During the 2013 regular season the Oakland Athletics had a number of replays on home run calls not go their way and that trend continued into the postseason against the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday.
Sean Doolittle entered to start the bottom of the seventh inning with a lead facing switch hitter Victor Martinez who appeared to have hit a game-tying home run off the left-handed reliever. Right fielder Josh Reddick made an attempt at a leaping catch and may have come up with the baseball if a Tigers fan hadn’t interfered with the flight of the baseball. The umpires immediately ruled it a home run and almost immediately both Coco Crisp and Reddick argued interference.
Manager Bob Melvin immediately went out to argue before the umpires went back to check the replay and after review ruled it a home run. Right call? Not even close. According to Major League Baseball the rule for interference with a ball still in the field of play is this:
Rule 2.00 “a spectator reaches out of the stands, or goes on the playing field, and (1) touches a live ball or (2) touches a player and hinders and attempt to make a play on a live ball.” In this scenario does exactly that he reaches from the stands and hinders the attempt at the catch.
According to rule 3.16 “if spectator interference clearly prevents a fielder from catching a fly ball, the umpire shall declare the batter out.” While the ball did go over the yellow line painted on the fence, which meant home run there is absolutely no disputable proof that indicated that even without the fan touching the baseball that the ball on its own wouldn’t be caught due to the trajectory getting changed on the account of the spectator.
No way around there’s no excuse for not being able to make the correct call in the postseason and this is exactly why umpires on the field of play shouldn’t get to make calls on reviews as it’s rare that a call does get overturned even with conclusive evidence. Angel Hernandez proved that when he took away a game-tying home run from Adam Rosales that clearly was a home run and Chris Young also had a game-winning home run taken away from him.
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