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:

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

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.

From Joe Posnanski:

(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.

From Jeff Passan, Yahoo sports:

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.