Blue Jays GM addresses accusations of stealing signs

TORONTO, Ont. – The Blue Jays are denying allegations that they have been stealing signs flashed by opposing teams catchers to their pitchers, and then relaying them to Jays hitters.

The allegations appeared on the front page of ESPN.com.

Team brass reacted to the accusations on Wednesday from the Rogers Centre.

Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos could barely stifle his laughter as he addressed ESPN’s story.

The story accuses the Jays of a using a plant in centre field to relay catcher’s signs to their hitters.  Four unnamed sources said that they swear they saw a guy in the outfield seats, wearing a white shirt, waving his arms when a breaking ball was coming and sitting still for fastballs.

“You have twenty-five players on a roster, you got thirty teams. That’s a lot of players. So four players believe they may have seen somebody wearing a white shirt – that’s compelling stuff to me.” Said Anthopoulos.

He then used words like “stupid” “ridiculous” and “unbelievable” adding he had never heard any complaints from other teams or from major league baseball.

Anthopoulos added that while ESPN is generally a terrific organization, they were wrong this time and he wished they had done more homework.

“I just wish people would look at the common sense component first and say is this really realistic. Think of what would have to go into all this stuff.”

Anthopoulos said that as far as he was concerned, it was a non story.

Jose Bautista said that after this, and last years steroid accusations, he was intrigued as to what questions he was going to have to face next year.