Best of Hal Lebovitz: Great Sportswriting from Six Decades in Cleveland - Hardcover

Lebovitz, Hal

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9781886228832: Best of Hal Lebovitz: Great Sportswriting from Six Decades in Cleveland

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886228833 ISBN 13: 9781886228832

Publisher: Gray & Co, 2004

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Here, collected for the first time, are the best columns and feature stories by Cleveland’s greatest living sportswriter.

Hal Lebovitz is a true major league hall-of-famer. Enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, he’s still at the top of his game after six decades on the beat for the Cleveland News, the Plain Dealer, the News-Herald, and others.

Several generations of sports fans have grown up reading Hal Lebovitz on the sports pages.

Hal has covered just about every major sports event of the past 60 years, reporting on each with honest, straightforward words and firm opinions—and most likely a scoop on the competition.

He has written about the greats of living memory—Jim Brown, Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Woody Hayes . . . and the great moments—the Indians’ 1948 playoff game, the Browns’ 1964 championship season, Rocky Colavito’s four consecutive home runs . . .

His writing has been featured 17 times in the annual Best Sports Stories and selected for numerous other anthologies. He has won countless writing awards and been inducted into 12 halls of fame.

"Ask Hal, the Referee," his long-running column, also appeared nationally in the Sporting News, establishing Hal as one of the foremost experts on sports rule books. (Which explains why his home phone sometimes rings in the middle of a World Series game, the producers from NBC or Fox calling for an interpretation of an on-field ruling.)

Always, Hal has written for the fans. And for as long as anyone can remember, fans have been reading Hal for his particular take on events. His constant, steady presence in the local sports pages for so many decades has made Hal Lebovitz a legitimate icon in Cleveland sports—a guy who, with his typewriter, has been as remarkable and consistent and rare as a .400 hitter.

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About the Author:

Hal Lebovitz, who was inducted into the writer’s wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000, has been a sportswriter for more than six decades. He got his first job covering high school sports for the Cleveland News in 1942 and soon became a beat writer covering the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians. He was hired by the Plain Dealer in 1960 to cover baseball and was that paper’s sports editor from 1964–1982. "Ask Hal, the Referee," his popular column on sports rules, also appeared in the Sporting News from 1947–1993. A former college athlete, he has coached baseball, basketball, and football and officiated all three sports, including a stint as a referee traveling with the Harlem Globetrotters. His sportswriting currently appears regularly in the News-Herald (Lake County, Ohio), the Morning Journal (Lorain, Ohio), and several other newspapers. He lives with his wife, Margie, in University Heights, Ohio.

Outwitting sign stealers is constant battle

January 23, 1958

Bob Feller’s fast ball traveled at the rate of approximately 100 miles per hour, which means that in less than one-half second it rocketed from Bob’s arm to Jim Hegan’s glove.

Furthermore Bob’s manner of delivery, with his foot kicked up high, made it difficult for the hitter to pick up the ball until it was almost on top of him. And some of them admitted they never saw it at all.

Yet Hegan never had any trouble catching Bob, not even in Mr. Robert’s prime.

Jim explains this: “I knew what was coming. The hitters didn’t.”

As the Indians’ catcher, Jim is the team’s quarterback. He calls the signals.

All clubs use the same signals, reveals Jim. “When I show the pitcher one finger I’m asking for his fast ball. Two fingers indicate the curve and three fingers mean a slider.” By wiggling his fingers he asks for the change-up and a clenched first signifies the knuckleball.

Obviously if Hegan’s signs could be seen by the opposition the pitcher’s advantage over the hitter would be nullified. So Jim must hide them carefully. He places his fingers high up against his thigh, and because he has such long legs coaches along first and third find it impossible to see them, no matter how hard they try.

Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, in contrast, is at a disadvantage. His short legs often permit a runner on first to see his signal. When a runner gets to second Berra is more careful, but apparently not until he reads this―if he does―will he realize his fingers often are visible from first base.

