Sunday, October 11, 2009

Still more on umpires


If there wasn't enough time after game 163 to savor its magnificence, there's been too much time since Game 2 of the Twins -Yankees series. Now everybody's obsessing with the bad umpiring.

Between Phil Cuzzi's inability to distinguish fair from foul from 10 feet away, C.B. Bucknor's (above) inability to figure out if a first baseman is touching the base and Randy Marsh's inability to see a ball graze a jersey, there are increasing calls for expanded use of replay review.

Ugh.

A few examples:


It's getting harder and harder to defend the guys in blue, who on the whole do a heck of a job. A part of you has to feel for them, but another has to expect them to get it right the first time.


(B)aseball replay is inescapable now because these playoffs have been an umpiring disaster. I don’t know if it’s a trend — it probably isn’t a trend. It’s probably just a bad run of high-profile missed calls. But it has felt like an epidemic, and it was topped by the almost-impossible-to-believe missed call on Joe Mauer’s sure-double against the Yankees — that ball was fair by a foot. Trend or not, this is the sort of thing that gets people talking, and the talk now is replay.

From Ron Gardenhire, via the Chicago Tribune, on the Cuzzi call:

The guy (Cuzzi) made a mistake. You move on and we do the best we can. .... I didn’t see the play, so I would have had coaches in the booth calling in my ear on my headset. Give me a headset, give me a red flag, and we can fix this stuff. But I’d have to have somebody calling in my ear to throw the flag.


That’s a wall MLB hides behind: that even if Mauer were on second, who’s to say Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer would’ve followed with singles? ... A sign something is totally backward: When the players wronged by an umpire are the ones whose later success can bail him out.

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The results from last week's poorly-designed Metrodome poll, which attracted 26 votes:

One (3 percent) hated the place from the get-go; seven (26 percent) said they'll miss the roof; 15 (57 percent) said it was OK but time to move on; and three (11 percent) loved the joint.

On to the next poll, which ties in to the Monday print column.

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