My favorite is the 1970 World Series call at the plate. It's famous as the play everyone got wrong. The runner missed the plate when he slid. The catcher tagged the runner with his glove while he held the ball in the bare hand. And the umpire was up the line and literally had his back to the plate at the time. That didn't stop him from making a call anyone - he called runner Bernie Carbo out.

That wins my vote for worst call. It wasn't just blowing a call or missing something - he was completely out of position and should never have made the call - yet he did it anyway.

That was the first one I thought, of, too. Elrod Hendricks was the catcher, and Ken Burkhart the umpire.

Here's the Phil Masi play in the '48 Series.

RE: The Denkinger call - to this day Whitey still insists that call cost him the Series. But Whitey, Don didn't: miss easy popups, allow passed balls, groove pitches or tank Game 7. Your boys did that. How people react to misfortune is as much a part of the tale as the misfortune itself.

Question - can anyone think of an example where a really horrible call in a critical postseason game clearly DID help one team win a game they shouldn't have - particularly in a game 6 - yet the team that got screwed by the call went on to win Game 7 anyways to render the call moot?

Question - can anyone think of an example where a really horrible call in a critical postseason game clearly DID help one team win a game they shouldn't have - particularly in a game 6 - yet the team that got screwed by the call went on to win Game 7 anyways to render the call moot?

Well, the Phikl Masi call referenced above helped give the Baraves their only run in a game they won 1-0, but the Indians came back to win the Series in six. It was Game One, though.

The worst calls are, to me, the ones where there can be absolutely no argument whatsoever that the call was blown:

Armando Galarraga's perfect game
Chuck Knoblauch's phantom tag
The double-play at third base in the Yankees-Angels ALCS that wasn't called
The Helton scoop from a month ago (where he was a foot off the bag)

I'm sure there are others...but, yeah, I'm sure instant replay will show that a lot of bang-bang plays are called the wrong way. That doesn't bother me so much. Indisputable errors--where every other person on the field except the umpire knows the call was wrong--those bug me, and they should do more to address them.

My favorite is the 1970 World Series call at the plate. It's famous as the play everyone got wrong. The runner missed the plate when he slid. The catcher tagged the runner with his glove while he held the ball in the bare hand. And the umpire was up the line and literally had his back to the plate at the time. That didn't stop him from making a call anyone - he called runner Bernie Carbo out.

That wins my vote for worst call. It wasn't just blowing a call or missing something - he was completely out of position and should never have made the call - yet he did it anyway.

That probably was the worst all-around call ever, but calls like that are why we all love baseball.

But it was a proper call. The rule doesn't say "unless nobody ever calls it". Just because everyone else was making the wrong call doesn't make this call wrong.

There isn't any video of the call AFAIK, so I don't want to argue whether Dietz made a legitimate effort to avoid the pitch. It's a judgment call anyway.

The way I see it, assuming Dietz just stood there, is that it's like the phantom double play. If the standard is to call the runner out at second, even though the SS doesn't touch the bag, then a single umpire can't just arbitrarily call a runner safe because of the game situation. That corrupts the game.

The Maier call should be ranked higher.

And should be listed more times.

The article overreaches when it tries to predict how events would've transpired if Garcia had made the right call just like Larry and other Yankee fans overreach when they claim it wouldn't have made a difference.

The truth is that we don't know what would've happened if Garcia made the correct call, but we do know that a very bad call that had a signficant impact on a playoff game was made in favor of the Yankees. We do know that fan interference was only possible because the Yankees failed in their duty as home team to secure the field of play. We do know that, worst of all, instead of booting Maier out of the stadium and condemning him, the Yankees paraded him around new york as a hero and gave him free tickets to later games. And we do know that YES continues to promote the play as a great moment in Yankee history and a hallmark of the greatest franchise in the greatest stadium and the greatest uniform in the universe.

I'm almost glad it happened. It's rare as a parent to have a convienent embodyment of sneer, of entitlement, of win-at-all-costs, of self-promotion - a paragon of bad values to point to as everything we don't want our children to grow up to be.

Randy Marsh missed a clear HBP of Brandon Inge with bases loaded, one out, top of the 12th, tie score in Twins-Tigers Game 163 in 2009.

That was pretty ####### bad.

The article overreaches when it tries to predict how events would've transpired if Garcia had made the right call just like Larry and other Yankee fans overreach when they claim it wouldn't have made a difference.

