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Old Thu Aug 18, 2011, 04:33pm
jkumpire jkumpire is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 685
Well,

Last night I was watching the Indians and White Sox in Chicago, and Carmona was throwing nasty stuff. Everything moved around faster than a PGA Tour player on a golf cart.

I am sure this did not get on MLB.com, but Carmona threw a pitch to Konerko that moved so much Lou Marson (I think who was the F2) who was set up outside he reached inside to catch it. Well, the pitch was just off the middle of the plate, it wasn't close to inside, and our PU rang up the strike.

Now Konerko saw where Marson's glove was, as opposed to where Marson was, and stood int he box and raised cain about the pitch. The Play-by-play man and color guy talked about how Knoerko handled it with class, and didn't show up the umpire, but complained for a long time about the pitch.

There was no false zone posted on the screen, and I wish there would have been, because it was a clear strike and should have been called. But the pitch made Marson look bad and if was borderline, it's a ball. Several CWS umpires did the same thing in Omaha, and nobody said boo.

This is all brought up to say one thing, even in MLB: If it's a clear strike, or the ball beats the fielder, and the close tag/maybe no tag is made, it's an out. It looks like an out and should be called and out.

But there are times where it looks bad, and it's still a strike or an out, and sometimes it looks bad and it isn't an out. That's why they pay good umpires not so good inflated American currency to call games, because they use good judgement on plays like this and know when to make the 'expected call' and when not to.