Anyone who thinks football is a manlier sport than baseball should contemplate the fact that no football player on Sunday ended the day with a broken leg (I think; as usual I haven't really done any research), while the same can't be said of baseball players who played on Saturday.
In the NLDS between the Mets and the Dodgers, Dodger baserunner Chase Utley was on first and hustled down to second on a ground ball to "break up the double play" as the expression goes. What Utley broke was shortstop Ruben Tejada's fibula. The umpires put their collective heads together, consulted replay, and came to a decision that the league repudiated less than 24 hours later.
The umpire's noticed that Tejada's big toe was maybe an inch away from the second base bag, meaning that Utley was safe. The minor detail the umps missed was that Utley missed touching the bag by several feet. It's Schrodinger's proverbial cat: Utley isn't out because the second baseman didn't touch the bag, but he's not safe because he didn't touch the bag.
The umpires rules the slide legal and declared Utley as safe, even though he never touched the bag and then ran out of the baseline to the dugout. On Sunday the league, which presumably had input on the replay, declared the slide illegal and suspended Utley for two games. Utley will get an immediate appeal and have a decision by game time Monday (if only the NFL handled appeals like MLB; if the NFL were handling this we'd have a decision by next year's All Star Game).
Utley's agent said his client was merely doing what ball players are taught to do, break up the double play with a hard slide. This excuse overlooks a few things. First, every player trying to "break up a double play" doesn't break the pivot man's leg. So this is somewhat exceptional. Second, Utley never "slid," he went in standing up into Tejada's body, hence the broken leg. Third, player's breaking up a double play are supposedly sliding into second base, but since Utley never touched the base it stands to reason he was doing something else.
MLB's delayed suspension of Utley is belatedly the correct decision. But why wasn't that communicated to the umpires, who should have called Utley out AND ejected him from the game? Supposedly the league was in charge of the review on instant replay. As Adam Sandler said in The Wedding Singer, that was information that should have been brought to their attention YESTERDAY.
No matter how much we improve technology, no matter how much communication there is, no matter how many reviews there are from however many angles, umpires and referees keep getting it wrong. All teams like the Detroit Lions and New York Mets can do is shrug it off and bemoan the fact that they can't find the same judge that Tom Brady's attorney found.
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