PHOENIX -- The Diamondbacks went into Game 6 of the 2001 World Series with their backs against the wall, and they had one crucial edge against Andy Pettitte: they knew he was tipping his pitches.
What has never been fully settled is how they figured it out.
A quarter-century later, the story still gets told around the organization, but the details have never lined up cleanly. Different people remember different versions of the same discovery, and nobody seems completely sure where the first tip came from.
Steve Finley said the warning arrived the day before Game 6 through a call from someone with another team.
"For the life of me I can't remember who it was, but someone told me what Pettitte was doing to tip his pitches," Finley said. "So I went to the video room, and sure enough, it was right there.
We had all three of his pitches -- his fastball, cutter and changeup. I made sure everyone saw it."
Mark Grace remembered it another way, saying he and Greg Swindell were the ones who spotted it.
"No, it was me and Greg Swindell," Grace said referring to the left-handed reliever. "I was not in the lineup that night, and Greg Swindell comes up to me and he said, 'When you get a minute, come to the video room with me, I think I might see something.'
So, he pulls up Pettitte from his start before, and he starts against Seattle. And I'm looking.
I'm like, 'Holy [expletive]!' It was blatant what he was doing."
Luis Gonzalez, who would later deliver the Game 7 walk-off hit, said only that the club had been alerted somehow.
"Somebody tipped us off," Gonzalez said. "That much I know. I thought it was a couple of scouts, but I can't remember now."
Bob Brenly believed more than one person was involved and said the video assistant at the time, Jim Currigan, helped dig into it.
Once the Diamondbacks had the pattern, they focused on Tony Womack, the leadoff man, because the tell showed up only when Pettitte was working from the stretch. If his glove drifted out just a bit on the way down from below his chin, it meant fastball. If the glove came down smoothly, it was the cutter or changeup.
"Your job is to get on freaking base right from the start," Grace said they told him.
Womack did exactly that, even though he preferred not to know any of the signs himself.
"I was one of those guys who didn't want to know, what was coming," Womack said. "Nope.
Some guys want to know, and they can do something with that. I didn't want to know, so I would never pay attention to that stuff.
But they told me to get on base and I did."
He doubled to lead off the game, and Danny Bautista followed with a single on the first pitch he saw to bring him in. Arizona kept rolling from there, scoring three more runs in the second after Matt Williams opened the inning with a single and forced Pettitte out of the stretch.
By the time the third inning turned into an eight-run eruption, Pettitte was done after four batters. The Diamondbacks kept pouring it on and hammered the Yankees, 15-2, to stay alive and force a Game 7.
The next day, Pettitte admitted something felt off.
“I didn’t feel quite as sharp as the last time out, but the way they were fouling pitches off ... some of the pitches they hit, I still can’t believe it,” Pettitte told the New York Daily News. “It was a shock for me to get knocked out like that."
Still, Arizona’s knowledge only got them so far. Knowing what was coming helped, but they still had to square it up. Earlier that same season, Oakland’s Tim Hudson had also been tipping pitches and still held the Diamondbacks to one run over a complete game.
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