 Hey, sports fans, what's America's most deceptive sport? As the honest liar, I'm interested in many forms of deception. I'm also a lifelong baseball fan, so today I thought we'd put aside traditional skepticism issues and look at deception in an unusual context, namely America's pastime baseball. Major League Baseball regards 1869 as the year baseball was officially born as a professional sport, and research shows that that transmission of secret signals across the baseball diamond began the very same year, an element of the game that is not only crucial to its workings and very nature, but that is therefore literally as old as the game itself. Inspired by semaphore's Morse code and the use of military signaling in the Civil War, baseball signals are a complex craft, one that players, pitchers, catchers, hitters, fielders, not to mention managers, and a multitude of coaches must all master in order to be successful. Yet, it is an element of the game that is invisible to most casual fans. If most of what you know about baseball is summed up by three strikes and you're out, four balls and you walk, well, then baseball might just appear on the surface to be the world's slowest and least interesting sport. But not unlike the movie Microcosmos, which revealed the hidden world of insect life that's invisible to most casual observers, the game of baseball is also dense, with secrets, deceptions, and strategies that shift and change with literally every single pitch of the ball. Indeed, probably a thousand such secret signals are communicated in one typical baseball game, not only among the defense, that is from catcher to pitcher, on each and every pitch, but on the offensive side as well, from the manager and coaches to the dugout, to the coaches in the field, posted near first and third base who in turn relay those signals back to the hitter, preparing to swing at the next pitch. This silent cacophony of signal without noise renders the game for many fans like myself, a gripping and endlessly fascinating drama, as dense and duplicitous as a John Le Carré spy novel, and indeed it is the relaxed pace of the game of baseball that enables this subterranean channel to even exist, since a faster game would not allow for the elaborate coded sequences used to communicate countless strategic decisions that managers communicate to players, including the steal, double steals, the hit and run, directing hitters when to take a pitch, such as on a 3-0 count, or when to lay down the bunt, or that glory of the game made famous by Jackie Robinson stealing home. And like any good code, they must be difficult to crack in order to prevent the opposing team from secretly stealing your signs and using that information to their advantage. In fact, it turns out stealing signs is also as old as the game itself, since there are references to a team being caught stealing signs in the early 1870s, a practice that continues to this very day. According to a 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal, in the legendary 1951 playoff game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers, the giants were allegedly stealing signs with a telescope. So in the game that eventually ended with Bobby Thompson's shot heard round the world home run, Thompson might just have known what was coming. Now the code itself, a sequence of gestures, can render a coach appearing as if he's been beset by a cloud of mosquitoes or a sudden case of indigestion, tapping and touching his chin, chest, nose, ears, hat, belt buckle, in a dizzyingly rapid sequence. And yet, even when all that is done, it might just be a single sign, the first or the last gesture, that actually communicates the critical information. Of course, if the team that's hitting has a runner on second base, then the other team must be prepared to change signs so as to prevent the runner from stealing them and signaling the next pitch's location back to the hitter. How does he do that? Well, one possibility is that as the runner leans forward preparing to run, he touches the knee with one of his hands. Left hand means one side of the plate, right hand means the other. And now his teammate, the batter, is ready for the location of the next pitch, a potentially devastating advantage. But what about the rules, you ask? Well, there's actually no rule against stealing signs, that is, because signaling is such a fundamental element of the game. However, in recent years, management's indicated that they will frown on the use of electronic or mechanical equipment beyond the use of the human eye and hand. And the battle between signs and sign stealers continues. Now, as the honest liar, I'm interested in the countless ways that deception enters our daily lives. But perhaps in fairness, I should acknowledge a differentiation between deception and subterfuge. Most signaling perhaps falls more in the category of subterfuge, whereas outright deception would be, well, for example, when the pitcher tries to keep the runner's guessing by faking a throw towards first base, then fakes another throw towards third or in the rare but lovely case of a fielder faking a throw entirely and hiding the ball for a moment in order to induce a runner to expose himself to a tag or to be thrown out on the base path. So what American sport is most laden with deception? Well, this fan would suggest that it's probably baseball, not because of the crudely concealed use of steroids, a disgraceful but I hope soon passing phase in the great game's history. Rather, I would choose baseball as the most interestingly deceptive sport thanks to the beautiful coated deceptions that flash across the diamond before every single pitch, invisible to all but the combatants and their fascinated fans. Could it be that this very element of elegant deception is what really makes baseball America's pastime? This is Jamie Ian Swift, and I am the honest liar.