RYAN PYETTE AND ANDY BADER, Free Press Sports Reporter; Special to The Free Press  

The New Zealand Black Sox raised the profile of softball in their country by beating Canada for the world softball championship title Sunday at home in Christchurch. But the host team's relationship with the rest of the international softball community is in danger amid charges the Black Sox stole their opponents' signals with a well-placed video recorder.

Canadian centre-fielder Ryan Wolfe admitted he thought little about the camera set up beyond the fence behind him -- until he noticed it before the gold-medal game.  "That happens all the time (in softball), a lot of teams tape the games and try to study our hitters, try to figure out our tendencies," said the 28-year-old Melbourne native and London resident.

"But when I saw it out there again during the warmup of the final, it was a bit odd. They already have all the tape they need during the week. You start to wonder, 'Now, what are they using it for?' " To steal their opponents' signs, if the Canadian team's controversial charges against the Kiwis are correct. Favoured New Zealand won the game and its third straight world title 9-5 over Canada -- but not without creating another Black Sox scandal.

Wolfe's teammate Jody Eidt of Mitchell, a former hockey player with the junior B St. Marys Lincolns, said the Canadian team leader walked out to centre field during the final and found a woman with a laptop computer and video camera relaying the catcher's signals to the coach and then to the batter.

"Considering they hit their first three home runs off of changeups, it doesn't seem like too strange a theory to say that they were stealing signals for the first half of the game," Eidt said. "Who would have thought it would come to that?"

Playing under enormous pressure in their home country and having already lost 5-4 to the Canucks earlier in the tournament, the top-ranked Kiwis surrendered three runs in the first inning before exploding for six in their first three at-bats.

"It's speculation but we had our suspicions before the game and everything we suspected seemed to play out," said Wolfe, a physical education and Canadian history and geography teacher at Glencoe district secondary school.

"Before the game, a player on the U.S. team tipped us off and told us New Zealand was stealing their signals earlier in the playoffs. But the Kiwis are a good-hitting team; it would be difficult to prove.

"During the final, our team complained to tournament officials and they ordered the camera to be shut off. But by then, the score was already 6-3. All I know is they scored less runs with the camera off than they did with it on."

Wolfe doesn't think an appeal or a softball hearing will fix the situation. He admits the silver medal, combined with the 16-hour flight home to think about what happened, left him and his mates with a sour taste in their mouths.

"It definitely does. It's one thing to lose, but to think the other team would do something like that to win, it makes it worse. We talked a lot about that after the game -- what's the value of a championship if you have to cheat to win?"

Wolfe said it could be uncomfortable when he suits up for Broken Bow, Neb., in softball's summer season. His teammates include Kiwi nationals Jared Martin and Thomas Makea.  "I consider those guys to be pretty good friends. They're fierce competitors and I imagine they wouldn't feel too good about themselves if they had to steal signs to win," Wolfe said. "I've never seen anything like that before. You always have guys standing on second base trying to steal signs, that's part of the game. "But I've never seen this level of technology involved."