On Sunday,
A.J. Pierzynkski bailed himself out of some atrocious baserunning by
manufacturing a B.S. interference call that not only saved the White Sox an out but also awarded him third base, where he eventually scored the winning run.
I saw it, you saw it, everyone in the stadium saw it (
here's video - fast-forward to the 3:13 mark) but the umpires. Second base umpire Doug Eddings is the one who blew the call, but third base umpire Ted Barrett
came to his defense after the game:
"As a runner, you're allowed to (make contact). What Doug ruled at second base was, even though A.J. did kind of stick his arm out to make contact, Aybar was still in his way, so A.J., if he would have turned, he wouldn't have been able to continue on to third. So after making the throw, Aybar is no longer in the act of fielding and he can't obstruct the runner, which is what Doug ruled happened.
Yeah, nice try, Ted. On Thursday, Mike Port, MLB's vice president of umpiring,
came clean to the St. Petersberg Times, admitting (albeit in a nice way) that Eddings did in fact blow the call:
"Looking back at that occurrence, for the first and last time, it was a missed call," Port said. "And it was not because Doug Eddings, an umpire with 10 years' experience and 10 before that in the minor leagues, didn't know the application of the rule, but just that in the moment in applying the rule, he saw something he thought was more than it turned out to be."
Hooray! And as a consolation, Port tweaked the standings to take away Chicago's win and give it to Tampa Bay! Oh wait ... he can't do that? Funny enough, I think that probably annoys fans in Minnesota more than Tampa Bay.
Back in 2001, major league umpires weren't too pleased with the revolutionary new QuesTec systems that were placed in a third of the ballparks around the league QuesTec was put in place to help establish a more uniform strike zone as the data collected would be used to teach the umpires about what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong.
