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Atl Econ J (2008) 36:359360
DOI 10.1007/s11293-008-9123-0
ANTHOLOGY
E. Frank Stephenson
Published online: 27 June 2008 # International Atlantic Economic Society 2008
JEL C10 . D00 . D80
In his recent book, The Echoing Green, Joshua Prager suggests the legendary 1951 pennant race between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers might have been affected by the Giants stealing signs from opposing catchers. Prager documents, beginning July 20, a Giants coach used a telescope to view the catchers signs and a bell to relay the signs to players seated in the Giants bullpen. A player in the bullpen then signaled information on the upcoming pitch to batters by sitting still to indicate a fastball or moving to indicate a curveball, for example. Consequently, Giants batters would have information on forthcoming pitches and presumably have more successful plate appearances than they would without the sign-stealing.
To determine if the Giants offense benefited from the sign-stealing, I estimated a straightforward regression model of runs scored (RS) by the Giants. A game is the level of analysis and there are 157 observations. Explanatory variables include HOME, a binary variable taking a value of unity for Giants home games, POST, a binary variable taking...