2. Denkinger’s debacle: 1985 World Series Game 6—Royals 2, Cardinals 1
Perhaps the most famous blown call in World Series history. But perhaps also the most overrated….
Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog went ballistic afterward. “The two best teams are supposed to be in the World Series,’’ he said. ‘‘They ought to have the best umpires in it, too. I think it’s a disgrace. It’s a joke. We haven’t got one call from the three American League umpires in this thing. You want my opinion? It stinks.”
“The whole inning was screwed up when he missed the call at first,” Herzog said in his office after the game. “I went out and asked why he was safe, and the umpire said he beat the throw. I said how the hell could he be safe when he stepped on Worrell’s foot going across the bag?”
Whitey wasn’t done.
‘‘When I went out, I thought it was a question of Worrell missing the bag. If he’d have said Worrell missed the bag, I’d have shut up. But he didn’t. He said Orta beat the throw. But he didn’t beat the throw. He was out by two steps. I’m not supposed to say anything about the umpires. But I sit here and manage this club, and I see what happens. We haven’t got one call from those guys, and I mean the three from the American League.”
Of course, it didn’t matter that Kansas City’s two previous wins were by 6-1 scores, so the umps clearly had little to do with those defeats. Or that if Clark had caught the foul pop or the passed ball hadn’t happened, the Cardinals likely would have escaped the inning anyway. Blaming Denkinger was the easy thing to do.
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1. Jose Can Still Seabiscuit Posted: June 14, 2012 at 03:44 PM (#4156986)I think 3 and 4 are both unfairly included. The Lopes/Bowa play is clearly the wrong call on replay but he's out by inches, not by feet, that's a terribly close play. The Reggie play is weird. If they call Reggie out for interference I think it is still on this list because Russell probably should have been called for intentionally dropping the ball.
These articles should really be called "The Most (whatever) In The Last Thirty Years Or So, Or Maybe Older If It Still Exists On Film"...
Nothing like the Denkinger play, for instance. I didn't even have much of a rooting interest in that Series, and I was still scandalized when I saw it. It was your basic defiance of reality (I'm sure an unconscious and accidental defiance, but amazingly so).
Or this.
Or this.
This.
Or this.
That was the first one that jumped to mind (that and the Armbrister play, cheating bastard). It was a much more obvious blown call than the Lopes play.
And why the hell didn't Russell just tag Munson and step on second?
I also figured the Galarraga call would be on here.
nobody was criticizing the umpires. nobody
Yeah, based on the angle Helton took fielding the ball, the umpire couldn't see that he was off the base. It really begged for assistance from one of the other umps, though obviously that only happens if the base ump asks first.
But the Helton, Knoblauch, and two yankees on third incidents were also terrible.
EDIT: Although #17 is a post-season game. That one was pretty bad.
For real; I remember watching that game with a die-hard, bleeds red & white Phils fan and we had to restrain him to keep him from throwing a pewter beer mug at the TV. That doesn't excuse the poor call but all year the Phillies had substituted someone (Jerry Martin if my old mind remembers correctly) for Luzinski in exactly these situations so they have only themselves to blame for this.
The Pieryznski dropped-third strike led to the White Sox winning Game 2 of the ALCS when they went on to win the World Series. And the Hrbek play was in the 1991 WS, one of the tightest WS ever.
You know this almost paid off. He was up 3rd in the bottom of the 9th and reached on a HBP
I was going to mention that Lonnie Smith was his defensive replacement, but that was a few years away. Jerry Martin was available and was a decent defensive player.
I think the accepted wisdom is that Martin probably would have made the play that Luzinski didn't, which would have likely made the bottom of the 9th academic.
And then I saw how you can blatantly cheat and get away with it on baseball's biggest stage.
Edit: Ok, wow, I was confused. I could have sworn that was the Twins vs. Cards in 1987.
There's obviously the Merkle game, although that's more a question of rule interpretation than a mistake about what happened.
There's Game 7 of the 1925 World Series, both in allowing it to be played in lousy weather (although I think that may have been Landis' decision), and some of the calls during the game (although visibility may have been an issue).
The Jackie Robinson steal of home, as mentioned.
I'm sure there's others I'm forgetting.
