NO SHIRT, SHERLOCK

WHEN MLB PLAYERS' JERSEYS MYSTERIOUSLY STARTED TO DISAPPEAR THREE YEARS AGO, TEAMS WEREN'T JUST WORRIED ABOUT THE LAUNDRY-THEY WERE SPOOKED BY WHAT SEEMED LIKE A STARTLING SECURITY BREACH. WHAT CAME NEXT: an all-out search for the thief

- STEPHANIE APSTEIN

Before each game, he repaints the batting helmets, erasing the dings they picked up the night before. He insists that his staff yank the zippers on all equipment bags to the middle. He spaces the hangers in each locker a finger-width apart.

Grems can identify at a glance whether someone has touched something he laid out. So when one of his assistants began pulling dirty uniforms from bags shortly before midnight on Sept. 2, 2020, after returning from a series against the Rockies, Grems could tell immediately that something was wrong. First, the zippers were askew. Then they got inside the bag.

Normally, his staffers fold pants inside of jerseys before dropping the whole bundle into a hamper. So when there’s only pants in there and there’s not the jersey,” says Grems, you're like: O.K., what happened?’

Grems would spend the next six weeks trying to answer that question. What first seemed like an accident—two jerseys could go missing any number of ways—would grow into an investigation that entangled five teams and two police departments.

Equipment had disappeared before, but never under circumstances quite like this. It had not been six months since the pandemic paused American life. People were still disinfecting their groceries and loading up on toilet paper. Major League Baseball, in deciding to stage a 60-game season, had created a tightly guarded, sterile environment. Support staffers had been tasked with rearranging locker rooms to create social distance between players; distributing masks and policing their use; and cleaning and disinfecting everything, everywhere, all the time. The Giants’ clubhouse staff had gone so far as to install clap-on lights so that no one ever had to touch a switch.