It would've prevented the Yankees from tying one game at that one point. To say with any degree of certainty what would or wouldn't have happened after that is a bit like trying to say what the world would have been like in 1869 if Lincoln had survived his second term. At least with the correct Denkinger call the Cardinals were but two outs away from winning the Series. With the correct Jeter call the Yankees still would've had four more outs and three more games before they were eliminated. A different call wouldn't necessarily have given Todd Zeile a brain, it wouldn't have transformed Rocky Coppinger into Cinderella, and it wouldn't have magically restored Scott Erickson's effectiveness. The Orioles had a gazillion chances to recover after Maier, and after the second game they blew every single one of them.

I do think it's great to read Whiney Herzog's quotes. I mean that is some grade A whining. Between that and Ron Cey's comments about the team basically quitting(the '78 Dodgers) because of the call, makes me think that ball players of the late 70's and 80's were a bunch of pussies. Those guys better not ever try to compare themselves in the old style arguments "when we played...." with today's players. Today players never give up on a game.

Given that a large majority of the commentary I've heard on the Pieryznski call say the ump got it right, I don't see how that makes the list.

This is either complete ########, or you restrict your reading entirely to White Sox blogs. Almost no one believes that piece of canine excrement "got it right". Many believe (ignorantly) that Josh Paul still should have tagged him regardless, even though Josh Paul and everyone who has ever caught high quality pitching knows Paul did nothing wrong. But beyond that, Eddings and MLB went in front of live TV cameras and blatantly, undoubtedly lied about what transpired. There are calls on that list that are worse, because they were huge mistakes by umpires that should have known better. Eddings has the mental capacity of a three year old, as he's proven many times before and after, so it's up to the individual to decide whether he was wrong or simply lacks the mental capacity to operate in an adult world. But by no means did he "get it right".

It doesn't work like that.

No, you're right, the only logical thing to believe is that everything that worked out for the Orioles would play out exactly the same way (even though it would be completely illogical for Rivera to not pitch in Game Two), and the stuff that worked out for the Yankees (the other three games of the series) would *not* work out the same way. That that one bad call not only cost them that one game, but somehow cost them four games. And, of course, it's completely unreasonable to believe that Mariano Rivera wouldn't have given up Game Two. I mean, who the #### was that guy? He certainly wasn't as good as we thought he was in 1996.

It's a bad call, but let's not make it seem like it cost Baltimore the series, or even a shot at the series. They lost the series 4-1.

My point is that you cannot assume that the Orioles would have won Game Two if Garcia doesn't blow that call. Mariano Rivera would have been pitching when Nelson pitched in that game, if everything else was the same. Maybe they would have won, but it would not have been the same game.

Eric Gregg: Lanta vs them Marleens

iven that a large majority of the commentary I've heard on the Pieryznski call say the ump got it right, I don't see how that makes the list.


What? No, they don't. He probably got it wrong -- but getting the tip wrong wasn't the problem. It was making the out signal and then disregarding it.

Eddings has made worse calls, though, though usually with less at stake. Earlier that season, Darin Erstad was up, with John Buck catching. Erstad swung at a pitch and Buck's glove got in the way, and got knocked a couple of feet up the third base line. Eddings declined to call catcher's interference, as he apparently thinks that catchers routinely throw their gloves toward third base while trying to catch pitches. In fairness, Buck did play for the Royals at the time, but even so ...

In terms of just absolute unbelievable wrongness, I think the Helton and the McClelland not noticing two guys off the bag might rank the highest in the footage-saturated era. Some of the bad calls are due to poor rule interpretation, some due to awful communication by umpires, and some are bang-bang plays that are difficult to adjudicate. Other bad calls are by Joe West.

The way I see it, assuming Dietz just stood there, is that it's like the phantom double play. If the standard is to call the runner out at second, even though the SS doesn't touch the bag, then a single umpire can't just arbitrarily call a runner safe because of the game situation. That corrupts the game.

So you're one of those people who thinks the Angels got screwed by the correct call being made in 2009, too?

I do think it's great to read Whiney Herzog's quotes. I mean that is some grade A whining. Between that and Ron Cey's comments about the team basically quitting(the '78 Dodgers) because of the call, makes me think that ball players of the late 70's and 80's were a bunch of pussies.

