or something when a curveball is coming.”
Though that quote is tough to beat, my favorite line from Herzog came from when he was explaining how abnormal it was for this team in particular to mash as they were mashing. “I suspected something yesterday when they got those 17 runs,” Herzog said in the article. “Hell, this is the same team as last year, and they didn’t hit like that then. That Bob Coluccio hit like Joe DiMaggio.” For some reason, Coluccio, a 17th-round pick rookie, catching a stray bullet from the manager makes me chuckle. Coluccio played just 5 seasons in the majors and posted a lifetime batting average of .220. Yet, in that series, the outfielder hit .308 with three runs scored, a homer, and four RBI.
Following this hysterical situation, the ’73 Brewers fell off the wagon and finished the year with a 74-88 record (32-47 after the Texas series). On the bright side, Dave May and George Scott tied for the league lead in total bases (295), and Jim Colborn became the first 20-game winner in franchise history. By the way, it should be noted that Scott, in the aforementioned article, defended the team mascot: “Nobody gave me no signs,” said Scott. “I been here two years, so I must have missed a lot of signs, man.” Yet, given the details outlined, it’s hard to argue in favor of the side that had a man peering with binoculars and another fellow in close proximity with discernible white gloves.
As baseball enthusiasts know, the team has yet to win a World Series, which leads me to a closing question: Is the Curse of Bernie Brewer in effect?