Selig Defends the Umps

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is on Letterman tonight. He spouted out the old canard, "The umpires are right 99% of the time."

Perhaps, Bud, but at least 95% of the calls are easy enough for a fifth-grader to handle.

I really don't hate umpires...honest! I have a great deal of respect for them in fact, at least below the MLB level all the way down to Class E Co-Rec Fall Softball.

But even though I liked some of the other things he said tonight (he too hates November baseball), I'm still no fan of Bud.

Don't Judge a Pumpkin Patch by its Cover

It's a popular time of year for apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and hayrides. Some businesses combine all three, plus a few other attractions like corn mazes, and do very well. My wife and I took the kids to one such place last year.

We were in Alexandria, Minnesota this past weekend with our two boys and my three older kids from my first marriage. My wife wanted to take all the kids to an orchard/pumpkin patch again this year, and was concerned we wouldn't get a chance if we went to Alex (pronounced "Alec" by us Alex natives...one of those local things, like Lake Carlos being pronounced "Car'-luss").

So to Google I went and found a business just west of Alex that was an apple orchard, pumpkin patch, and hayride provider, just like you find in the Big City (Alex city limits population is around 10.000). Better yet, the online source said their hours were from 8am until dark through October. Jackpot!

We headed out Sunday morning with the directions I had written down, and like a Northwest Airlines pilot, I overshot the place by quite a bit before realizing it. How could we have missed it? It was right on this road!

My wife called the phone number I so smartly had also written down, and an old woman answers. Yes, they had apples/pumpkins/hayrides, but she and her husband just got back from church. They usually open around 1 PM (it was about 11 AM when we called), but if we turn around, look for the mailbox on the address, and pull in, they'll be glad to help us. Her husband would even change out of his Sunday clothes and fire up the John Deere to pull us on a hayride.

This big-city-style attraction was in fact just a lovely couple in there mid-eighties I would guess, who had been doing this for forty years, and it was all on their modest homestead. The woman pulled off the tarps to expose the pumpkins and apples, most of which were neither symmetrical or without some sort of flaws.

Her husband pulled out the tractor, an oil-burning machine that was barely bigger than an ATV. He hooked it up to a small wooden trailer/wagon equipped with home-made seats that wiggled when we sat on them. My two-year-old grabbed me tightly as I grabbed the semi-secure railing on our bumpy journey. "Daddy, I scared," he wimpered to me.

The exhaust we inhaled on the hayride (hay excluded, by the way) had to be about as damaging as if we had smoked two packs of filter-less Camels on the 10-minute trip. But the awkwardness of the whole situation at this Mom-and-Pop Orchard/Pumpkin Patch/Hayride Haven ended there.

To our surprise, their back yard was quite long, and consisted of 60 trees. The old man would stop occasionally, telling us of how this year's crop was poor, and why. A big reason was, not surprisingly, the weather, but we learned the weather affected the amount of bee pollination that occurred, which was not enough for a bumper crop. Who knew the Bee Movie was actually accurate to any degree?

We saw where the deer got into the pumpkins and squashes, and learned that barbed wire seems to work OK as a repellent. We saw all the trees, the raspberry patches, and other gardens. And at the end of the ride, we got to see how they make apple juice the old-fashioned way.

Out of the garage, they pulled out an old wood-and-steel contraption. It consisted of a motorized apple chopper, a barrel into which the apple chips flew, and a manual crank to squish the juice out. The juice would drain into a pale and they used a steel sieve to catch most of the pulp.

I had to take it on faith that the old machine, the bucket, sieve, and of course the apples had all been washed. The kids got a kick out of putting the apples in the chipper, although we kept a close eye on the two- and four-year-olds' fingers. No need to make apple juice a protein drink. After a sip of the best-tasting apple juice we'd ever had, we were sold.

We ended up with four pumpkins the kids picked out, a bag of apples, and a gallon of freshly squeezed organic apple juice, not to mention the hay-less hayride. All in little over an hour. Total bill: $16. We handed the nice woman a $20 bill and told her to keep the change.

Bargain of the year, I figured, plus we were truly helping out the local economy. Maybe they can invest in some wagon seating reinforcement.

Moron, err, More on Baseball Announcing

Throughout the MLB postseason, I have been cringing at Chip Caray's inability to distinguish between a fly ball, a soft-liner, and a flare. In the bottom of the ninth of tonight's Philadelphia win over LA, to put the Phillies up three games to one, he did it again. It was a soft liner to third, and he called it a fly.

Still, I never thought he would become his late grandfather so soon in life, until I heard his call on the game-winning hit. "Here comes the throw home," he yelled, exactly while the ball was coming in to the second baseman. There never was a throw home as the winning run crossed the plate.

Yikes. I'm guessing I would still prefer Caray for the course of a full season over the Twins' announcers.

Farewell to the Metrodome

I was at the last two Minnesota Twins games ever at the HHH Metrodome, with tonight's elimination against the Yankees being the finale. While it was disappointing to watch yet more base path blunders from a team that is supposed to be known for its fundamentals, it clearly wasn't meant to be for this team this postseason. (Along with Nick Punto's impression of a class D co-rec softball player, I count Cuddyer failing to get to second on what should have been a hit to right a blunder, even though it was somewhat understandable.)

Those who know me for giving MLB umpires a hard time may wonder what I thought of Phil Cuzzi's gaffe in game 2. It was horrendous, to be sure. No one really knows whether it actually cost the Twins the game, but I am certain of two things: It is absolutely inexcusable, and would have been avoided with instant replay.