When the Dodgers spit the bit in game 5 of that 1978 World Series, Bill Russell of the Dodgers said it had completely ruined his sense of security when he saw people still in the ballpark after the seventh inning. It was such a foreign experience that he thought they were all just waiting to roll him after the game was over.

So you're one of those people who thinks the Angels got screwed by the correct call being made in 2009, too?

My view is that if umpires act in such a way that the players come to rely on calls going a certain way, a single ump can't suddenly call it differently just because of the game situation (obviously, any ump might get it wrong in given case).

There isn't any video of the call AFAIK, so I don't want to argue whether Dietz made a legitimate effort to avoid the pitch. It's a judgment call anyway.

I remember seeing a replay of the Dietz call on TV the following day. My memory, admittedly hazy, is that while Dietz didn't make a herculean effort to get out of the way, he didn't just stand there either. He sort of turned away, like a lot of batters do. I do distinctly remember thinking it was a horrible call.

I'm surprised there isn't some surviving video of the play.

Meals' call's not terrible. I don't see an angle that (ETA: definitively)shows there was contact on the sweep tag.

More interesting was that after the batter belly-flopped, if McKenry had thrown to first, the run might well have been erased. But, no, he pulled a Knoblauch.

Further, the idea that Lugo didn't touch the plate until after the call (Pos's claim) is just nuts.

This was a pretty shitty call.

My memory, admittedly hazy, is that while Dietz didn't make a herculean effort to get out of the way, he didn't just stand there either.

My memory is that that he did just stand there and let it hit him. But it was a very unusual call.

Many believe (ignorantly) that Josh Paul still should have tagged him regardless, even though Josh Paul and everyone who has ever caught high quality pitching knows Paul did nothing wrong.

Of course Josh Paul should have tagged him. If he had, then Eddings mistake would have been moot.

And why should Paul have slapped the tag on Pierzynski? Because he should have known that whatever half-assed gestures Eddings was making with his hands (which was something that the other Angels could see, but he most certainly could not), he was not making the same vocal gestures that indicated an out had been recorded. It was the absence of any noise from the ump that triggered Pierezynski's dash to first. A.J. was headed back toward the dugout, but recognized that something was amiss based on Eddings' conduct and took off.

I can't blame the rest of the Angels for thinking A.J. was being called out because of what they could see Eddings doing. But Paul couldn't possibly see Eddings' arm gesture, and the absence of any vocal clue, should have alerted him that something was amiss. Eddings ###### it up, of that there's no question. But Paul most definitely deserves a dollop of scorn for failing to recognize that Eddings ###### it up and acting accordingly, which any catcher with common sense would have done, your appeal to catching high-quality pitching notwithstanding.

More interesting was that after the batter belly-flopped, if McKenry had thrown to first, the run might well have been erased. But, no, he pulled a Knoblauch.

There was only one out when the play happened.

This is either complete ########, or you restrict your reading entirely to White Sox blogs. Almost no one believes that piece of canine excrement "got it right".

Funny. I was going to say the only people I've ever heard complain about that call are Angels fans. So that the site's leading Angels fan complains about it. I'm not really rethinking what I said. Swinging strike three on a ball in the dirt.

(reads on). Oh, then another Angels fan whines about it. Same as it ever was.

Actually, checking the original thread from 2005, it looks like my memory is badly skewed, so nevermind me then.

The main argument was if Paul should've tagged, not if the ump made a good call or not. Got that conflated in my mind. Apologies all.

It nothing else, the ump clearly let a player guide his decision, and that ain't good. And then made a lame excuse/answer about it after the game, which also is bad.

Nevermind me, then.

RE: The Denkinger call - to this day Whitey still insists that call cost him the Series. But Whitey, Don didn't: miss easy popups, allow passed balls, groove pitches or tank Game 7. Your boys did that. How people react to misfortune is as much a part of the tale as the misfortune itself.

It's rarely recognized this way, but the meltdown that it preceded and precipitated is what makes the Denkinger call so important in baseball lore. If the Cardinals had bounced back and recorded the win in Game Six like any team would nine times out of ten, no one would care about Denkinger and his brain fart in the least. What makes it important is that it obviously did rattle the Cardinals, who were constitutionally inclined to ##### and moan and play with their hearts on the sleeves. That club was full of mercurial and high-strung personalities, from Tudor (who famously tore up his pitching hand punching a box fan after he fell apart in Game Seven) to Clark to Andujar to Whitey himself. If ever there were a championship club that would melt down after a terrible, pivotal call, it was the 1985 Cardinals, and the fact that Jack Clark played a key role in the team's self destruction is no great shock.

