[Ump20]

One of the victims when the Board was sanitized is the following situation. Although I am in agreement with Warren and ascribe to a certain umpire's List of Five Exceptions this play seems to be a case where a jusgement call was changed after it was final.

I came across the following situation in Baseball By The Rules Pine Tar, Spitballs, and Midgets "..The score was 1-0 Boston in the bottom of the fourth. Oil Can Boyd was doing the pitching honors for the Red Sox, and the Angels had two out and two men on: outfielder Brian Downing on first and first baseman Wally Joyner on second. Third baseman Doug DeCinces came to the plate and hit what Jim Palmer called a ‘pool cue shot’ – the ball meandered down the first baseline and bounded off the bag into fair territory. By the time Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner caught up with the bouncing ball, his play was at the plate, where Wally Joyner was preparing to score. Buckner fired the ball to catcher Rich Gedman. It was a close call, but plate umpire Terry Cooney made it: safe.

Red Sox Manager John McNamara argued the call, and Oil Can was predictably perturbed, but it’s unlikely that even they could have predicted what happened next: Terry Cooney had second thoughts, conferred with third base ump Richie Garcia, and changed his call. Joyner was out.

This time Angel’s manager Gene Mauch argued the call and then some, but he didn’t get a new call for his trouble. He got thrown out of the game. (However, he did get some satisfaction later, when the Angels won the game, 5-3.)

Interviewed after the eventful game, umpires Cooney and Garcia explained what happened. Cooney said that because he’d gone to cover the play at first, he was able to see that Gedman had the ball in time, but he wasn’t sure Gedman had actually tagged Joyner. He called the runner safe. When McNamara and virtually the entire Red Sox bench came at him, Cooney decided to check with Garcia.

Garcia said that Cooney didn’t ask him to make a call or to decide whether Joyner had beaten the tag; Cooney simply wanted to know whether or not there had been [EMPHASIS] a tag. Garcia answered in no uncertain terms-there had definitely been a tag. The umpiring teamwork resulted in a reversed call….” (pg 204-205 book by Glen Waggoner, Kathleen Moloney, and Hugh Howard).

I do not recall the play that well. I was not yet an umpire. I do remember many thought Oil Can should have been ejected albeit it was a league playoff game. Heaven forbid but this seems to support the EWS crew in that the call was made after a “final judgment” and based upon a manager’s complaint. I also know that a year or two ago a MLB ump [Frank Pulli] went on his own to a video replay on I think was a homerun call so MLB umps are not infallible or without mistake. Jim Simms/NY