Stealing Signs? Cheating or part of the game?

I just finished reading an article from the Wall Street Journal about the Giants stealing signs to win the pennant in 1951 aka Bobby Thompson's "Shot Heard 'Round The World!" and I was wondering what everyone thinks about stealing signs?

Here's the article if you want to read it. It's very interesting and explains how they did it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB980896446829227925.html

There's a video of Joe Mauer allegedly stealing signs that I'm sure most of you have seen. The title of the video even has the words "not cheating" in it so you know what the person who took the video thinks of sign-stealing.

Is sign-stealing still prevalent in today's game? Or at least to this extent where players are hiding in clubhouses and sending messages to the bullpen and/or dugout? Do you consider that cheating?

Does it even matter to the hitter? Do they even want the sign? Does it matter how good of a hitter they are? Say Joe Mauer doesn't want the sign but someone like Drew Butera might want it to help him out a little at the plate?

My take (TwinsTake? Haha) is it depends on how it happens. It's one thing to have a guy hiding somewhere in the stands or the bullpen and relaying the signs somehow to the dugout and the batter. I think it's different thing if it's from the players actually playing in the game. The Mauer video has him doing various things to let the batter know what pitch is coming while he's at 2nd base. I consider that a part of the game and a component to beat the other team.

Tony Gwynn didn't want to know what pitch was coming as he trusted his eyes and his instincts as a hitter. He was a great hitter but how 'bout a player who isn't a great hitter or is in a slump? I think I'd want to trust my eyes and instincts.

The baseball video games sometimes have an option where you can guess the pitch and it will tell you if you are right. I tried that for awhile and it hurt my hitting. I did try just guessing fastball because it was nice knowing if a fastball was coming or not but I went back to just watching the ball after awhile. Not sure that relates in any way to actually playing the game though. Haha

Part of the game. And it matters to any hitter especially the good ones. The bad ones (see: Butera, Andrew Edward) cannot hit even if they know what's coming.

Here's another article from ESPN from last August about Toronto's HR rate at home - http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/...-rogers-centre