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<\/p>\nRUSH: The Major League Baseball exhibition season kicks off today with a cold front moving through Florida. What a great day yesterday. You know the feel-like temperature yesterday was 90 degrees when the program ended. Right now the feel-like temperature is 63. That\u2019s chilly for us wimps who get used to the heat and humidity here. It\u2019s actually 70 degrees out there, but the feel-like is 63.<\/p>\n
The reason I bring this up is because I also get Open Line Friday questions in the email. And I got one here from our old buddy Seton Motley. “As you are an ex-Kansas City Royals executive, I\u2019d like to hear your thoughts on the Houston Astros cheating scandal. If you have already discussed this and I missed it, I sincerely apologize.”<\/p>\n
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I have not discussed the cheating scandal, Houston Astros. By the way, not all teams start exhibition — like the Cardinals and the Mets start tomorrow. But many major league teams start the exhibition season — it used to not be \u2019til March 12th that the exhibition games began, but everything\u2019s been moved up. So make a note, Snerdley, remind me, Astros cheating scandal, sometime before the end of the program.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: You know, about the Astros cheating scandal, you remember Bobby Thomson\u2019s home run, 1951, the year I was born, the Shot Heard ‘Round the World? You don\u2019t remember that? Well, guess what? Bobby Thomson had the sign. He knew what Ralph Branca was gonna throw. Cheating in baseball, sign stealing is as standard as quarterbacks throwing touchdowns in the NFL. It ain\u2019t that big a deal.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Look, I need to make a major correction. When I said, “Sign stealing,” i.e., cheating, “in baseball is no big deal,” I misspoke. What I meant to say is, “It\u2019s not unusual.” It is a big deal from a moral and a fairness standpoint. It is a big deal. I don\u2019t want anybody to believe that I think cheating is okay. That\u2019s not the point. But it\u2019s not unusual. The Astros just took it to a new level. Now, I found out something in the past year that I didn\u2019t know about all of this. 1951 was year I was born. I was born January \u201951.<\/p>\n
When I was 10 months old, there was a huge baseball game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers — and in that season, they had a three-game playoff to determine the winner of the National League pennant that year. The Dodgers had something like a 13-game lead with six weeks left in the season, and the Giants ended up winning the pennant from the Dodgers, overcoming those 13 games or 12, whatever it was. The culmination was Bobby Thomson\u2019s home run in 1951, with Ralph Branca on the mound for the Dodgers.<\/p>\n
Bobby Thomson\u2019s shot… It was at the Polo Grounds and it was the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, and everybody thinks it was just magical. It was the culmination of one of the greatest comebacks in major league history. Well, guess what? Guess what? Out in center field, the signs were being stolen via a telescope or binoculars or something — and interestingly enough, it was a buzzer system from the employee in center field letting the dugout know what the pitch that had been called by the catcher was, and they found a way to inform the hitter. Apparently, everybody knew it. Everybody knew this was going on after the fact. Ralph Branca, who gave up the home run pitch to Bobby Thomson… Thomson knew it, and in interviews about this in years and years after the game and after the event, nobody would deny it. I didn\u2019t know any of this until a year ago when this Astros stuff bubbled up, and all kinds of history about sign stealing in baseball began to resurface. There were comments like, “Yeah, Branca knew that Thomson was sittin\u2019 on the pitch. Take a look at the film.”<\/p>\n