A research report on sign stealing in Japanese high school baseball.

Abstract

  The sign steeling in baseball is the observing and relaying of signs given by the opposing catcher to the pitcher, and this illegal action is reported frequently. The purpose of this study was to research the existing situations in Japanese high school baseball, and to investigate the coaches and players attitude to sign steeling.

  A questionnaire survey was conducted on 258 university male students who belonged to baseball club when they were high school students. The main contents of survey were following; highest competitive result, presence or absence of experience of sign steeling, effectiveness of sign steeling, and attitude to sign steeling of coaches and players.

  As a result, 85 out of 258 students carried out sign stealing (32.9%), and 74 out of 85 students answered that it was effective (87.0%). There is no significant relationship between competitive result and experience of sign steeling, therefore sign steeling was carried out at any competitive level. We conducted a Chi-square test and the results revealed significant relationship between the attitude to sign steeling of coaches and the experiences of sign steeling (p<0.01). These results indicated that the sign steeling in Japanese high school baseball can be reduced by coaches’ attitude to prohibition against sign steeling.