In that respect, Whitey and TLR were similar--they and their teams played angry (or passionately, if you prefer), but that passion did not swing exclusively to their advantage.

75 - right, thanks. I actually knew that when I started watching replay.

The truth is that we don't know what would've happened if Garcia made the correct call . . .

Garcia, with the benefit of replay, has said the "correct call" would have been ground rule double since Tarrasco wouldn't have caught the ball. Since he's a professional umpire, who can argue.

In any event, as others have noted, it's hard to say how the rest of the series would have played out, but the fact the Orioles didn't win a single game against the Yankees at Camden Yards all year suggests that the teams may not have been so close that the Maier play was the difference. Regular and post-season, it was 14-4 Yanks.

And why should Paul have slapped the tag on Pierzynski? Because he should have known that whatever half-assed gestures Eddings was making with his hands (which was something that the other Angels could see, but he most certainly could not), he was not making the same vocal gestures that indicated an out had been recorded. It was the absence of any noise from the ump that triggered Pierezynski's dash to first. A.J. was headed back toward the dugout, but recognized that something was amiss based on Eddings' conduct and took off.

I can't blame the rest of the Angels for thinking A.J. was being called out because of what they could see Eddings doing. But Paul couldn't possibly see Eddings' arm gesture, and the absence of any vocal clue, should have alerted him that something was amiss. Eddings ###### it up, of that there's no question. But Paul most definitely deserves a dollop of scorn for failing to recognize that Eddings ###### it up and acting accordingly, which any catcher with common sense would have done, your appeal to catching high-quality pitching notwithstanding.

At the time, someone made the point that Pierzynski knew Eddings' verbalization patterns because he'd been in the whole game, but Pope Josh Paul didn't because he had just entered the game. All Paul knew was he caught the ball.

And "half-assed gesture" isn't quite right. Eddings did exactly the same thing he did that ended every strikeout in the game (except for one where he totally fist-pumped out Konerko on a checked swing he declined to get help on, because he's Doug Eddings and that's what he does). That was the problem.

Garcia, with the benefit of replay, has said the "correct call" would have been ground rule double since Tarrasco wouldn't have caught the ball. Since he's a professional umpire, who can argue.

I'll argue with that. Maybe *he* would have called it a double, but you almost always see that called an out.

It's rarely recognized this way, but the meltdown that it preceded and precipitated is what makes the Denkinger call so important in baseball lore. If the Cardinals had bounced back and recorded the win in Game Six like any team would nine times out of ten, no one would care about Denkinger and his brain fart in the least. What makes it important is that it obviously did rattle the Cardinals, who were constitutionally inclined to ##### and moan and play with their hearts on the sleeves. That club was full of mercurial and high-strung personalities, from Tudor (who famously tore up his pitching hand punching a box fan after he fell apart in Game Seven) to Clark to Andujar to Whitey himself. If ever there were a championship club that would melt down after a terrible, pivotal call, it was the 1985 Cardinals, and the fact that Jack Clark played a key role in the team's self destruction is no great shock.

With the sole exception of Ozzie Smith, those 1985 Cardinals were the sourest and whiniest team in the history of baseball. Whitey, Clark, Coleman, Andujar, Mr. "acts-like-he-hasn't-taken-a-dump-in-a-week" Tudor, and that's probably just scratching the surface. Even though they would've (maybe) won the Series with a correct Denkinger call, who could ever feel sorry for them after they played game 7 like a child holding its breath in protest of not getting a pony for Christmas?

Of course to a Cardinals fan none of this would've mattered, but how many other teams could've had most of the rest of the country rooting for the ####### Mets?

------------------------------------------------

In any event, as others have noted, it's hard to say how the rest of the series would have played out, but the fact the Orioles didn't win a single game against the Yankees at Camden Yards all year suggests that the teams may not have been so close that the Maier play was the difference. Regular and post-season, it was 14-4 Yanks.

Against the three other AL playoff teams that year, plus the Braves, the Yankees had a combined regular and postseason road record of 21 and 5, with all 5 of those losses coming to Texas in the regular season, and only 2 of them coming after April 7th. In Camden, the Jake and FuCo they went 18 and 0.

