QueEx said:
Interesting Note: I represent a charitable foundation with a remote link to yourself, Runaway and me: The Tommie Agee Charitable Foundaton. Tommie played for the Sox, Mets and was from my hometown. My father, a Negro Leaguer, coached Tommie (and Cleon Jones both of the Amazin's '69 fame [and Amos Otis - Royals]) in semi-pro ball before they went up.
QueEx
Now, I know somebody gotta be thinking, what fucking hometown is that ???
Answer: the one with more major leaguers than any other single city (I think) LOL.
Cranrab, where are you ??? LOL.
Unfortunately, my professional sports knowledge resides mainly in basketball... i'm a casual fan of the NFL, and as G and RS can tell you, almost a complete dunce when it comes to baseball...
congratulations to the sox... thought G would appreciate this column i read this a.m.:
Blown-call cloud will hang over '05 postseason
Kevin Hench / FOXSports.com
Posted: 1 hour ago
Most fans will remember the 2005 baseball postseason as the year the Chicago White Sox ended the curse of the Black Sox.
Some fans in St. Louis will remember it as the year the Cardinals became only the 10th team in baseball history to win 100 games in back-to-back years without winning the World Series.
Others, perhaps, will remember it merely as Year 5 in what will become a 40-year title drought for the New York Yankees.
My hope is that we will all remember it as the year there were so many outright bad calls it forced baseball to come to its senses about instant replay
Fifty-eight years after Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, it still seems incomprehensible that the small-minded rulers of baseball prohibited black players from participation for so long.
And while the injustice certainly isn't comparable, some day our children or our grandchildren will watch a terrible call being rectified by replay and wonder how the small-minded traditionalists who ran baseball as late as the early 21st century could have allowed umpire error to affect the outcome of so many games after replay's efficacy had already been proven in professional football.
Seriously, Bud Selig, what's it going to take? Will it have to come down to a missed fair/foul call on the game-winning home run of Game 7 of the World Series? Your umpiring crews just endured the most embarrassing month in the history of sports officiating. Were the calls they missed difficult? Sure. Could replay have bailed out the beleaguered umps? Absolutely.
But instead of taking this opportunity to improve the situation, baseball did what it usually does: swept a significant problem under the rug by denying there was any problem at all.
When umpire supervisor Rick Rieker came out to defend Doug Eddings after the fiasco in Chicago in Game 2 of the ALCS , it seemed somewhere between a statement from the Politburo and a Scott McClellan press conference.
We always hear the same thing: Major League umpires get the "vast majority" of calls right. Is that supposed to be comforting? You know who else gets a "vast majority" of calls right? Beer-league softball umpires. Can you imagine how bad you'd have to be as an umpire to get a "narrow majority" or "slight minority" of calls right? Let's face it, the vast majority of calls in baseball are easy. It's on the tough ones where the umps earn their reputations. So let's sum up how the men in blue did on the tough calls this postseason.
Remember Posada's ALDS act?
Before we even got to "Third Strike Gate" in Chicago, we should have suspected there would be trouble.
In Game 2 of the division series between the Yankees and Angels, Jorge Posada deserved an Oscar for his convincing portrayal of a man who had just fouled a ball off his foot. Yes, the Yankees lost the series in five games, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Or lack of lying.
After hitting a harmless dribbler back to the mound that was scooped up by John Lackey, Posada began hopping around as if the ball had struck his foot in the batter's box, hoping his performance would fool home-plate umpire Jerry Meals and the rest of the blue crew. Mission accomplished. Though replays revealed that Posada was clearly faking, he was allowed to return to the batter's box where he drew a walk.
So Posada should have been out on a comebacker, but thanks to his willingness to lie and cheat and exploit "the human factor" of umpire fallibility, he was on first base. Not only would this play have been easily corrected by replay, but it also would have afforded the umps an opportunity to dissuade future cheaters by tossing Posada from the game after emerging from underneath the hood.
The Angels were able to weather the bad call by Meals, but they clearly weren't ready for the work of Eddings and Co. in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the ALCS. We all know what happened. In fact, we knew it well before the umpires. You know why? Because we've got television sets that provide instant replay. Lots of it — in super slo-mo.
Hard to forget ALCS Game 2
Kelvim Escobar struck out A.J. Pierzysnki on a nasty split that 1,000 replays showed disappearing into the webbing of catcher Josh Paul's glove. The so-called "change of direction" that Eddings and Rieker lamely pointed to as if it exonerated the umps would also occur if the ball were striking the webbing while it was flush with the ground. But no one barked out, "Objection. Irrelevant" while they were peddling this defense.
Eddings had conferred with third base coach Ed Rapuano for help. But like everyone else in the stadium, when Rapuano saw Eddings ring up Pierzynski with his fist, he probably checked out. Once Eddings overruled himself and called Pierzsynski safe, Rapuano couldn't very well trump Eddings on a ball Eddings must have been claiming to have heard hit the dirt, since a plate umpire's view is obstructed by the catcher.
