I missed it when it happened, maybe because I was busy Saturday afternoon or maybe just because nobody's paying much attention to the Indians these days. But this was enough for me to know I needed to do some Googling!
For everyone who loves the neighborhood play. https://t.co/oRG7BOavQn
— Yakyu Night Owl (@YakyuNightOwl) August 22, 2015
So, yeah. It happened Saturday in the Indians-Yankees game. This clip goes on for some time, but you'll see just about everything you need to see in a 10-second stretch beginning at roughly the 0:45 mark:
Terry Francona asked the umpires to talk things over. When they delivered an unfavorable verdict and he heard their "reasoning" he got upset and ultimately said something that got him ejected.
Can you blame him? After the game, Francona reviewed the proceedings:
Well, when I went out, I wanted to let [Yankees manager] Joe [Girardi] go first, because I knew he was checking the play at first. It was good, because it gave us time. I just wanted to check with them, because I know what I saw, but I wanted to talk to them first. As a crew, they got together, which was good. Then they came back to explain it to me.
He was trying to make three points and I thought all three were incorrect. He said the first one was that it has to be a throw that takes him away and he said it was a very good throw. I didn't agree there. He was set up on the inside of the bag and the ball goes to the outside.
He said he has to be off the bag. He said he was on the bag. I've got him 0-for-2.
Then he said if the runner makes him deviate, that's the third one. The runner wasn't close to the bag.
I thought it was an atrocious explanation and it continued to be worsened. I think he was more concerned about asking me if I was going to get thrown out. I wanted him to go check it, because we needed to have bases loaded with Carlos coming up. That's all they had to do. Just get it right. That's what we have replay for.
The reason I thought they had replay was because you want to get it right. Carlos could've hit into a double play. We'll never know. I just thought that his explanation was terribly incorrect.
Well, yeah. The umpire at second base obviously blew the call. Francona didn't say it, but he might have been thinking the umpires all knew he blew it, then made up that terribly incorrect explanation to avoid embarrasing the guy who blew the ball.
But if Francona really doesn't want stuff like this to happen, then he should -- unlikely practically every other baseball person I've heard on this matter -- argue against the legality of the neighborhood play. Yes, of course this shouldn't have been considered a neighborhood play by the umpire, for all the reasons Francona (and the guys on TV) enumerated. That was just flat-out wrong. But as long as you give the umpires an opportunity to blow an easy call, occasionally they will blow it.
And by the way, does NOBODY want to talk about the bizarreness of the neighborhood play. If there is ONE THING that is truly fundamental in baseball, it's that the fielder must make a clean play to record an out. Hell, they make the catcher catch the third strike ... or make a weird throw to first base, etc.
The neighborhood play is supposed to protect the fielder. But if the fielder can't make a play without getting hurt in the course of normal baseball activities, then HE SHOULDN'T BE MAKING THE PLAY.
Granted, this would be easier for the fielder if the runners weren't (still) allowed to routinely deviate from the basepath in order to disrupt the fielder's throw. That should be cleaned up, and maybe cleaning that up should be a precondition of eliminating the neighborhood play.
But it's a stupid tradition, and frankly I'm surprised that something so stupid has endured in this shining new age of video review.
So just kill the damned thing already. It's at least two years past time.
