Bowa's sign steal charge fires up Victorino

PHILADELPHIA -- Leave it to Larry Bowa, the pepper pot former Phillies manager and player and current third-base coach of the Yankees, to add some spice to the 2009 World Series.

One of the oddities of this series has been the frequent trips to the mound by Yankees catchers as well as manager Joe Girardi and pitching coach Dave Eiland.

Does it suggest a problem communicating between Posada or Jose Molina with Yankees pitchers?

"No it does not," said Yankees manager Joe Girardi.

So why the worn-out 60-foot path?

According to Bowa, the former Yankees third-base coach who now coaches with the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of the reasons for the bevy of conferences are the Phillies' ability to steal signs from the opposition.

Historically, sign stealing has been viewed as part of the game, an art by baseball men. But during a press conference yesterday afternoon, hours before Game 5 at Citizens Bank Park, Phillies outfielder Shane Victorino took Bowa's comments to mean something else and wasn't too happy about the implications.

"For Bowa to come out and say something like that if he doesn't know what he's talking about, if he doesn't have cold hard facts," said Victorino, the All-Star outfielder who was hitting .200 for the series going into Game 5. "He shouldn't say something like that ... For you to pop off like that, I'm not happy.

"We play between the lines and that's what it's about. Don't talk about what has happened or what you know. If you know for a fact that we're stealing signs, then that's a different story. Obviously if we're stealing signs, we would be doing better than we're doing right now."

The Phils not only entered last night's Game 5 facing elimination, down three games to one in this best-of-seven series (a hole from which no Phillies team has ever extricated itself), but hitting a disappointing .220 (and only .210 versus lefties) with only 16 runs scored in four games. That's almost a run dropoff from the Phillies squad that scored 24 runs in winning the 2008 World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays in five games. But then no one on the Rays accused the Phils of stealing signs last year.

"He's saying that's the reason we're good," Victorino said. "Don't downgrade our team and say that we're not good ... We're too good a team to say that's the reason why we're struggling. I'm not trying to dog him ... you're not giving us enough credit as a team.''

Stay tuned to see if the fireworks between a legendary Phillie and the current Phillies go any further.

Contact Barry Federovitch at bfederovitch@njtimes.com