Have The Braves Been Cheating?....TBS Braves Announcers Banned From Flying With Team!

[CalifYanksFan]

SPORTS MONDAY • June 26, 2000





Looks like the Braves finally got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Interesting how all these years Maddux and the boys were able to "frame" those pitches.
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SPORTS

Catcher's box catching flak
Carroll Rogers - Staff
Monday, June 26, 2000


For the second time since Major League Baseball made a concerted effort to shrink the strike zone last year, the Brewers have accused the Braves of catching outside the box.

The catcher's box is a 43-inch-wide chalk box behind home plate where the catcher is supposed to line up before each pitch. Umpires were encouraged to use the rule last year to help them call a tighter strike zone.

Braves pitchers like Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, meanwhile, want catchers to give them a target outside the plate, so if they miss, they miss off the plate. Maddux was the subject of the Brewers' complaint --- unnecessarily, if you ask Braves general manager John Schuerholz.

"Because of their excellence, (Glavine and Maddux) have been the target because a lot of people . . .try to derail them because their hitters can't," Schuerholz said. "It's a shame. It was a deterrent from what should have been the focus, and that was a well-pitched game."

In the first inning of Maddux's start against the Brewers on Saturday night, catcher Fernando Lunar was called for a balk for lining up with his right foot outside the box, leading to the ejection of manager Bobby Cox and bringing the rarely enforced rule up for debate again.

Braves players and coaches feel victimized, pointing out that base coaches rarely line up in their boxes and batters don't always stay in the batter's box.

Schuerholz downplayed the issue Sunday, though the Braves appeared to be busted on TV the night before. To the Braves' chagrin, TBS superimposed footage of Friday's catcher's box onto Saturday's version and the latter appeared 4-5 inches smaller. The change apparently came in response to complaints from Brewers manager Davey Lopes on Friday night.

"I don't think there was any more to it than maybe a particular day the lines weren't drawn exactly where they ordinarily are," said Schuerholz, who said the Braves do have a 43-inch-wide template the grounds crew uses to draw the box. "It's not a big deal. . . . It's the first time I've seen one called. (Assistant general manager) Frank (Wren) said he hadn't seen one called since he was 15 in Little League.

"That box was designed when catchers were 5-9 (in height). Now we've got big guys trying to keep their feet inside the lines."

Major League Baseball could choose to make an example out of the Braves, and Schuerholz said he wouldn't be surprised or bothered if MLB sent someone to measure the Braves' template. But he can take solace in knowing that an incident last year in Milwaukee died a quick death.

Former Brewers manager Phil Garner complained to plate umpire Angel Hernandez that Javy Lopez was lined up outside the catcher's box with Bruce Chen on the mound. Lopez was warned and Cox was ejected after arguing in his defense. The Braves had no other such incidents the rest of the year, including other games Hernandez umpired.

"Some people have the need to be thrust into the center of controversy," Schuerholz said. "We deal with it and move on."



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Truth won't fly on Braves plane?


By Carroll Rogers
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

Stats:

---

YOUR VIEW 

Braves management's call to keep TBS announcers off the team's flight to Montreal was: 

  Down the middle. 24% 366 

  A wild pitch. 76% 1172 

Total Votes   1538 

---

The Atlanta Braves were so angry that TBS aired video showing the Turner Field catcher's box had been altered that team officials banned the cable channel's four baseball announcers from the Braves' chartered flights.

Skip Caray, Joe Simpson, Don Sutton and Pete Van Wieren usually fly with the Braves players, coaches and staff. Now, they will have to use commercial flights, beginning with the road trip to Montreal and New York starting today.

The four announcers are employees of TBS. Time Warner Inc. is the parent company of both the cable channel and the baseball team.

When asked Monday for comment on the dispute, Braves President Stan Kasten replied, "No, thank you."

Simpson, reached at his home Monday, declined to comment.

The other three broadcasters could not be reached.

TBS aired the video on the catcher's box in the top of the first inning of Saturday night's game.

After plate umpire John Shulock called a balk on catcher Fernando Lunar for lining up with his right foot outside the box, TBS superimposed video of Friday night's catcher's box over the current version. Saturday's was about 4 to 5 inches smaller.

The balk figured in the Brewers' first run in what turned out to be a 2-1 loss for the Braves and pitcher Greg Maddux, and the on-field dispute led to manager Bobby Cox's ejection from the game.

Many Braves pitchers like the catcher to set his target wide of the plate, but opposing managers point out it increases the chances of an outside pitch being called a strike rather than a ball.

Major League Baseball said it is looking into the incident.

THE RULE
From the Major League Baseball rulebook: 2.00 (definitions of terms): The CATCHER'S BOX is that area within which the catcher shall stand until the pitcher delivers the ball.
4.03 (a) The catcher shall station himself directly back of the plate. He may leave his position at any time to catch a pitch or make a play except that when the batter is being given an intentional base on balls, the catcher must stand with both feet within the lines of the catcher's box until the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. PENALTY: Balk.



