King Kaufman's Sports Daily

White Sox beat Angels on ump's screwup. And catcher's. And pitcher's. Does baseball need replay? No!

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Oct. 13, 2005 | Let's get this out of the way first: Baseball doesn't need instant replay.

The way Game 2 of the American League Championship Series ended Wednesday night is the kind of thing that leads, in other, lesser sports, to demands for video review. I haven't heard a lot of talk about it so far, but one online poll shows a slim majority in favor of replay review. These people are wrong.

Instant replay would have solved nothing Wednesday night, and it would pollute and bog down a perfectly fine game if it were adopted in response.

What happened Wednesday was that the Chicago White Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels 2-1 on a big screwup by someone. Also on a complete game, one-run, five hitter by lefty Mark Buehrle that will be little noted nor long remembered. The ALCS is tied 1-1.

Depending on your point of view, the blame can be divided however you'd like between home-plate umpire Doug Eddings and Angels catcher Josh Paul. Eddings and Paul both helpfully denied that they'd done anything wrong. I think both of them can shoulder some blame.

I'm also with Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who was angry over the ninth-inning call but said his team didn't do enough to win anyway.

In the other game Wednesday night, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series by jumping on Houston starter Andy Pettitte and then hanging on to win 5-3. Game 2 of that series is Thursday night in St. Louis. The Angels and White Sox are off.

The White Sox were batting with two outs and the bases empty in the bottom of the ninth Wednesday with the score tied 1-1 when A.J. Pierzynski swung and missed a Kelvim Escobar splitter for strike three. The ball dived down out of the strike zone and Paul caught it just before, or just after -- a key question -- it hit the dirt.

Eddings, the umpire, signaled by jabbing his right arm out to the side and then clenching his fist in front of him. What these two moves signaled is a source of dispute.

Pierzynski, after following through his swing, instinctively juked to avoid a tag by Paul. If the ball had hit the dirt before Paul caught it, he would have been required to tag Pierzynski or throw to first to record the out.

On any third strike that's low, the catcher routinely tags the batter, whether the ball hit the dirt or not, just to make sure. The home-plate umpire, looking over the catcher's shoulder, has a tough angle to see whether the ball caught the ground, so the standard move is to tag and remove all doubt.

The batter often makes a perfunctory move to avoid the tag, which is what it looked like Pierzynski was doing. Everyone is saying he started walking back toward the dugout, but that's not what happened. He juked, then, upon realizing Paul wasn't trying to tag him, he took off toward first.

Next page: "It's not my fault." Oh, yes it is. Plus: On the radio