Post number 58 is the best post in the thread, nay, its the single greatest example of sportswriting in all history.

The Armbrister call was brutal. Taught me life's unfair.

as a brewer fan having don money's game winning grand slam taken away because the first base umpire called time remains a bitter, bitter memory.

At the time, someone made the point that Pierzynski knew Eddings' verbalization patterns because he'd been in the whole game, but Pope Josh Paul didn't because he had just entered the game. All Paul knew was he caught the ball.

And that's not enough. Josh Paul doesn't make the call, Eddings does. Absent any verbal signal from the umpire that an out has been recorded (the only kind of gesture he was capable of registering), it behooved him to make sure that A.J. was indeed out. He didn't. That he genuinely caught the ball is of no solace.

It doesn't remove any of the blame on Eddings for his mishandling of the situation. But yes, Paul should have simply tagged him when it became obvious that no verbal out call had been made.

What about Matt Holliday?

Paul should have simply tagged him

Correct. It's a play you see routinely: ball near the dirt on strike three, catcher tags batter just to be sure.

as a brewer fan having don money's game winning grand slam taken away because the first base umpire called time remains a bitter, bitter memory.

Which I declared the worst ending to a regular season game in history.

The Armbrister call was brutal. Taught me life's unfair.

Not too long ago, I read a rather convoluted presentation saying that Barnett's non-call was correct. As a Red Sox fan, I found it unconvincing. However, I will admit that Roger Angell ("Five Seasons") got it right. After discussing the play at some length (and taking a different position than that recent article), he noted that Fisk still had plenty of time after the body block to make the play at 2nd, but airmailed the throw.

Cokes to those who commented on the importance of how teams/players react to adversity.

Edit: The "Barnett was right" account was in Bruce Weber's "As They See 'Em" book about his Plimpton-like umpire experience.

Post number 58 is the best post in the thread, nay, its the single greatest example of sportswriting in all history.

I was going to compliment it also.

I'm almost glad it happened. It's rare as a parent to have a convienent embodyment of sneer, of entitlement, of win-at-all-costs, of self-promotion - a paragon of bad values to point to as everything we don't want our children to grow up to be.

This is gold.

It's rare as a parent to have a convienent embodyment of sneer, of entitlement, of win-at-all-costs, of self-promotion - a paragon of bad values to point to as everything we don't want our children to grow up to be.

Ehh. My reaction to this was "Didn't the previous century of Yankee history suffice?"

a century is not a convenient embodiment

No, you're right, the only logical thing to believe is that everything that worked out for the Orioles would play out exactly the same way (even though it would be completely illogical for Rivera to not pitch in Game Two), and the stuff that worked out for the Yankees (the other three games of the series) would *not* work out the same way. That that one bad call not only cost them that one game, but somehow cost them four games. And, of course, it's completely unreasonable to believe that Mariano Rivera wouldn't have given up Game Two. I mean, who the #### was that guy? He certainly wasn't as good as we thought he was in 1996.

You'll note I didn't say any of that. The Orioles got screwed by a bad call, but if you're being objective about it at best you can say that it made winning that game, and therefore the series, more difficult. Impossible to say if it would have changed the overall outcome.

You'll note I didn't say any of that.

And Larry didn't say that the Yankees definitely would have won game 2 if Rivera hadn't pitched in game 1. He only said that "This line of reasoning is better than the assumption that if the Orioles had won Game One, they would have still won Game Two and not lost all three games at home..." Yet his post stating that one can't make assumptions about how the rest of a series would have played out got an immediate response protesting that you can't make assumptions about how the rest of the series would have played out. Etc, etc, etc.

Gosh I loves me teh intranets.

Yet his post stating that one can't make assumptions about how the rest of a series would have played out

Except that his post didn't say that at all. He was taking issue with the assumptions that favored the Orioles, and presenting an alternate (and, granted, maybe more plausible) set of assumptions that favored the Yankees.

He may have been thinking that it's foolish either way, but that's not the way he presented it.

For some reason I remember very, very few individual plays, or games, for that matter. I've probably watched an average of 25 or so full games on TV every year for the past 25 years, and other than the exceptional plays that get re-hashed year after year (like the Armando Galarraga perfect game, or the Blue Jays triple play in the '92 series) I never remember them. I've only been to 6 live games, and I only remember who won two of them, let alone any plays that stood out.

Stats on the other hand, I have bascially an encyclopedic memory for them.