Everybody's buzzing this morning about ... well, about a lot of things! Baseball's been really interesting lately! But this is one of those things! It happened in the bottom of the eighth in Philadelphia. The play began with Ben Revere on first base, Michael Young hitting a grounder to third base. Now watch -- via the magic of Crashburn Alley's .giffing -- what happened next:
Bob Davidson makes one scratch one’s head
USA TODAY Sports
The second-base umpire is Balkin' Bob Davidson. He called Revere out at second base ... and he called out Young at first base, too, ruling that Revere committed interference at second base. I'm not finding the precise rule that covers such situations, but experience tells us that THIS IS NOT INTERFERENCE. Revere never strayed from the basepath, never really lost contact with second base, and didn't raise his arms or otherwise blatantly hinder second baseman Derek Dietrich's throw. This just isn't interference according to any established precedent.
So what in the hell was Davidson thinking? it’s really hard to say. Maybe he’s just a lousy umpire.
As you know, once an umpire’s been around for a while it’s almost impossible to get rid of him. My guess is that Major League Baseball knows that Davidson’s not good, but has no recourse. He’s 60, so now MLB is just running out the clock and hoping for a minimal number of terribly embarrassing moments like this one.
Addendum: It does occur to me that Revere’s slide was the sort that might have resulted in a concussion. Is it possible that Davidson’s call is some sort of MLB-wide effort to curb dangerous slides? I don’t mean to make excuses, but I would like to find some explanation other than rank incompetence.
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