The last two nights, there have been some questionable calls. I’m not talking about ball/strike calls (even while watching games on television, umpires seem to be inconsistent in this park for some reason).

Yesterday, it was clear that Carlos Gomez was hit with a Scott Feldman pitch - I think the sight of Gomez looking like he’d just been electrocuted sold the play. But home plate umpire Dale Scott, who has botched calls against the Twins in the past, claimed the ball ticked Gomez’s bat.

Gomez’s hand was red and throbbing. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire asked Scott to just look at Gomez’s hand for proof that it hit him. Scott refused.

Funny…there was a memo on Gardy’s desk before the game talking about how hard umpires are working to get calls right and that managers should understand that. Hah!

Tonight, it looked like Julio Borbon missed third base as he scored on Michael Young’s single. The Twins bench threw their arms up in the air immediately, and Gardenhire had Scott Baker appeal the play. Safe. 

Now, I’m not close enough to see for sure, but it was clear Borbon didn’t touch much of the bag. Umpire - Dale Scott - claimed that Borbon’s foot landed on the inside of the bag but he felt the foot turned inward and brushed the bag as he went by. Whatever. No one has the guts to call those appeal plays, anyway.

The whopper was the ninth inning, when Andruw Jones clearly went around on a two-strike swing against Joe Nathan. I’ve had surgeries on both eyes and could see his wrists snap the bat across the plate - and the replays showed that it wasn’t even close.

Home plate umpire Ron Kulpa said Jones didn’t go around. An appeal to first base Jerry Meals got the same response. Gardy hit the roof, and I heard the language wasn’t very clean.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I barked in the pressbox. I was up against deadline. I didn’t care who was winning, I just wanted the game over so I could get in the clubhouse.

Nathan was hotter than I was. Joe Mauer - who got nicked up by a couple foul balls in the game, by the way - had to go out to the mound and put his arm around Nathan to calm him down. Jones, of course, then drives a Nathan pitch down the line that hooked foul. Whoa. But Nathan finally struck Jones out to end the game.

I try not to go Patrick Reusse on umpires. It’s a game played and judged by humans, and humans make mistakes.

But what game were those guys watching? And that memo……..bah!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Random thoughts, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.