Not only does Hegan call the type of pitch, he also gives the location. He may do this by motioning up, down, in or out, with his bare hand, or he may quickly flash a target with his glove.

And he is forever attempting to foil the sign-stealers.

To make it as difficult as possible for the thieves, Jim always flashes three signs before each pitch. In sequence, he may rapidly show the pitcher one finger, then two, then three.

In this case, if the battery had decided in advance that the second signal was the official one, the pitcher would know he was to throw a curve.

In the next inning, perhaps, the third signal would be the official one. Sometimes the official sign is determined by the number of outs. With no outs, for example, the wanted pitch would be given on the first sign. After one out the second sign becomes official. After two outs only the third sign would be regarded.

If this sounds complicated―it is. And when Hegan rapidly flashed the signs at us by way of illustration, it seemed extremely difficult to select the correct one, and we were much closer to him than 60 feet.

“It’s not hard to do after a little practice,” Hegan assured us. “We don’t get crossed up very often.”

Feller crossed him up more than any pitcher he ever caught, Hegan discloses. It may have been because he often blinked nervously when he first came up. “I remember once in Boston in ’47, I called for a curve,” the catcher recalls, “and Bob threw his fast ball. I waited until the last split second for it to break. The ball hit me right here.” Hegan pointed to his wrist, adding, “It’s lucky for me that by ’47 his fast ball and slackened up a little.”

Instead of having a broken wrist his was only black and blue for a week.

Teams have employed all sorts of sign-stealing devices. “We were sure that Detroit and Boston were getting our signals for a while but we didn’t know how,” Jim reveals.

“In Boston we suspect somebody in the center field bleachers must have been using binoculars. When a pitcher has real good stuff and the hitters get a good toe-hold and stay right up there with a solid swing we know something’s wrong. We keep switching our signs on every pitch, using the same basic signs but we change the code.

“Just a couple of years ago in Boston during a game Lemon was pitching, we were so positive the Red Sox were getting the signs somehow, I told Bob to call the pitches simply by the position in which he held his glove. The Red Sox immediately stopped hitting.”

The Tigers, Hegan later discovered, employed binoculars to steal the Tribe’s signs, particularly in 1940 when Detroit beat out Cleveland for the title. “When Al Benton joined us in 1949 he admitted he was the one who sat in the Tigers’ bullpen in center field and picked off our signs through binoculars. Another pitcher out there, by shifting his position, would telegraph the sign back to the hitter.”

Not until Chico Carrasquel and Jim Busby joined the Indians in ’56 did Hegan learn that the White Sox , too, had been stealing Tribe signs successfully.

“They did it from their scoreboard,” he discloses. “They’d get the sign through powerful glasses and then relay it to the batter simply by blinking Sherman Lollar’s number, which is “10.” When they flickered the “1” it meant a fast ball was coming. If the “0” flickered it meant the curve. None of us ever thought to study the board that carefully but after we found out we were on the alert. They don’t try that method against us any more.”

The Indians have been accused of stealing signs via the scoreboard during pennant-winning ’48. In fact, some ex-Indians have so confessed, but Hegan refuses to comment.

“I will say this,” he offers. “Boudreau, Keltner and Gordon really could rack the pitchers when they knew what was coming. They were great at stealing signs for each other from second base. It’s easy to see the catcher’s signal from second. After all, he must make it visible to his second baseman and shortstop so they can anticipate which way to break when the ball is hit.

So if a runner’s out there he sees it, too.

“Often when the catcher walks out to talk to the pitcher there’s a man on second base and we want to change our signs so they can’t be stolen. Occasionally I’ll tell the pitcher verbally what the next two or three pitches should be and then I’ll go back behind the plate and give a fake sign.”

Hegan says he’s never gone to the mound to ask a pitcher where he’s going to eat dinner or to crack a joke. “I go out there either to slow him up, or to switch our signs or, if a newcomer comes in to pinch-hit, to ask the pitcher if he knows what his weakness is.”

