It was way back in 1972 when Hall of Fame auto racer Richard Petty put to words what sports teams apparently still ascribe to today.

“If you ain’t trying to cheat a little, you ain’t likely to win much,” Petty cracked, no doubt referring to his latest souped-up carburetor.

Well, in New England anyway, that phrase has morphed into the frequently repeated “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”

We thought the beloved Patriots had cornered the rule-bending market back in 2007 when they were caught videotaping the New York Jets' sideline. The vestiges of Spygate have stalked Bill Belichick and Tom Brady ever since. Clueless talking heads around the country quickly pull that card when the Pats make other sloppy mistakes, including the NFL’s current investigation into a non-football staffer video recording the Cincinnati Bengals' sideline last month.

But now there appears that a much more believable, dastardly scheme was afoot with another franchise in the City of Champions. According to a lengthy report in The Athletic, three unidentified people associated with the 2018 World Series champion Red Sox say that during the regular season, players were allowed to visit a video replay room near the dugout during games and decode the sign sequence of opposing teams.

The Red Sox issued a statement Tuesday saying they were “recently made aware of the allegations,” and everyone should wait for Major League Baseball to complete its investigation, but these charges appear to ring true. First off, stealing signs is a way of life in baseball. Coaches — mostly parents — try to pilfer the steal signs in Little League. By high school, teenage sluggers want to know when the curve is coming their way. In the pros, it sure helps if you know if that Big Hoss on the rubber is ready to unleash a slider or a heater.

But players and managers sneaking a peek is gamesmanship at its finest. That’s sports. Using cameras and high-tech watches and elaborate relay systems is simply against the rules.

After all, if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

It seems the Red Sox, the record-setting, 108-win Red Sox were trying real hard back in 2018. Like virtually all teams, the Sox have a room set up near their clubhouse where video techs can roll tape of upcoming pitchers for Mookie Betts to take a look at, or allow David Price to study the tendencies of opposing hitters. During games, hitters and pitchers are free to leave the dugout and use the video room.

The report says the Sox went a bit further and knowingly violated MLB rules. Make that twice in two seasons, which means the team acted with utter arrogance toward these replay rules.

Back in 2017, the Yankees turned in the Red Sox after the Sox used an Apple watch to illegally transfer stolen signs from their video room to an athletic trainer in the dugout. MLB fined the Sox and commissioner Rob Manfred drew a line in the sand, notifying all 30 teams that future violations of electronic stealing of signs will be subject to more serious sanctions, including the possible loss of draft picks.

That slap on the wrist apparently didn’t deter the Sox. The report in The Athletic states that the 2018 Sox were paranoid that other teams, including the reigning World Champion Houston Astros, were also into sign stealing. “You got a bunch of people who are really good at cheating and everybody knows that each other’s doing it,” said one person with the 2018 Red Sox.

The Sox would have a staff member in their video replay room tell players an opponent’s sign sequence. That info would be shared with coaches in the dugout and relayed to base runners. The runner, usually from second base, would watch the catcher’s signs and signal the calls to the hitter with specific body movements, like standing on second base with both feet.

Besides horrible optics, the problem for the Red Sox is that manager Alex Cora is now a central figure in multiple MLB investigations into sign stealing. Cora was the bench coach in Houston in 2017 when the Astros reportedly would crudely bang on a trash can in their dugout to relay pitch calls to batters.

Cora came to Boston the next season and polished up his game a bit but cheating is cheating and he’s in line for a major fine. If commissioner Manfred wants this to stop, he needs to make an example of Cora (and Houston’s A.J. Hinch) — maybe suspend them without pay for 30 or so games.

It’s a pretty sad day when MLB has to assign monitors to video rooms like it began to in the 2018 playoffs and World Series. But this is sports and no one can be trusted.

As old Richard Petty said when he slapped a little extra grease on his chassis, “if you ain’t trying to cheat a little, you ain’t likely to win much.”

kmcnamar@providencejournal.com