A 1930 Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco ad featuring Chicago Cubs catcher Zack Taylor:
Taylor, according to Jimmy Dykes, was a major factor in the Philadelphia Athletics’ 4 games to 1 victory over Chicago in the 1929 World Series. According to The Philadelphia Record, Dykes told attendees at a lunch for the Delaware County Real Estate Board:
“We didn’t watch for signals in that 10 to 8 game where we scored 10 runs in the seventh inning, but in all the other World Series games we knew the Cubs’ signals.
“We worked it this way: When one of our batters got on base, he would fix his eyes on Taylor…who at times, was a little careless. The runner would stand in a perfectly natural position until he caught the signal, then he would move his hand in such a way that the batter was informed what kind of a ball was a about to be pitched, or else a man near the batter would catch the runner’s signal and relay it to the man at the plate.”
Dykes was ridiculed for the claim.
Davis Walsh, the baseball writer for the International News Service, noted that the Athletics left 27 men on base during the four games Dykes said they were stealing signs.
Damon Runyon, in his column for the Hearst paper’s Universal Service, said Walsh showed “By facts and figures that if the Athletics had the Cubs signs the only bewildered the Athletics.”
Dykes hit .421 with four RBI in the four-game series.
Baseball History Daily 