Lee: How the Internet helped crack the Astros’ sign-stealing case
From Joon Lee at ESPN.com on January 17, 2020:
When allegations that the Houston Astros had stolen signs electronically during their 2017 World Series championship season surfaced in November, Jimmy O’Brien was sitting in his new apartment in Harlem, waiting for five Verizon workers to finish setting up his cable internet.
Known better as Jomboy, O’Brien had broken into baseball internet prominence over the course of the 2019 season with a series of hot-mic videos that included turning New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone’s “savages in the box” rant into a viral sensation.
When O’Brien read in The Athletic’s report that a banging sound could be heard from the Astros’ dugout whenever a changeup signal was given by an opposing team’s catcher, he quickly began scouring the MLB.TV archives, using his cellphone as a hot spot. He was far from the only one to track down Chicago White Sox reliever Danny Farquhar’s now-infamous 2017 appearance in Houston, but within two hours, O’Brien had pulled the video demonstrating the banging, added his voice-over commentary, and tweeted it out.
Read the full article here: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28476354/how-internet-helped-crack-astros-sign-stealing-case
Originally published: January 17, 2020. Last Updated: January 17, 2020.