Some pitchers tip off their pitches. “We always suspected Tommy Henrich was able to tell what Feller was going to throw,” reveals Hegan. “Mel Harder was able to call Mel Parnell’s pitches. Red Kress has had good luck calling Whitey Ford’s pitches from the first base coaching box.”

But for the most part the hitters have to guess. “And they usually try to outguess the catcher not the pitcher,” according to Jim.

“Some catchers follow a pattern in calling signals. The studious hitters catch on to those patterns eventually. I’m not the pattern type. I study the hitter, watch his stance and I try to discover as quickly as possible which pitches are working best for my pitcher on that given day.

“But the real secret of callin ’em, as I see it, is to mix ’em up. Sometimes I may use a pattern for the first three innings just to fool the hitters in the late innings.”

All the Indians’ top pitchers will tell you they have Hegan to thank for much of their success. “He gives you so much confidence when you look at him crouching back there,” says Herb Score. “If he wants me to throw a curve on a three-two pitch I don’t hesitate. I say to myself, ‘If he thinks I can do it I guess I can.’”

A pitcher, of course, has the right to pitch his own game. “After all,” says Hegan, “the final responsibility is his. He can shake off a pitch at any time.”

Often however, when a pitcher appears to be shaking off a sign he does this merely to confuse the hitter. “Score may shake off a sign,” says Hegan, “and come right back with the pitch I originally called for.”

For the past six years, Lemon has never second-guessed Hegan. “Once he called for a curve and I shook him off,” relates Lemon. “I wanted a slider and the batter hit it for a home run. After that Hegan called all the pitches.”

“Wynn has shaken off Hegan’s signals more than any other pitcher he’s ever caught. “Early devised a set of switches,” Jim reveals. “If he held his glove in a certain position before I gave the sign, it meant that if I called for the fast ball he would throw the curve, and vice versa. He had another switch after I gave the sign. In this way the hitter found it almost impossible to steal pitches from him.”

Hegan is sure now that Wynn will continue the same switches with the White Sox. “But knowing them won’t help us unless we can see what the catcher is calling,” he adds.

Virtually the only time Wynn shook off Hegan was when the catcher called for a fast ball with the count in the hitter’s favor.

“When Early is behind it seems he just hates to give in to the hitter,” explains Hegan. “That’s all right, except the hitters are starting to get wise. They know if the count is against Early they’re not going to get a fast ball.”

Except for one short, unhappy period in his career, Hegan has been the Indians’ quarterback. In August of 1947 Lou Boudreau, the manager, told Hegan, “I’ll call the signals from shortstop. Watch my glove for the signs and relay them to the pitcher.” Boudreau told no one else on the team that he had taken over, not even the pitchers. But he did tell the sportswriters, whom he swore to secrecy until the end of the season.

Even Al Lopez, the Tribe’s second-string catcher, didn’t know. Lopez remembers, “Once I substituted for Jim and in the fifth inning Boudreau called ‘Time.’

“He said to me, ‘I called for a fast ball and Lemon threw a curve. How come?’

“You called for a fast ball?’ I asked. “Since when are you calling the signals?’

“Lou then told me, ‘I’ve called every pitch for the past month.’”

The story of Boudreau’s master-minding broke publicly at the end of the season and it cut Hegan deeply. To this day it bothers him.

“I didn’t appreciate it. I’ll admit it bothered me and I said so to reporters afterward. It was the most unpleasant period of my baseball life. Many times I’d call a pitch, the pitcher would shake me off and I’d have to go out to the mound and say, ‘The man says throw it.’

“It’s the manager’s prerogative to call the pitches. But I don’t think he should call every one. It takes all initiative away from the catcher and makes nothing but a messenger boy out of him.

Aware that Hegan was perturbed, Boudreau called Jim into his office at the start of ’48.

“Let’s forget what happened,” the manager told Hegan. “You call all the signs from now on.”

That year the Indians won the pennant.

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