When players are suspended, they can’t even come to the ballpark. They’d have to wait until next year to drill him.
Don’t forget to save some of that ire for the Sox fans, after all they paved the way. IIRC in 1999 when a Sox player had a call of stepping out of the running lane(or whatever it’s called), the exact incidence from last night happened. Garbage raining down on field, delay of game, etc
As far as Arod, give him some credit, that was a pretty inventive maneuver. He was out so why not take a chance? The first baseman blocked the view of the 1st base ump, so that’s why he didn’t even see miss the bag. Kudos to the umps for taking the time to talk and make the right call.
Same place I’ll be tonight, in front of my TV, cursing away. 
Because Jeter would have ended up at second instead of back at first. It was a fairly dumb and possibly costly play.
Does the interference rule bring the other baserunner back to the base?
I Am Not An Umpire, but I don’t believe the “safe” signal is supposed to be made until the runner actually is safe. It’s not supposed to be used to indicate that the runner is “not out yet.” If A-rod was not tagged out, the umpire should have made no signal at all until he touches the base.
Furthermore, A-Rod did NOT tag the bag as he ran past it. I watched it on Tivo several times. After he runs by it, he even appears confused about whether or not he should scramble back to tag the bag, having already been called safe.
Dangit! If I’d just posted instead of reading over the whole thread to see if anyone had already made that point, I probably would have beat you to it.
The complexion of the rest of that inning is considerably different with a runner in scoring position …
I can understand their ire if they didn’t get to see a replay. I didn’t notice the swipe when watching it full speed on TV, I thought he just dropped the ball. Without the replay, all the umps did was call a guy who was safe, out, and bring someone who scored back to first base :eek: :mad: None of this stuff is unique to Yankees fans either, as World Eater mentioned.
Bad play on A-Rod, though, a real rally killer (even though there was no rally to speak of)
Yup, no runners can advance on interference, so it brought Jeter back from scoring position. Who knows what would have happened?
Ah I didn’t know that. Boneheaded? Probably. Cheating? Nah
I just talked to a friend who was at the game. From experience, I know that Yankee Stadium is horrible at showing replays. They rarely do it, and when they do, they show it no more than once. He concurred that if they did show a replay, they only did so once and most fans around him were focused on the field.
Second, that was the second call to go against the Yankees. Both calls were correct, but to many in the stands, the umps had now blown two calls. The fans were cold, wet, tired and cranky.
That is no excuse for the inappropriate behaviour of a bunch of drunken louts. However, it is not confined to NY and our fans.
I’ve been to maybe 80 Yankee games in the last decade and a half (although not last night’s), and I can guarantee you that they do not show replays on controversial plays, or even anything remotely controversial. I’ve always thought it was a MLB rule (and a smart one) - but I can’t find anything that says it is.
NFL games are apparently very different (I haven’t been to many). From TV, you always get the impression that they show almost every play on replay. I think it’s a culture thing - in football there’s a whole set of rules and procedures to catch and penalize “cheating” - it’s part of the game. It’s just not that way in baseball, so I would argue that it makes sense to not show the replays.
Sort of a sidebar - one of the smartest things the NFL did was when they started having the referee give more detailed explanation of the rulings. If they had the capability to do that at MLB games, you’d have to believe that it would make a display like last night’s less likely.
None of this is meant to excuse the behaviour of the small percentage of Yankee fans who acted totally inappropriately. And I certainly do wish that Rodriguez would have been a whole lot more standup about what he did afterwards.
But nice big brush there, people! We do have more than our share of bandwagoners, but there are many rational Yankee fans out there. We know we have an advantage because of our payroll, but does that mean that we shouldn’t root for our team? Hey, when I started rooting for the Yankees my favorite players were Kevin Maas and Oscar Azocar, so I’m no johnny-come-lately. And has been brought up, at least we don’t riot when we win.
Every time the Yankees show up on TV I start humming the “Imperial March” from Star Wars.
You can add a word to that:
“…to many idiots in the stands…”
It never ceases to amaze me how many dickhead baseball fans think that they can see the play better from 100 yards away than the umpire can from 10 feet. If you don’t get a replay, then don’t just assume that your call is more likely to be correct, because in my experience the umpires do get it right most of the time.
I completely disagree.
I don’t see why umpires should be immune from scrutiny by fans at the ballpark. If they’re worried about fans over-reacting to bad calls, then they should do something about those idiot fans, not deprive everyone else of the replay.
::runs nekkid through thread::
GO SOX!!!
I’m a Sox fan, but can you imagine the pitting he would have gotten if he had chosen this perfectly legal option?
I’d like to thank you for not saying “how many dickhead Yankee fans” and acknowledging that NY isn’t the only city to suffer from this phenomena.
Can I just say that I don’t really care for sports and know absolutely jackshit about baseball, but this thread has made me:
a) crack the fuck up
and
b) actually kinda want to watch baseball?
That is all.
He wouldn’t have been pitted at all. Anyone who knows baseball knows that if you bloack a base path, you’re fair game.
The problem in this case, though, is that neither Arroyo nor the 1st baseman Doug Mientkiewicz were actually blocking the basepath. They were both inside the line.
True, Arroyo wasn’t, but Minky looked to be.