I got a kick out of the back-and-forth on the game logs, blogs, and message boards about that play. Twins fans complaining and looking somewhat foolish by over-reaching with their logic, followed by Yankees fans yelling back with a plethora of idiocy.

The most annoying counter to complaints about Cuzzi is the one that goes like this: "Oh yeah, well if the ump in Game 163 didn't F-up, you wouldn't even be in this game!"

First, it's a red herring. More specifically, aa kind of tu quoque - a logical fallacy commonly found in political arguments. Second, while both calls were incorrect, and the one that went against Inge in game 163 was arguably more costly to his team, as I stated in my previous post, the Inge call was entirely understandable. That kind of call (or no-call) cannot be reasonably held personally against the umpire. Not so for Cuzzi's blown call.

In a recent article by Ken Rosenthal, he claimed the Inge call was "perhaps even more egregious" than Cuzzi's. I agree with much of what Rosenthal was trying to say in the article, but seriously...egregious?? To borrow a line from Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what he thinks it means. And he makes a living as a writer?

I guess if Phil Cuzzi can make a living at about three times of my own by missing the one call he was put in there to make, then anything is possible.

But enough about the calls. You know what I found interesting about these last couple of nights? What might have really made a difference in this series is just the luck of the asymmetrical nature of ball park design.

If Yankee Stadium and the Metrodome swapped ball park dimensions (i.e., it was 343 down the left field line at Yankee, 318 at Metrodome, etc.), then Brendan Harris's triple in game 2 is a home run, and Texeira's game-winning home run would have been a ground rule double (assuming, of course, Cuzzi called it correctly). In tonight's game 3, Posado's home run would likely have been caught for an out.

I enjoy thinking of the "what ifs" to the point where I probably have built a reputation as an excuse-maker. But that's not what it's about at all. I just find it fun to look for the things announcers normally don't. There's a lot of luck involved in the game, even in a seemingly easy three-game sweep.

As a Twins fan, it's not too hard to go outside of the "good piece of hitting right there" box we Twins fans are so used to. But sometimes I like to get carried a way with it. What if Yankee Stadium and the Metrodome had the same dimensions as the old Polo Grounds? Well, then neither of A-Rods atomic bombs would have been home runs.

All right, I'll admit that's a bit much.

Go Vikings!

Edited to add: After finishing up this post, I went back to the Rosenthal bit to read some more of the comments. I had missed this one, obviously from my twin from whom I was separated at birth. Check out the last lines:

theoneeyedjack 10/11/2009 3:19:34 PM
While I agree with the overall point here, the Twins have nobody to blame but themselves for the loss, there are a couple of strangely incorrect statements. "the apparent double that was ruled foul by left-field umpire Phil Cuzzi." APPARENT double? Are you kidding me? It could not have been more obvious that Cuzzi blew the call. It hit Melky's glove in fair territory and clearly landed at least half-a-foot inside the foul line. Also to say that the umps rendered a "perhaps even more egregious decision on the Tigers just three nights earlier" that benefitted the Twins is absurd. More egregious? The ball barely grazed Inge's jersey. Even on super slow-mo replay, it was hard to tell whether there was actual contact from some angles. A blown call, but totally understandable how it was missed. It's impossible for me to see how Cuzzi blew the call on Mauer's double.
Kenny Boy, me thinks you need a dictionary. Apparent? Egregious? To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, "These words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean."

Game 163

I was in attendance at the Metrodome for the 12-inning thriller over Detroit Tuesday night. I will post some pictures when I get them loaded.

Being how hard I have been on MLB umpires, I would imagine some might wonder what I thought of the no-call on Brandon Inge's jersey getting hit by a pitch, which would have led to the go-ahead run for the Tigers. I have complained most vociferously in the past when the calls have gone against my Twins.

I suppose people would accuse me of bias when I say this: the umpire did the right thing. With 54,000 yelling, it's not reasonable to expect him to hear the jersey getting clipped. It was also not enough contact to be obvious visually. When faced with no evidence, the umpire must not make the HBP call. Believe me or not, but that's my opinion on the matter regardless of whom is victimized by the non-call.

In the 2003 Minnesota Corporate State Softball Tournament, my team finished second. During the championship game, I was playing first base. On one play, a grounder was hit against us, the infielder threw it wildly, and I awkwardly reached and made a desperate tag on the runner, barely getting him on his backside before he touched first. The umpire called him safe.

I didn't say a word, but the umpire could tell by my reaction that I was extremely disappointed in the call. So much so, that in the next inning, he apologized to me. I told him, "Hey, you made the call you had to make. It was a wild throw and I wasn't able to make an assertive tag. You were positioned correctly, and if you didn't see the tag, and I didn't give you reason to assume it was made, you had to call him safe." Or words to that effect.

What I was so upset at was that it came to that - a bad break - not that the ump failed me. Hearing Inge's post-game comments, it seemed like he rightfully felt a little bit the same way. Some blown calls you cannot blame the umpire for, but rather simple bad luck, like a bad hop or a lost ball in the sun (or roof, or lights).

Another thing about the Inge at bat: If the ump makes the right call and gives him the base, and the Tigers win, then I would be pushing for a new rule about players' jerseys. Inge looked like he was wearing a circus tent. In the spirit of the HBP rule, a player should not take a free base just for wearing a jersey fit for an NHL goaltender.

Oh, man, don't get me started on goalie equipment. Maybe this winter I'll write about that. In the mean time, go Twins. See if you can't steal one from the Yankees tomorrow.