s whether they did or not, it is no smirch on the
character of the club, for they stole honestly--which sounds like a
paradox.

"You have such jolly funny morals in this bally country," declared an
Englishman I once met. "You steal and rob in baseball and yet you call it
fair. Now in cricket we give our opponents every advantage, don't cher
know, and after the game we are all jolly good fellows at tea together."

This brings us down to the ethics of signal stealing. Each game has its
own recognized standards of fairness. For instance, no tricks are
tolerated in tennis, yet the baseball manager who can devise some scheme
by which he disconcerts his opponents is considered a great leader. I was
about to say that all is fair in love, war, and baseball, but will modify
that too comprehensive statement by saying all is fair in love, war, and
baseball except stealing signals dishonestly, which listens like another
paradox. Therefore, I shall divide the subject of signal stealing into
half portions, the honest and the dishonest halves, and, since we are
dealing in paradoxes, take up the latter first.

Dishonest signal stealing might be defined as obtaining information by
artificial aids. The honest methods are those requiring cleverness of eye,
mind, and hand without outside assistance. One of the most flagrant and
for a time successful pieces of signal stealing occurred in Philadelphia
several years ago.

Opposing players can usually tell when the batsman is getting the signs,
because he steps up and sets himself for a curve with so much confidence.
During the season of 1899 the report went around the circuit that the
Philadelphia club was stealing signals, because the batters were popping
them all on the nose, but no one was able to discover the transmitter. The
coachers were closely watched and it was evident that these sentinels were
not getting the signs.

It was while the Washington club, then in the National League, was playing
Philadelphia that there came a rainy morning which made the field very
wet, and for a long time it was doubtful whether a game could be played
in the afternoon, but the Washington club insisted on it and overruled the
protests of the Phillies. Arlie Latham, now the coacher on the Giants',
was playing third base for the Senators at the time. He has told me often
since how he discovered the device by which the signs were being stolen.
He repeated the story to me recently when I asked him for th