Dan Patrick: “When I say the name ‘Mike Fiers’ what do you think of?”
Don Mattingly: “As a player within the clubhouse you would have liked him to have taken that stance while he was there… ‘After the fact’ makes it a little different, when you could have spoken up right then and right there within the clubhouse and maybe put an end to it.” (Full Interview Above)
Listen to current Miami Marlins manager and former New York Yankees All-Star Don Mattingly join The Dan Patrick Show to discuss Mike Fiers’ role in blowing the whistle on one of the biggest cheating scandals in sports history.
Fiers, who pitched for the team from 2015-2017, said the team had a TV monitor around the home dugout at Minute Maid Park that had a clear and magnified view of the opponents’ catcher that was shot from a discrete center field camera.
Astros staff would then watch the rigged up monitor in the tunnel while Houston players were batting, to see where the opposing catcher was setting up and what fingers he was throwing down. They would then relay to the Astros batter up at the plate which pitch was likely coming next by literally banging on trash cans, whistling, or hitting the ceiling of the dugout to signal if it was an off-speed pitch or a fastball.
The unprecedented mayhem that would then unfurl would become arguably the most infamous moment in baseball history.
Fiers has said he gotten death threats for exposing the whole operation.
Listen to Mattingly detail why he thinks Fiers should have tried stopping the cheating while he was a member of the team’s 2017 World Series winning season and not years later after the fact.