Sign stealing has always been a part of baseball, going back to the earliest days of the game. Virtually every team has done it, or at least tried to.
However, the Houston Astros may have gone too far with their modern take on an age-old practice. A story released by The Athletic on Tuesday featured former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers revealing that in 2017 the team had cameras in center field that zeroed in on the catcher’s hand signals. He elaborated further by adding that the camera was linked to a television in the clubhouse, and the team would have a person bang on a trash can as loud as they could in order to let the batter know that an offspeed pitch was coming.