LEXINGTON, Ky. _ You know that current Oakland A's and former Houston Astros pitcher Mike Fiers is Major League Baseball's most famous whistleblower.
When Fiers revealed late last year in an interview with sportswriters Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drelich of The Athletic that the 2017 World Series champion Astros were using a center-field camera to steal signs from opposing catchers so that Houston batters would know beforehand what pitches were coming, it launched the roiling controversy that has consumed MLB.
What you may not know is that Fiers, 34, has a viable connection to Kentucky.
In 2007, Fiers went 7-2 with a 3.68 ERA as a starting pitcher for the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg.
Patriots baseball coach Brad Shelton recruited Fiers out of Broward College, a Florida junior college. Shelton is not surprised that the Astros' sign-stealing scheme bothered Fiers enough that he eventually spoke out.
"He was a guy, the integrity of the game was important to him when he played for me," Shelton said Wednesday. "He's an old-school guy."
That sensibility showed up at Cumberlands when Fiers was pitching in a game and an opponent tried what Shelton described as a "bush league" tactic.
The opponent _ who Shelton declined to reveal _ had runners on first and third with one out. The opponent put on a play designed to induce Fiers to throw to first, thus giving the runner on third a chance to score.
"It was like a trick play," Shelton said. "The runner on first actually walked to right field, dropped on all fours and started barking like a dog."
Fiers, Shelton says, stepped off the mound, collected himself and then handled things in the old-school way.
With his next pitch, he plunked the batter in the ribs to load the bases.
Fiers then induced the following hitter to ground into an inning-ending double play.
Afterward, Shelton says the pitcher told him, " 'Coach, I knew I would get the double play. I didn't want them disrespecting the game like that.' "
That 2007 season was the only one Fiers pitched for Cumberlands. His senior year at the Williamsburg school was aborted when Fiers was in a car accident.
Says Shelton: "On his way back (from Florida) from Christmas break, he stops at a friend's house in Orlando to watch (the college football national championship game). Then he tries to drive throughout the night to get back to school. He fell asleep at the wheel and had a car wreck."
Fiers' resulting injuries, which included four fractured bones in his back, knocked the pitcher out of the 2008 baseball season. He subsequently decided to transfer back to his native Florida and finished his final college season at Nova Southeastern University.
The Milwaukee Brewers chose Fiers in the 22nd round of the 2009 MLB draft.
From that modest start, Fiers has enjoyed a notable big league career.
On Aug. 21, 2015, in his third start for Houston after being traded from Milwaukee, Fiers threw a no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Last season, with Oakland, Fiers had a career year. He went 15-4 with a 3.90 ERA.
On May 7 of last year, Fiers threw his second no-hitter, this time against the Cincinnati Reds.
Fiers also has a 2017 Houston Astros World Series ring.
Of course, in the eyes of many, that ring has been tainted by what Fiers revealed about the lengths to which the Astros went to claim it.
Some, including ESPN analyst Jessica Mendoza and former Boston Red Sox stars Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz, have criticized Fiers for violating the trust of his former Astros teammates by blowing the whistle on the sign-stealing scheme.
"He's one of my guys and I will defend him to the end," Shelton says of Fiers. "I totally understand where he was coming from. He always was a guy who wanted to do what was right."
In the aftermath of Fiers' revelations about Houston's sign-stealing, three major-league managers who were with the 2017 Astros in various capacities have lost their jobs.
AJ Hinch, who managed Houston from 2015-2019, was axed by the Astros.
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, Houston's bench coach in 2017, and first-year New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran, an Astros player in 2017, also lost their positions after their names appeared in MLB's investigative report on the Houston sign stealing.
At Cumberlands, Brad Shelton can't help but marvel at the impact on Major League Baseball that his former pitcher has had.
Says Shelton: "You don't know too many NAIA baseball coaches who can say they have had (a former player) throw two no-hitters in the big leagues _ and that's not the most famous thing he's done."
