In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: Peeking (batters subtly glancing backward in an effort to pick up the catcher’s signs or location).

Television cameras have caught the likes of Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr. and Alex Rodriguez, among others, casting backward glances during at-bats. After Game 1 of the 2000 NLCS, Jerry Grote, who had been a catcher for the Mets more than two decades earlier, informed team personnel that, while watching the game on television at home in San Antonio, he came to the conclusion that Cardinals first baseman Will Clark had been peeking at catcher Mike Piazza. (Clark went 1-for-3 in a 6-2 defeat.) Clark had already once been accused by the Mets of peeking, as a member of the Giants in 1993.

Whatever Grote saw, however, managed to escape Piazza. “I think I would notice,” said the Mets backstop in a Newsday report. “Some guys try to mix it into their routine. You just have to try to disguise it. And if it’s really that blatant, you have to say something.”

Perhaps in response, the Cardinals leveled accusations of their own, asserting that Mets third baseman Todd Zeile was tipped to pitch location by whistling from the New York bench.