4 Down, 7 to go

The bloggers on the Angels site are understandably pissed off, and I was wondering what the karmic result of this victory would be for the Sox.  Unlike most Angels fans, though-- and being as objective as I can possibly be-- how can you fault AJ or any of the Sox for what happened?  AJ is not a cheater.  He's not A-Rod trying to slap the ballout of Arroyo's glove after hitting a weak ground ball.  He figures he'd just try running to first. He's a catcher;  he's supposed to think of stuff like that.  And then Buehrle, Crede, Ozuna, all the stories of a well-played game.

After all the outs we threw away in this game (Rowand Rowand Rowand), the Angels were lucky to be hanging around at all in the 9th.

And so, I don't feel wonderful about the win either.  The true test will be how the Sox handle this when they stepon the field in Anaheim.  Ojala con cojones grandes...

that this kind of win, regardless of how it occured, sparks the bats for the rest of the season.

I never bought the "no rest" argument for the Angels, so I'm ok with a split.  It just means that chicago can win the series at home.

It shouldn't have come down to that.

What the hell is Joey Cora THINKING?!?!?!  Nobody out, and you're sending him home?!?!?!

Unreal.  It should have been 2-1 at that point, with the Sox looking to tack on some insurance runs, but no -- it's dissappointing that the contreversial call had such a huge impact on the game.

Look everyone, this is taking on a Bartman level of annoyance for me.  The call MAY or MAY NOT have been blown.  Here are the only 2 points that matter:

1. I was a catcher my entire baseball life (through senior year of high school...i didn't go to a college with a baseball team otherwise I'd probably have been playing there as well).  Among the first things I was ever taught was if a ball is even close to in the dirt, tag the runner and remove all doubt.  Watch any major league game and catchers will tag runners on balls that were a lot more obviously caught than that.  Josh Paul committed a catching SIN.  He allowed an ump to decide the play rather than being safe.
2. That put a runner on first base with 2 outs.  I keep hearing the call talked about as though it was the last play of the game.  Ozuna stole 2nd.  Crede falls behind 0-2.  Now if I am on defense with 2 outs, runner on second, and a hitter with below average strike zone awareness down 0-2 I am feeling pretty good about my chances.  Instead a mistake pitch is thrown and the game is over with.

The call didn't result in the loss, Crede's hit/Escobar's mistake did.  And don't give me the "Crede doesn't get the hit without the call" arguement because that is letting a pitcher off the hook for a mistake.  Make the plays you are supposed to make and it is a non issue.

ESPN has posted the Transcript of the umpiring crew at the post game presser if anyone is interested.

...was in his use of hand signals. At best, assuming it is true that he used 2 motions to to indicate strike 3, they were confusing. Does anyone know if he consistently used 2 motions to call strikes all night?

That being said, I think this is no where near as bad as the Maier or Denkinger incidents. The bottom line is that ruling Paul trapped the ball is a reasonable call. It's hard to tell for sure either way from the replay, so the ruling is certainly not ridiculous (like Denkinger's was). Plus Paul couldn't see the confusing hand signals anyway, and rolled the ball out before the second motion. I'm also willing to bet that the Angels leaving the field were reacting to Paul rolling the ball out, rather than Eddings' fist pump.

It's hard to imagine how I would feel if the Sox had been on the other end of this. I think I would be upset that the ump wasn't clear about his trap call. But I would also be very unhappy that a tag wasn't applied and that SB and double followed, and that would be on the Sox not the ump.  

...was pretty interesting. He's an Angels fan and and wrote the following:

"Heck of a play by A.J. Pierzynski. Seriously heads-up. If he doesn't push the issue, we're not talking about any of this and the Sox are down 0-2"

The interesting thing is he thinks the Angels win if that play doesn't happen. Which I think is different from how most Sox fans would feel if the situation were reversed. Are Sox fans natural pessimists?

I keep hearing the whole "if a catcher catches the ball cleanly on a hop it is still a putout" talk on the radio and on the net.  Here is the official rule (bold text added by me).

The Sox still earned the win with Ozuna's steal and Crede's double.  And Buehrle's masterful pitching performance.  We can't just forget about that.  The overreaction to the call is so absurd that people, like Eric Neel apparently, are acting like the Angels were winning before that play.  It was a tie game!  

And as far as the call goes, I think everyone can agree that it's extremely tough to tell one way or the other.  I personally believe that the ump got the call right, based on the replays I've seen, but, obviously, as a Sox fan, I'll never have true objectivity.  But I think this play is more controversial because it played out weirdly, not because the call was obviously wrong (nothing obvious about it).  Imagine if it was a bang-bang play at first base and the first baseman assumed the runner was out and flipped the ball toward the mound before actually hearing the out call.  He'd be the one getting crucified for not waiting for the call on a close play, and no Sox fan would feel bad about winning after such a call.  As Brent said, Josh Paul made a major mistake.  I suspect he may have even been so demonstrably casual about the play because he knew he trapped the ball and he wanted to just play it off like a routine strike three and get off the field.  Because there's no good reason not make sure of the out on that play.

Okay, here's my final point to make people feel better.  If this had been a regular season game, would you feel even a tiny bit bad about the win?  No.  You'd say, "Hey, that's baseball," and go to bed happy.  I suspect that most people's ambivalence toward the win is based on deeply ingrained Sox fan pessism gnawing at the back of your mind telling you that now even if the Sox win the World Series, it will be tainted by "the call."  And all the annoying Cubs fans you know will forever deny the legitimacy of a Sox title based on the call.  But who cares? If we cared what everybody else thought, we wouldn't be Sox fans in the first place!

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-call/  pretty good article as usual from the guys over at HBT regarding the call.

I feel just as good about this win as if the play didn't happen. And I think just the opposite about the Karma related to this. I think this shows the baseball gods are smiling on us. Sometimes upmires get calls wrong (and I'm not even sure it was wrong looking at some of the real close up views). That's part of the game. The good teams take advantage of the questionable call.

For example, if Cano isn't called out on a questionable call the Angels may not even be here. But he was and they went on to win. The Angels had multiple opportunities to make that play irrelevant (Paul tagging AJ, throwing out Ozuna, not hanging an 0-2 pitch to Crede) and they couldn't get the job done.

Let's go sox!

This game had so many layers to it. Another thing that crossed my mind before the game and then again after the play was the fact that Sciosia started both of his main catchers. And thus was forced to use Paul when he pinch ran. Would either Molina brother simply have tagged AJ? Well of course they deny it now in support of Paul. But the reality is that I've seen catchers tag players on caught balls that are close to the dirt all the time.