True Confessions - Your Analysis and Eval?

[Carl Childress]

Originally posted by Dave Hensley
This has been a most entertaining discussion; I have a simple question.

One of the five instances in which an umpire can legitimately reverse a call, as taught us all by Mr. Childress, is:

a fielder drops a ball on a tag called out and the calling umpire does not see the drop.

Now, think about Moose's play. Can someone please explain how Moose's play (which was a force instead of a tag play) is functionally different from the exception everybody agrees on?

Why does Moose's situation look bad, and demean umpires' dignity, yet changing a call on a dropped tag does not?

Simple and obvious: First, it is a professional interpretation: Major league umpires are instructed to change calls on a dropped tag. The umpire who "overrules" his partner has information the calling umpire does not have. That is part and parcel of all five calls that can be changed: One umpire knows something critical to the call that another umpire did not see or know.

On the other hand, whether an out occurs following a dropped ball on a force play (or at first base on the batter-runner) is umpire judgment: Was it a transfer? Did the fielder have control of the ball? Did he hold it long enough? Was his foot on the base? Was he close enough for a neighborhood "out"? Those are judgment decisions not connected to additional data.