Touch 'Em All: MLB says umpires made 'improper call' against A's
The bosses at Major League Baseball on Thursday told the Athletics that they were right, the umps were wrong, and they were sorry but they can't make amends.
The bosses at Major League Baseball on Thursday told the Athletics that they were right, the umps were wrong, and they were sorry but they can't make amends.
One day after umpire Angel Hernandez and his crew blew a call on what would have been a game-tying homer for Oakland at Cleveland, MLB executive vice president Joe Torre told the A's to suck it up.
With two outs in the ninth inning Wednesday, Adam Rosales sent a drive to left that easily cleared the 19-foot-high outfield wall and struck a metal railing before bouncing back into the field of play.
At that point, Oakland manager Bob Melvin asked Hernandez and his crew to review the hit, and the umpires left the field for a lengthy look at the replays. When they returned, the deciders ruled that the blast was a double.
That decision shocked the A's, the Indians, everybody - and got Melvin tossed from the game for vehemently expressing his shock to the umps.
On Thursday, Torre conceded the umps made an "improper call" but added that it was a judgment call and that it would stand.
"Given what we saw, we recognize that an improper call was made. Perfection is an impossible standard in any endeavor, but our goal is always to get the calls right," Torre said.
Melvin, who had been in contact with MLB officials since shortly after the game, said he never thought the ruling would be overturned.
"No, I didn't think there was any chance at that," he said, "because there'd been calls before that have been missed and nothing's happened."
Rosales was equally stoic.
"That's the final decision," he said. "I mean, there's nothing else you can do about it. Once it happened, it happened. It's over, that was yesterday. Just got to move on from it and continue forward."
Stats are us
Boston's David Ortiz's 27-game hitting streak came to an end Wednesday at Fenway Park on a night when the Red Sox and the Twins combined for 33 hits and scored 17 runs in the first two innings before Minnesota emerged with a 15-8 victory. Ortiz, who had been hitting .414 before the game, went 0 for 5, dropping his average to .381.
Yankees slugger Robinson Cano got his 1,500th career hit Thursday with ground ball up the middle in New York's 3-1 win over Colorado on Thursday. And for good measure, he later hit a solo homer.
- Wire reports