By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/15/a-cub-shows-too-much-leg-in-a-game-one-loss/Cubs manager Joe Maddon doesn’t like Chicago’s soda tax. It took a play at the plate in Game One of the
National League Championship Series to learn that.
Because Dodger shortstop Charlie Culberson was thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the seventh—
no, he wasn’t, after Cubs catcher Willson Contreras blocked the plate before he had left fielder Kyle
Schwarber’s throw in his possession.
Culberson was on second after hitting a double immediately after Yasiel Puig led off with a home run. A
bunt toward short and an infield hit later, still aboard second, he motored home when Justin Turner shot
one past third for a base hit.
Schwarber playing deep picked the ball clean and came up throwing. The ball one-hopped to Contreras,
whose left leg moved over the foul line in front of the plate seconds before he had the ball while Culberson
slid, Culberson unable to touch the plate and appearing to have bumped Contreras’s shin guard.
With Cubs pitcher John Lackey backing the play—Lackey, normally a starter, was in the game in relief of
Mike Montgomery, who’d surrendered Puig’s bomb and Culberson’s double—Contreras tagged Culberson
past the plate to record what he thought would be the second out.
Culberson came up pointing to the foul line near the plate. So did Cody Bellinger, the Dodgers’ on-deck
hitter. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called for a review. Multiple replays showed Contreras’s leg crossing
the foul line before he had the ball, which came to him on the fair side of the line.
Under Rule 7.13 instituted before the 2014 season, catchers can’t block the plate unless they actually have
the ball in their hands. Maddon hustled out to argue, and plate ump Mike Winters generously let him make
his case—arguing replay review calls is an automatic ejection—before throwing him out of the game. After
the Dodgers finished their 5-2 win, Culberson’s run being the fifth, Maddon blasted not Winters but the rule
itself.
“The umpires did everything according to what they’ve been told,” the skipper fumed. “From Day One, I’ve
disagreed with the content of the rule. That was a beautifully done major league play that gets interpreted
tantamount to the soda tax in Chicago. All rules or laws aren’t necessarily good ones.”
Maddon’s right about all rules or laws not being necessarily good. But he’s wrong about how the call was
made. Going into a squat to take the Schwarber throw would have been one thing. Sticking a leg across
the foul line to take it is something else.
“It was an amazing play,” Contreras said after the game. “The ball took me to that position.” The ball did
nothing of the sort. Watch any ten replays of that moment and you should see Contreras, down on the fair
side of the line in front of the plate, moving his leg across the foul line
moments before the ball one-
hopped into his mitt.
Oops.
“I looked at just like everyone else looked at it,” said Roberts, “and as the rule states, he was in violation.”
“It’s sad,” said Lackey, who claimed to have had just that conversation with the umpires over 7.13. “It’s
sad the direction our game has gone. Textbook play by the kid, and he got penalized for it.”
Which textbook? If you interpreted the rule book strictly prior to 7.13′s enactment, you would never have
seen any allowance for catchers blocking the plate without the ball in their hands.
Following much discussion and work by a special committee, 7.13 merely re-interpreted and clarified Rule
7.08(b) after what happened to cost the Giants’ Buster Posey most of a season after the Marlins’ Scott
Cousins plowed him at the plate on 25 May, 2011.
What essentially happened to “our game” after 7.13 was that umpires could no longer just ignore the
original rule as in the past. When Lackey talks about what’s happened to “our game,” he’s talking about
a kind of tradition born of a kind of ignorance.
All Culberson’s run did was provide the Dodgers a little extra insurance in a game that turned into a bullpen
battle after both starters, Clayton Kershaw and Jose Quintana, came not to figure in the final decision. A
game in which the Dodgers entered with a hand tied behind their backs after losing regular shortstop Corey
Seager for the series with a back injury he incurred on a slide during last weekend’s division series.
On more than a week’s rest Kershaw was rusty enough to surrender Albert Almora, Jr.’s two-run homer in
the fourth; on barely a couple of days’ rest Quintana pitched very well until his fuel went AWOL in the fifth.
He surrendered a pair of one-out walks and paid through the proverbial nose when Puig doubled to the
back of center field and Culberson followed with a sacrifice fly. Game tied.
Quintana’s relief, Hector Rondon, opening the sixth inning, served up a fastball almost down the pipe that
Dodger center fielder Chris Taylor drove over the right field fence. That made for a one-run game opened
up when Puig sat on Montgomery’s 1-1 fastball, a little in, just a hair up, and sent it over the left center
field fence.
With Dodger relievers Tony Cingrani, Kenta Maeda, Brandon Morrow, and Tony Watson getting the game
safely and spotlessly to Kenley Jansen, and Jansen striking out all four Cubs he faced to finish, Culberson’s
run almost didn’t matter in the big scheme.
Everybody wants to get a leg up to open a set for the pennant. Showing too much leg ended up adding
insult to the Cubs’ Game One misery.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Polly Ticks @Machiavelli @DCPatriot @Cyber Liberty @Slip18 @Bigun @Mom MD @musiclady @Weird Tolkienish Figure @TomSea @catfish1957 @GrouchoTex 
