The USA might be good enough to make the quarter finals this year. Then it'll make these pages

John, that was some kiss.

I bet to keep yourself under control you had to think about baseball.

I'm sure I did that to illustrate a point. Also, it's quite unfair that on my keyboard the "i" key and the "o" key are so close together.

I deserve a new, red Corvette.

Go this route and, by extension, there is absolutely no reason to even have umpires on the field at all. They can all sit in a control room somewhere watching the videos and phoning in calls.


It's a human game and should be subject to all the failings that humans have to live with.

ESPN and FOX Sports can go screw themselves. They completely control the "narrative" of the sport after the games, I WILL NOT allow them to control what goes on during the game as well.

Someone has to make a stand, and if Jim Joyce must be made a scapegoat in order to do so, then I say start building the pyre RIGHT NOW.

Perhaps we should go back and make sure Larsen, Buehrle, et al didn't benefit from a bad strike call on a full count, or, if so, take their names out of the record books.

I didn't see the play in question but in baseball the guy on the field makes the call and they like it that way. It is an "I call it like I see it" thing and had another umpire had an issue they could have made a change of the call right there. I've seen errors changed to fair hits, out runners called safe, after the other ump jumped in.

this is ture, but never after the ball is put back into play. after that it's over.

Yup

That's just baseball jargon. I could have also, appropriately, called him a crumb-bum, a chump or mentioned that he moonlights selling pencils...

I don't know what you've seen, but this is not what is happening.

Should two umpires simultaneously make different calls, they are supposed to confer with the crew chief privately and make a final decision.

Should an umpire see that another umpire has made an obvious mistake, he is supposed to use the crew's signal to have a conference; then they are supposed to confer with the crew chief privately and make a final decision.

But an umpire never, and I mean never simply overrules another umpire.

See rules 9.02.c, 9.04.c., and 9.05.

Now, the least likely call imaginable for signaling a conference would be a plain vanilla force at first base.

FWIW: this very thing happened to me once. I was umpiring a softball game at a tournament in Holland, and there was no FU to help me. I made a call on a plain vanilla force at first, and some Dutch guy had one of those cameras that takes dozens of pictures a second, so he came to me between innings to show me a picture that proved I was wrong. I was.

To Gaddy: there will always have to be human beings on the field officiating, and I understand your reticence regarding the idiotic commentators on sports channels (they seldom really understand the rules any better than the fans, which means they understand the rules very little. Most people don't even understand the strike zone, much less what constitutes obstruction or a balk.).

The point is that the technology exists to help umpires make better calls, and in the end the whole point of umpiring is to make good calls.

Another thought on this whole episode is that F3 to F1 was a stupid play. Watch the replay again and you'll see that it should have been F4's play. So we could blame F3. Or we could also blame the dude who hit the ball in the first place. If he had just taken an intentional strike we wouldn't be having this discussion.