There must be something in the water. This week, there was almost another changed call at a University of Texas game. The game was against No. 1 Rice. The crew: Home: Steve Emerson 1st: Randy Christal 3rd: Jerry Goolsby
The play: Texas fastest player at plate. Strike 3 squirts away from catcher and heads toward the 1st base dugout. Batter gets poor jump, but takes off. F2 gives chase. U1 moves to foul ground (2nd base line extended) about 5 feet from the bag. F2 picks up ball, fires to F3. Throw is a little off line. U1 bangs out the runner on a VERY close play. As the defense sets for next batter, who is stepping in the box. Texas 1st base coach gets U1s attention and complains to U1 that F3 came off the bag (which would have been directly toward U1).
U1, without hesitation, yells to PU, Steve, did he pull his foot?
PU: Huh?
U1: Did the throw pull him off the bag?
PU: No, he was on.
No one seemed to notice the exchange. The Texas coach seemed happy U1 checked. I am sure I am the only one in the stadium bothered by what happened. I refrained from heckling.
For what it is worth, I cannot help but be an armchair umpire when I go to games. I realize these guys have a thousand times the experience I have and are excellent umpires. I watch them to learn. In this case, I did not think either base ump had a good game. In addition to the play I described above, there were four noteworthy plays.
1. U1 missed an easy obstruction call when the batter runner rounded first on an extra base hit to left center filed. F3 clearly got B/Rs way as they juke each other a couple of times. U1 was heading to cover second and never saw it. The runner went have way to 3rd before retreating to second.
2. U1 seemed to have trouble getting an angle on plays at 1st. He always went into foul ground to make calls and was often closer to 180 than to 90 degrees.
3. U3 failed to call interference on a pop up slide at 2nd during an attempted double play. A Rice assistant went berserk, pushing through U1 to get to U3. I was VERY surprised U3 did not eject him. The assistant told me after the game, I guess he knew he blew it because he did not chase me.
4. PU called batter interference when the batter stumbled into F2 during a throw on a steal of 2nd. (I agreed with the call, not that anyone asked.) That is the 3rd time this year batters interference has been called at UT games. All three were by different umpires. I have not seen that call three times in the last 21 years I have been watching UT baseball.
Like I said, there must be something in the water.
Mark
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