LOS ANGELES -- In the bottom of the eighth inning of the first game of the NLCS, Justin Turner singled Charlie Culberson in from second base to put the Dodgers up on the Cubs 5-2. Culberson slid into home and attempted to tag the plate but didn’t. Willson Contreras tagged him after the fact, but either way it didn’t matter.
The Dodgers scored a run because Willson Contreras violated the collision rule and Joe Maddon flipped out about it
Charlie Culberson was originally called out at home.
Photo by Harry How/Getty Images
He was out.
But wait a second, he wasn’t actually out. The Dodgers challenged the call because they believed that Willson Contreras was illegally blocking home plate. They won the challenge, because the officiating crew agreed that Contreras didn’t give Culberson a lane to tag the plate.
For those not familiar with the Home Plate Collision Rule, it dictates that a catcher can’t block a runner’s path to the plate if they don’t have the ball. If, while they are catching the ball they move into the runner’s path that’s fine. But if it is blocked in advance, the runner can be called safe.
“The umpires did everything according to what they’ve been told, but I, from day one, have totally disagreed with the content of that rule,” Maddon said after the game.
“That was a beautifully done Major League play all the way around. That gets interpreted kind of like tantamount to the soda tax in Chicago, for me,” Maddon added. “Suddenly we’re taxing soda back there all of a sudden. My point is all rules that are created or laws aren’t necessarily good ones. That’s my point.”
There is also an inverse part of the rule that prohibits runners from doing things, but you don’t have to pay attention to that right now. The rule is meant to prevent injuries and unnecessary collisions on both sides.
You can see how clearly he was blocking the plate before he had the ball in this clip.
Having his leg extended clear across the plate long before he got the ball is the violation here, and according to the rule the umpires can then call Culberson safe. Which they did.
“What I saw right there, the ball was leading into toward the line,” Maddon explained. “If you’re concerned about Willson sticking his leg out, what else is he supposed to do right there? You have to keep your balance. You have to hold yourself in place. And, furthermore, you should block the plate once you’ve caught the ball, which he did.”
At which point Cubs manager Joe Maddon went off and argued with the umps — which is an automatic ejection because you can’t argue the result of a challenge.
He was ... very not happy about the call.
“Listen, I’m not going to just sit there and take that when I disagree with it 100%. And I let Mike Winters know that,” Maddon said. “I let Mike know what my intent was. I could easily not say anything, absolutely. And I could easily just acquiesce. But if I’m doing that, I’m going against what I believe in, and I’m not going to do that.”
Maddon may have been needlessly upset about the call, and went out to pointlessly argue about it, but so was announcer Ron Darling in the booth.
Darling may have actually been the more upset party, as he wouldn’t stop talking about how incorrect the rule is and used the phrase “it’s a letter of a BAD law” more than once, so you could tell he was proud of himself for coming up with that one.
This doesn’t always happen in the postseason, but the original call was fine based on the home plate ump’s perspective and the bang-bang nature of the play, a challenge was deployed correctly, and the call was appropriately reversed according to the rule’s contents.
Watching Maddon get ejected might have been a happy perk for some people (aka Not Cubs Fans), but for baseball lovers everything actually went as right as it can in a high profile game on a big stage.
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