To expect a base umpire to say he definitively saw the ball hit the mitt when the plate umpire is saying he heard it hit the ground is absurd. Unless, of course, the third-base umpire had replay — like the millions of home viewers.
A bad call in the NLCS too
In Game 2 of the Cardinals-Astros series, we saw the flip-side of Posada's perfidy. Mark Grudzielanek fouled a ball straight down and it suddenly took a sharp right turn and rolled out in front of the plate, where it was collected by Roy Oswalt and flipped to first for an out.
Oddly, unlike Posada who had begun hopping around on a ball that clearly missed his foot, Grudzielanek took a few fatal steps toward first and was rung up. He argued vehemently and correctly with home-plate ump Greg Gibson that the ball had hit his foot — which was obvious on replay — but Gibson was clearly going off of Grudzielanek's actions out of the box. As usual, no one in the umpiring crew saw what the cameras captured from multiple angles: the ball clearly hitting Grudzielanek's foot.
Things would get worse for the Cardinals with the umps, but first we had another blown call in the ALCS that could have been easily corrected by replay.
Blown calls aided White Sox's title run
Though the phantom dropped third strike in Game 2 of the ALCS and the erroneous hit batsman ruling in Game 2 of the World Series were the blown calls that most notably helped the White Sox win the championship, there was another unfortunate miss by an umpire that aided their improbable run.
With runners on first and third and the Angels trailing 3-1 in the second inning of Game 4, Steve Finley hit a soft ground ball to second. Even though the 40-year-old Finley has lost a step, there was no possible way the White Sox would be able to turn two. Tadahito Iguchi threw to second to force Bengie Molina and I was stunned when Juan Uribe even bothered to throw to first. I was even more stunned when the throw beat Finley to first. How the heck did the ChiSox turn two on a slow ground ball to second off the bat of a left-handed batter with above-average speed? Let's go to the replay.
Being that it was the 2005 playoffs, it should come as no surprise that the White Sox were the beneficiaries of a bad non-call. Finley's bat had struck that man Pierzynski's glove just before he made contact, a clear instance of catcher's interference. Finley should have been awarded first base. But instead what happened was Finley was put in that awkward position that Posada and Grudzielanek had negotiated so differently. How would Finley's actions or inaction influence home-plate umpire Ron Kulpa's call? Finley sort of split the difference. He began chugging down to first while looking over his shoulder and yelling at Kulpa that Pierzynski had interfered with his swing.
Turns out Finley made the wrong choice. By running toward first, he had forfeited any opportunity of convincing Kulpa of his case, and by yelling over his shoulder as he ran he had slowed himself down enough to allow the 4-6-3 to be turned. So instead of the bases loaded and one out, the White Sox were out of the inning and on their way to another victory.
Replay could have helped
If only there was the technology to help prevent such embarrassing mistakes by umpires. Oh wait, that's right, everybody watching at home knew that Finley's bat had hit Pierzynski's glove. Only the men in blue — once again providing that super-awesome "human factor" — were unaware of what had transpired.
To sum up: Posada acted as if he had fouled the ball off his foot and was allowed to continue his at bat even though he was lying; Grudzielanek acted momentarily as if the ball hadn't hit his foot even though it had and was called out; and Finley, too, made the mistake of running toward first when he was, in fact, entitled to walk down there and was called out. Can we learn something from these three instances about what information umpires use to call certain plays when they haven't seen them clearly? And does it matter that replay provided incontrovertible visual certainty that all three calls were wrong? Mr. Selig? Hello?
Back to the NLCS
Everyone seems to agree that you wouldn't want to open the Pandora's box of the strike zone to replay, but you didn't really need a replay to know Phil Cuzzi had blown it when he rung up Jim Edmonds in the eighth inning of Game 4. Edmonds turned away from a pitch that was high and tight before getting the bad news from Cuzzi that he had called it a strike. Edmonds got tossed and the Astros moved one step closer to, well, getting swept in the World Series.
But before Houston could go out with a whimper in four straight, we needed a little more umpiring ineptitude.
Back to the World Series
Umpire Jeff Nelson sends Jermaine Dye to first base on a ball that should have been ruled foul. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)
In the seventh inning of Game 2 with Chicago trailing 4-2 as Houston tried to level the series, Dan Wheeler came up and in with a 3-2 fastball that either hit Jermaine Dye's forearm or bat. Home-plate umpire Jeff Nelson ruled forearm, so it could hardly come as a surprise when the super slo-mo replay revealed that the ball had hit Dye's bat. Paul Konerko followed with a grand slam and the White Sox went on to win 7-6.
Here's my question: Wouldn't umpires themselves like to eliminate some of the human element? Like, for example, the part where a guy swings his bat 90 miles per hour at a pitch that is traveling 95 miles per hour and deflects it straight down and the ump has to determine if it grazed his toe. Turns out there's some guesswork to umpiring. Guesswork that could be reduced by replay.
