I watched this over and over last night, convinced Ryan Howard caught it. Then I saw the below screen shot this morning:
He didn’t. Video after the jump.
Scroll to 2:20:
Shame there wasn’t a definitive camera angle, but to blame the umpire on a play like that is ridiculous. Impossible with the naked eye to positively pick up what happened there. Anyone who cries over that call is piling on.
11:37 am on October 30th, 2009
What I do not understand is when any form of umpire / official misses a call in any sport that you could not get right without hundred’s of replays and day after still photo’s how they can be blamed for missing the call. They don’t have the luxury of seeing every angle, and still photo’s before making the call or getting it right. In this case it is not the umpire’s fault and people need to stop crying foul.
11:57 am on October 30th, 2009
I’m just going to throw out that Posada knew what happened during that play while he was running in the opposite direction. But I wouldn’t what to pile on.
12:11 pm on October 30th, 2009
Who would want to be an umpire after this year, if you saw that play live NO ONE would have thought he dropped that ball, thats why beisball needs a challege system, You get three challeges every wrong challege is an out.
12:19 pm on October 30th, 2009
If you want to know if it was a catch all you have to do is look at the action of Howard. If he caught the ball he would have run over and touched first base for the double play. Instead he tried to throw to second to get the lead runner in a force out. Howard knew he did not catch it.
9:34 pm on October 30th, 2009
Why wouldnt MLB do replay??? 3 challenges PLUS any extra innings would be buzzed in to the ump. Whats that all you need are cameras and pagers… Wow you could have had that since what 72? Hell HD since 02
3:13 pm on October 31st, 2009
the bigger effect the umpires had on this game were the strike calls burnett got on left handed batters with his curve ball on the outside corner. atrocious. and buck/mccarver don’t have the stones to call it what it is.