I think that, except for Tampa Bay and Toronto, nobody's playing on artificial turf anymore, even in the ballparks that have
retractable roofing.
when you're playing for a championship. There
are reasonable limits to how many challenges a manager can call for in a game. (And, by the way, one of the strongest advocates
on behalf of replay turned out to be an umpire whose blown call helped turn a World Series around---Don Denkinger.) I haven't
noticed the human element dissipating from the game because of technology that actually helps get the tight or debatable calls
. And human element be damned, I got sick a long time ago of seeing teams lose critical games---or, in the case of
hapless Armando Gallaraga---pitchers losing no-hitters or perfect games on bad calls that could and should have been reversed.
And as much as I love a good historical baseball debate, it gets a little tiresome debating blown calls three or four decades
after the fact. Sometimes even fans in Kansas City and St. Louis get tired of debating the bottom of the ninth in Game Six,
1985 World Series, even if both cities can pretty much agree the Cardinals were foolish to see Denkinger rotated to calling balls
and strikes for Game Seven and to lose it as promptly as possible at the sight.
I can remember a classic such instance that didn't involve losing a perfect game or a no-hitter:
The Human Factor Be Damnedby Yours Truly, 27 July 2011.
http://throneberryfields.com/2011/07/27/the-human-factor-be-damned/This is exactly what the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose surprising graduation from the National League’s near-two-decade doormats to legitimate
National League Central contenders has been one of the season’s sweet surprises, don’t need.
Never mind pitching coach Ray Searage tweeting an outraged Tweeter, “Deal with it.†If the Pirates hold to that attitude and push it to one side,
it will say plenty about the makeup of this year’s edition. But first the Pirates are going to let their feelings be known about home plate umpire
Jerry Meals absolutely blowing the call on the run that won a game for the Atlanta Braves in the bottom of the nineteenth. And enough of everyone
else are asking when baseball government is going to wise up and sanction instant replay.
It started when Atlanta reliever Scott Proctor—forced to bat because both sides had emptied their bullpens—batted one up the left side that was
picked off cleanly by Pittsburgh third baseman Pedro Alvarez on the run over the infield grass. Alvarez threw home on a perfect line to rookie catcher
Michael McKenry and Julio Lugo, the Braves’ baserunner coming down from third, looked like a dead duck.
McKenry was at least two feet up from the plate when he landed a ball-in-glove tag on Lugo sliding toward the plate. Any replay you care to review
will show you McKenry got the glove on Lugo’s forward leg, well before Lugo could have crossed the plate. As a matter of fact, Lugo bounded up out
of his slide at about the moment McKenry got the tag on him, and half-pirouetted around before he got half a foot on the plate standing up.
Meals winged his arms up in the safe call as Lugo stepped on the plate after the tag. It looked as though McKenry was replying to a Meals comment
and saying he’d gotten the tag down. ““I saw the tag, but he looked like he oléd him and I called him safe for that,†Meals said after the game. “I
looked at the replays and it appeared he might have got him on the shin area. I’m guessing he might have got him, but when I was out there when
it happened I didn’t see a tag. I just saw the glove sweep up. I didn’t see the glove hit his leg.â€
The Pirates may have been trying to be gracious in defeat, but it didn’t stop the organisation from filing a formal protest. “[We] are extremely
disappointed by the way [our] 19-inning game against the Atlanta Braves ended earlier this morning. The game of baseball, and this game in particular,
filled with superlative performances by players on both clubs, deserved much better,†said general manager Frank Coonelly in a formal statement. †. . .
While we cannot begin to understand how umpire Jerry meals did not see the tag . . . three feet in front of home plate, we do not question the integrity
of Mr. Meals. Instead, we know that Mr. Meals’ intention was to get the call right. Jerry Meals has been umpiring major league games for 14 years and
has always done so with integrity and professionalism. He got this one wrong.â€
Indeed. And while it’s going to prove the launching pad for a showing of just what kind of mettle these plucky Pirates actually have going forward—they
were leading the NL Central and playing a nail-driver against the NL East-contending Braves, against whom they have a history of heartbreak enough
(the Sid Bream game in the 1992 National League Championship Series, anyone?)—it’s also proving evidence to spare on behalf of expanding replay’s
use beyond mere home run calls.
Let’s get one thing straight right off. There appeared no malice in Meals’s miscall. This wasn’t a case of several National League umpires so fed up with
Leo Durocher’s season-long baiting that any close call was going to go against the 1969 Chicago Cubs. This wasn’t an ump making a grudge call because
a player had gotten in his grille once too often. Meals may have had a questionable strike zone much of the night—both sides but the Braves in particular
fumed over it earlier in the game (especially when Nate McLouth got ejected fuming over a dubious strike-two call in the bottom of the ninth)—but in no
way, shape, or form did it appear he was performing under less than professional mandate. He didn’t come out and apologise, a la Jim Joyce viz Armando
Gallaraga’s should-have-been perfect game last year, but neither did he deny that he just might have been wrong.
