Iwas at the Indians/Orioles baseball game last night and saw something I’ve never seen before, specifically, a run added to the Orioles’ total three innings later.
link:
http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/gamecenter/recap/MLB_20070428_BAL@CLE.
Orioles coach Treblehorn said he’s seen runs put up on the scoreboard well after the fact before. I say, if so, when?
I think the Indians win the protest. I wonder if my ticket stub will let me into the game when it gets recommenced.
I can’t recall this happening in the thirty years I’ve been following baseball.
This is going to be fodder for endless debate on whether the umps made the right decision or not, and I’m not going to start that ball rolling. However I will say that even if the protest is upheld, they would not be forced to replay the game. They would simply remove the run.
I’m pretty sure that the last time a protest was upheld and a game was forced to be replayed was the George Brett pine tar incident in July, 1983.
I don’t see anything much happening here with the game. The inning was over, play did not continue because of umpire error. The run that was added did not change the outcome of the game, they won by three runs. The only thing that will happen is hopefully the commisioner’s office will make a clear ruling on if umpires can confer that far into the game and change a ruling, to keep something like this from happening again.
There was a “fourth out” situation many years ago. (Like 15+?) At the end of the game, the head ump went to both managers and notified them that a run had actually counted since there had been no appeal play on it. No dispute over that game.
The Indians will lose the protest; as Loahc points out it doesn’t affect the way the game played out. Anyway, the run absolutely should have counted, so it’s only that they didn’t put it on the scoreboard right away.
Had it not been counted, and had the Orioles lost by a run, they WOULD have won a protest.
This brings up a related question: has any major American sporting event have had the result be overturned due to an appeal? I hear about games being played “under appeal” quite often but it never seems to result in a outcome being changed.
baseball-almanac.com relates the story of the infamous Pine Tar game.
To summarize, K.C. Royal George Brett hit a two-out ninth-inning home run to put the Royals up 5-4 over the Yankees. Shortly thereafter, Brett was ruled to have pine tar too far down his bat handle (only allowed 18 inches from the handle), and called out after the homerun was nullified. Game over, Yankees win 4-3.
The Royals protest. The American League President agrees, overturns the nullification, and the game is continued more than three weeks later. The Royals finish the top of the ninth with the 5-4 lead, and hold off the Yanks in the bottom of the inning. Game over, Royals win 5-4.
The most likely outcome is that MLB will declare the protest moot, since the margin of victory was greater than the one run that is under dispute.
The run definitely should have been counted at the time Markakis scored. No run can score on a play in which the third out of an inning is a force play, but Tejada was out on appeal, which isn’t a force play. What surprises me is that the umpires didn’t know this, and didn’t check the rulebook right away. MLB umpires have to be experts on the rules, and this case isn’t even all that obscure.
It’s not clear to me that the umpires handled the situation properly. When a protest is upheld the game is replayed from the point where the mistake was made. The umpires didn’t do this (the rules don’t allow them to) - instead, they added a run to Baltimore’s score at a later time, in a different inning. I don’t see how it did any harm in this case, but there are cases where it could.
Imagine, for example, a game where the home team protests in the third inning that a run disallowed by the plate umpire should have counted. The game gets into the ninth inning with the home team up by a run, and the visiting team ties the score with a walk, stolen base, sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly. In the bottom half of the inning the umpiring crew decides that the run in the third inning should have been counted and gives it to the home team, who wins the game as a result. If the visiting team had known they had to score two runs to tie in the ninth inning they wouldn’t have used one-run strategies, and might have won the game outright in the ninth inning or later. In this case the visitors would lodge a protest that would probably be upheld, and the game would be replayed from the third inning onwards. Suppose then that the home team wins the replayed game by five runs. In this case the visiting team has had their best chance to win the game taken away from them by the actions of the umpires. It might be better policy if an umpiring mistake isn’t corrected right away to complete the game under protest, which would avoid the type of scenario I’ve just described.