THE BACKGROUND
The catcher's box is 43 inches wide, extending 13 inches on either side of home plate. The Cincinnati Post last year quoted former Brave Mark Wohlers as saying that Atlanta catchers purposely set up outside the box with the object of getting outside pitches called strikes. "The thinking," said the Post, "was that if the catcher didn't have to move his glove to catch the ball, the umpire would likely call it a strike. The strategy worked for years."
For more background, see Carroll Rogers' report from Monday's paper.
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Boxgate: TBS announcers caught in Kasten's cross hairs





When it comes to times like this, it is Stan Kasten's measured response to send the bad boy out to stand in the hall.

It becomes somewhat silly and surely petty when the bad boy -- or boys, in this case -- happen to be some of the most visible employees on TBS's international cable feed. But if anything, Kasten is consistent when his ire is unfurled. And it surely is fluttering now.

The Braves' TV-radio announcing crew has been banned from traveling on team charter flights after Saturday night's memorable telecast, when it was insinuated that the Braves have been fudging on the arcane rules governing the catcher's box. It might sound like a tempest in a spitcup, but now that Sandy Alderson, MLB's vice president for operations, is reviewing the incident, some of the Braves' vast dignity is at stake.

Hence the spite of the team president. None of the principals is speaking out yet, but so far no one looks very good.

By superimposing how the 43-inch-wide catcher's box had been drawn for Friday and Saturday nights' game, TBS revealed the box appeared mysteriously thinner -- by three or five inches -- after Milwaukee management voiced complaints about where Atlanta's Javy Lopez had been setting up. A wider box makes it easier to frame a pitch on the corner, and this game has long grown tired of debating where the corner exactly starts and ends with either Tom Glavine or Greg Maddux on the mound.

So with Maddux working Saturday, catcher Fernando Lunar was called with a catcher's balk. His entire foot was planted outside the chalk; there's something to tell the grandkids. Bobby Cox got tossed by plate umpire John Shulock, obviously thinking outside the box.

And there it might have died, except that TBS immediately aired the plate area as chalked out Saturday night, as opposed to Friday. Perhaps as a preemptive move should Brewers manager Davey Lopes bring a ruler to the plate, the box obviously was slimmer Saturday. This is most delicious baseball treachery.

More than disingenuously, general manager John Schuerholz suggested, "Maybe a particular day, the lines weren't drawn exactly where they ordinarily are." The suggestion becomes a backhand at one of the club's most dutiful employees, groundskeeper Ed Mangnan, who runs one of the club's most buttoned-down departments. Yeah, crazy ol' Ed just plunked first base down at 91 feet, too.

In a series of Sunday meetings, Kasten dressed down the guilty and surely told them to keep their mouths shut, too. Even Glenn Diamond, long-time TBS coordinating producer for Braves broadcasts and normally a conversation waiting to happen, began citing chain of command in TBS public relations when asked about the episode.

If the Braves are guilty of anything, it is committing one of the game's old tricks. It is watering down the dirt next to first base when Maury Wills comes to town. Or not mowing the infield with your best sinkerball going tomorrow. If guilty, you pay your fine and go on.

But if the Braves look bad, Kasten's pique only makes them looks worse. He already has found his broadcast crew guilty of something, even if Alderson's office is a little slow on the uptake. And if Kasten is just acting on the anger of Cox and Schuerholz at being caught, someone should remind all of them that Pete Van Wieren did not line the field Saturday evening.

TBS's heinous crime was to commit a little sports journalism, a precious commodity wherever it's found, and those of us who scribble the night away in the press box should be a little envious. If it is not in the contract of a rights-holder to actually "cover" the team it broadcasts, even if the rights-holder also owns the team, then such is TBS's tangled web.

And isn't Time Warner supposed to be a news company anyway?

So, for now, Van Wieren, Caray, Sutton and Simpson stand out in the hallway, where a number of us media-types have stood before. I first was sent out in 1981, when Kasten did not care for my coverage of the Atlanta Hawks and had my courtside seat moved down the second row.

Don't worry, guys. It only lasts a little while. Then, when no one's looking, they let you back in.

[penguin4]

So that's how they managed to win the division ten years in a row! Couldn't dream it possible if your team wasn't from NY... obviously I was right.

Ah those Braves really have really defied the "moral code" of America so much lately... first it's racism, then drunk driving, and now cheating. What will Ted Turner dream up next to keep the fans interested?

[clipper]

I think to call this "cheating" is a bit of a reach. The catcher's box rule is (as stated in the article) one of the most obscure and least enforced rules in baseball. Catchers everywhere seek advantage this way (Girardi always did), the same way batters stretch the box backward.

If the umpires want to start enforcing this rule, that's fine, but I'd rather they worried about calling balls and strikes accurately (as the rules are written).

This is just gamesmanship. It's being blown way out of proportion (and I root against the Braves except when they play the Mets & RedSox).