Gene Garber went on to call Christina Hendricks "anorexic" and 2002 Iraq "simply crawling with WMDs."
But that game didn't involve a New York team, so no one cares now.
The Pieryznski dropped-third strike led to the White Sox winning Game 2 of the ALCS when they went on to win the World Series.
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.
I'm sure there's others I'm forgetting.
Sam Rice jumping into the stands to catch a ball - either the 1925 or 1933 World Series. The ump called the guy out, always a source of controversy. Rice had a statement on the play to be opened on his death saying he caught the ball and never lost control. But a few days after that statement went public, a person who'd been in the first row of the stands that day said Rice caught it, but then dropped it, and then picked it up.
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.
There's Game 7 of the 1925 World Series, both in allowing it to be played in lousy weather (although I think that may have been Landis' decision), and some of the calls during the game (although visibility may have been an issue).
There's a World Series game - in 1922, I believe - where the umpire oddly and inexplicably ended the game due to darkness with an hour of sunlight left. Yeah, that's bad.
Chris, Judge Landis had been set up for a hot date with 17-year-old Brooklyn hottie Clara Bow, who was as much of a "prodigy" as Bob Feller...it was "now or never," so he told the umps to call the game.
And, you know, it's a cryin' shame that Jeffrey Maier didn't turn out to be good enough to at least play minor-league baseball. Think of the field day everyone would have had if that had been the case...
But other than those TD, you're right. ;)
The Meals call can't be the worst because he might have gotten it right.
You're right---Hrbek also did the "shove the runner off the bag and tag him out" play in that '87 series, against Tommy Herr. My recollection is that Herr was picked off first (or had broken for second before the pitch) and was scrambling back to first and Hrbek used his body to block/shove Herr, and then applied the tag. Egregious, obvious interference in a tight game during a tight 7-game series.
Wendelstedt said later that Dietz hadn't made enough effort to avoid the pitch, but (a) this was Don Freakin' Drysdale, who hit batters all the time; (b) that call was never made (though I've seen it a few times since); and (c) players of that era like Ron Hunt notoriously stepped into pitches all the time in order to get on base (not that Dietz did that, just that the hypocrisy of Wendelstedt's explanation was so glaring).
If Jeter's ball is called an out, the Yankees win Game Two, the O's lose in 5.
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, because if the rest of the series had played out the same (since we're assuming Game Two plays out the same in favor of Baltimore), the O's go back to Yankee Stadium down 3-2 in the series.
It may have been the worst 50.
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robinson getting called safe at home in the 1955 series eats at every yankee fan i know of my generation since whenever yogi is interviewed he insists robinson was out
I'm a Yankee fan, I watched that game, and if anyone cares to look at the photos on pp. 16-17 of the SI issue that covered that World Series, he can clearly see that contrary to Yogi's opinion, Robinson was safe.
And of course the Yanks won that game, anyway, so even if Robby had been called out, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. It was a big stink about nothing.
Some men just like to watch the world burn.
There was newsreel footage too, which I saw many years ago. I remember seeing Lou Boudreau jumping up and down, literally hopping mad at the call.
And of course the Yankees would never, ever recover from a 2-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven. Why, just ask Sam Rickey and his buddy Mark Wohlers.
The ump is also interviewed in that video, and what he says seems at least vaguely reasonable to me: In order to be called safe, you not only have to be in contact with the base, you also have to be under control (I don't know if this is true or not, but it's what the ump says). He goes on to say that everybody looks at the feet on the replay, but if you look at the upper body, Gant was already falling over. Not in control.
I'm not saying it was definitely a good call; I'm just saying it looks to me a lot less obviously bad than I thought it was twenty years ago.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
That was pretty ####### bad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
My memory is that that he did just stand there and let it hit him. But it was a very unusual call.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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.
The Armbrister call was brutal. Taught me life's unfair.
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.
Correct. It's a play you see routinely: ball near the dirt on strike three, catcher tags batter just to be sure.
Which I declared the worst ending to a regular season game in history.
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.
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.
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.
He may have been thinking that it's foolish either way, but that's not the way he presented it.
Stats on the other hand, I have bascially an encyclopedic memory for them.
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