It seems that everytime i go to a baseball game, i find something to complain about. Still love the game, though.
First, the rant.
So, i’m at the Orioles/Blue Jays game at Camden Yards yesterday. My girlfriend had scored a couple of good seats from someone at her work, $40 seats in an area known as the Field Box. We were in Section 58, and if you go here you can see where that is (click on the section and you’ll get a view of the diamond from the seats). As you can see, that section is just outside third base, and we were about 25 rows back.
Now, sitting in those seats, one gets a side-on view of the pitch. If the batter is right-handed, we are looking straight at his back; if he’s batting from the left, we are looking straight at his chest. So tell me, all you whining, moaning, arm-chair umpires in my section, how the fuck can you tell when it’s a strike and when it’s a ball?
We can, of course, see the height of the ball. But if the height is OK, there’s no fucking way you can tell, from 150 feet away and side-on, whether the ball painted the outside corner, or whether it was wide. Of course, we get a few hints from things such as the catcher’s position, and we can also infer some things from the batter’s actions. For example, if the batter suddenly rears backwards way from the plate, chances are that the ball was inside. But this happens rarely. And yet you parochial idiots spend the whole fucking afternoon complaining every time the umpire calls a ball on Oriole pitching, and every time he calls a strike on Toronto pitching.
Now, i’m not some impartial purist who goes only to see the best possible game and doesn’t care who wins. I cheer strongly for Orioles hits, and sigh deeply when they throw away yet another game. And i was as pissed as anyone with the blown call at first base that was a major factor in yesterday’s defeat. But give me a break. You lose all credibility when you just sit there all afternoon whining about almost every pitch.
That was a rather mild rant, i know, but such one-eyed, irrational fans give me the shits.
And now to my question:
As i mentioned above, a blown call at first base had a major effect on the game. It was tied at 3 in the top of the tenth, there were two Blue Jays out and no-one on base. All Baltimore needed was one more to get out of the inning. Batter grounds hard to short-stop, who makes a good snag and a looooong throw to first. The ball beats the runner by half a step (as replays conclusively prove), but the umpire calls the runner safe. Toronto goes on to score the two winning runs in that inning.
When the call is made, Orioles manager Mike Hargrove comes leaping out of the dugout and engages in a huge argument with the first-base umpire that gets him tossed from the game. The crowd is booing like crazy.
There was also another very close call at first a few innings earlier, in which Baltimore’s Jeff Conine was called out. The crowd booed that one also, but i thought the umpire made the right decision, and replays later proved this also.
Just about every play made during the whole afternoon was shown in replay on the big screen at the ground. But neither of these two controversial plays was shown in replay. Is this some sort of policy to prevent umpire abuse (or lynching :))? And does it only happen in Baltimore, or is it common practice throughout the major leagues?
