Good morning.
We’ll have a sunny day with a high of fifty-six, and southwest winds of 5 to 15 mph.
Sometimes a hard call is still a correct and right one. Last night, in Game 3 of the World Series, third-base umpire Jim Joyce called Obstruction (Official Rules of Major League Baseball, Section 2.00 Definition of Terms) of on Boston’s Will Middlebrooks, and since Allen Craig was close at home anyway, the obstruction call gave the win to St. Louis, 5-4. So, for the first time in World Series history, a game was decided on an obstruction call.
There’s general agreement – although perhaps not as much in Boston – that the call was the right one. It was:
It ended on an obstruction call, and what appears, pretty much indisputably, to be a correct obstruction call, made by third-base umpire Jim Joyce on Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks.
And here’s the most important thing you need to know about that call: It doesn’t matter if Middlebrooks intended to interfere with the Cardinals’ Allen Craig or not. Got that?
It. Doesn’t. Matter.
It doesn’t matter that Middlebrooks was just doing everything he could to catch an uncatchable throw to third by catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
It doesn’t matter that that throw led Middlebrooks right into the runner, and that it was basically unavoidable that he found himself lying in the dirt, flat on his belly, as Craig was trying to scramble to his feet and race home.
Here, the umpires explain the call:
Baseball is an old and established sport, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t new things to see. There are – every night, and especially on a night like last night.