Was the game perfect otherwise? Not exactly. Pirates manager Clint Hurdle, who’s making a solid case for Manager of the Year for getting this squad into
the thick of the race after eighteen losing seasons, made a few mistakes well before Meals’ biggie. He let Daniel McCutchen throw 92 pitches compared to
his previous season high of 52, and McCutchen was exhausted to every naked eye that could see after having pitched two straight days with 25 pitches
total following a five-day layoff. And it’s going to be forgotten somehow that, even had Lugo been called out at the plate, the Braves would still have had
one out yet to go.
Both teams left a small truckload of men on base. The Pirates actually had a shot at winning the game in the ninth, when McKenry managed an infield
single off Craig Kimbrel and took third on pinch hitter Brandon Wood’s followup single, but McKenry stopped too late breaking from third as the Braves
called a pitchout on an apparent suicide squeeze attempt. McCann fired a perfect strike up the line and McKenry was dead, before Kimbrel dispatched
batter Xavier Paul to end the frame.
The bullpens had already been the heroes of the evening as it was. Both teams’ bulls had combined to throw 26 scoreless innings on the night, with
Braves bull Cristhian Martinez throwing six scoreless just by himself. It may or may not have taken a little of the sting out of Atlanta losing Brian McCann
to an oblique strain incurred when he threw high and into center field trying to bag Neil Walker stealing second.
What should get bagged, once and for all, are the arguments in favour of the, ahem, “human factor†and against “prolonging the games even more†that
get deployed by the stubborn against deploying instant replay. Commissioner Bud Selig, who thinks himself a moderate willing to be persuaded either way
on the matter, is already responsible for elongated games as it is. Or haven’t you noticed all the commercials squeezed in between innings all game long
with or without extra innings? That’s been expanded under Selig’s watch.
Human factor, my spike. The umpire’s job is to get it right, case closed. Anyone arguing otherwise should be dismissed as a terminal philistine. And if the
umpire needs a little technological help to get it right, get that help to him (them) post haste. “This isn’t about protecting baseball’s human element,†writes
Yahoo! Sports’s Jeff Passan. “The idea that a person’s capability to miss a call supersedes the ability to use technology and ensure accuracy is so insulting,
so wildly backward that it could come only from the offices of Major League Baseball.â€
Actually, that argument also comes from people outside of baseball government who profess to stand on behalf protecting the game’s integrity. People who
tend to refuse offering reasons why a near-flagrantly blown call doesn’t compromise the game’s integrity. People who have no idea about McKenry’s night’s
work, catching every last one of Tuesday/Wednesday’s eighteen and two thirds innings, 303 pitches worth of catching, only to see it end with Meals telling
him he hadn’t done what he and everyone watching the live play and about two dozen television replays knew he had done.
Reality check: There’s still a lot of baseball for the Pirates and the Braves to play yet. This call probably isn’t going to make the difference between the Pirates
pulling off a miracle finish and going home empty, never mind that they’re having their best season since 1992. When an erstwhile Pirate on battered legs
managed to score from second, sliding home with the Braves’ pennant-winning run ahead of a throw in from left, and everyone in Pittsburgh and beyond
knew the club’s management wasn’t going to be able to keep the solid and National League East-owning team together.
Eighteen years, one division shift, and seven dead-last finishes worth of losing baseball later, the Pirates are America’s baseball feelgoods. They deserve to
be. Watching winning baseball in and from Pittsburgh once again is an absolute treat. The Pirates can keep it that way indeed by shaking off Tuesday/
Wednesday.
But they’re a lot more human than the fools perpetuating discredited arguments for the “human factor,†when even they admit that this one hurt like hell
when it absolutely didn’t have to hurt.
“It’s a shame,†Atlanta Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said Wednesday, “because Jerry Meals is one hell of an umpire.â€
Meals is also one hell of an honest ump, based on remarks he made later in the day Wednesday about his call that enabled the Atlanta Braves to win a
marathon, 19-inning, 4-3 game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Turner Field. The Braves won after Julio Lugo, tagged above his right kneecap on his thigh
by Pirates catcher Michael McKenry, was called safe by Meals, inexplicably.
After coming into the locker room, I reviewed the incident through our videos that we have in here and after seeing a few of them, on one
particular replay, I was able to see that Lugo’s pant leg moved ever so slightly when the swipe tag was attempted by McKenry. That’s telling me that I was
incorrect in my decision and that he should have been ruled out and not safe.
—Jerry Meals.
He didn’t exactly apologise; there was no “I’m sorry†in the comment, but clearly Meals knows what did happen. Clearly enough, he said it. Let’s give
Meals the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge his regret. He wasn’t out there looking to job the Pirates. But let’s also acknowledge that the blown call
is still further evidence on behalf of replay.
Just as clearly, there’s still a lot of baseball to play yet. Though they were surely right to protest the Tuesday/Wednesday outcome, it’s on the Pirates to
do exactly what they suggested themselves in protesting—shake it off and play their best baseball the rest of the way. To the extent that nobody can argue
one blown call at the plate triggered a pennant race collapse for a plucky team that’s spent the season thus far defying everyone else’s expectations.
end up faltering down that stretch. Nobody will ever know whether that blown call at the end of that marathon
game knocked the wind out of their sails, but then (the human element being what it is) it might not necessarily be a surprise to discover it actually might
have affected the team's morale somewhat.