Baseball Movies: It Happens Every Spring (1949)
The greatest cheating scheme of all time.
Cheating, in some form or fashion, has been at the forefront of baseball conversations for some three decades now. The first and most obvious example is, of course, doping.
Roids. Juice. It gave us monstrous home runs and bigger-than-ever superstars. But it also ruined the sport as we know it and took down the careers of Bonds, Rodriguez, Ramirez, McGwire, Sosa, Canseco, Giambi, and Clemens.
But even after Major League Baseball cracked down on performance-enhancing drugs, players didn't stop looking for shortcuts to success. Few will ever look at the Houston Astros organization the same after their trash can-aided sign-stealing scandal, even when all those guys are long gone. We still see the effects of the sticky stuff that pitchers smeared on their hands, gloves, belts, and necks to skyrocket a baseball's spin rate when umpires inspect each pitcher in each game. And Aaron Judge would've never broken the AL home run record if it wasn't for the fact that MLB's defective high-flying baseballs seemed to only get delivered to Yankee Stadium...
Steroids changed the course of the baseball narrative so completely that we've all but forgotten any scandals pre-cable television, like the Black Sox or Pete Rose's illegal betting. But I've discovered a cheating scheme so successful that no one talks about it because, well, he got away with it. That is, until now.