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Again, I was just having a little fun (admittedly at the expense of Mr. Nelson) with the "hands are part of the bat" nonsense.
However, since the issue of the call itself has been brought up a couple of times, here is my take.
1) The highly esteemed MLB umpires have not acquitted themselves very well in the games involving the White Sox so far. On the U3K in the ALCS, whether or not the call itself was correct was moot to most umpires discussing the call. It was the ususual mechanics (or changed call, depending on our point of view) by the plate umpire that was at issue. One of the BB "big dogs" has written an article on the free portion of Officiating.com that concludes that the issue was the PU was incompetent, and that had he made this same call the same way in his final AAA game, he would never have been elevated to the bigs.
2) With respect to the HBP call, I fully understand how difficult the call can be. This is no doubt made even more difficult with all the body armor the "tough guy" MLB batters wear these days. However, if the PU was not sure of his call, what is the call to be? Surely "not sure" would equate to "foul ball" rather than a base award. Therefore I can only conlude the PU was sure but wrong (which renders moot all of the discussion about how difficult the call is - he was sure!). Either that, or he was unsure and made the call to award the base anyway.
Bottom line: how could he have been "sure" unless he saw something that did not happen?
If unsure, why did he award the base?
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Tom
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