How did they get this wrong??

[greymule]

This ruling is puzzling, because obviously at least one umpire knew what was going on: the ump at 3B was aware that the force was off, and that runners could advance at their own risk.

I think that DG and tiger49 are correct that after wrongly calling the out on the force play at 2B, the ump turned away and didn't see the tag (and neither did the other umps). Then, when the umps were sorting things out, they left the runner at 2B since (they thought) he hadn't been tagged. ("Yeah, I know I called him out, but you should have tagged him anyway" . . . "But I did tag him" . . . "Well, I wasn't looking since I had already called him out.")

Funny thing was, if the 2B ump thought there was a force at 2B, he must have thought the previous play at 3B was also a force. But he also must have seen the safe call even though the throw clearly beat the runner.

Kudos to the announcers for calling a spade a spade.