BBTF links to a Wall Street Journal article on the bat boy involved in the George Brett pine tar incident.
On Tuesday at Yankee Stadium, George Brett will hold a news conference to talk about the most famous moment in his Hall-of-Fame career: the Pine-Tar Game.
Yet absent from that news conference will be a 47-year-old New York cop named Merritt Riley, who feels personally responsible for the pine-tar debacle.
“I really believe the Pine-Tar Game would never have happened if I hadn’t done what I did,” said Riley.
It’s a great story with insight into George Brett’s personality. Well worth the read.
Sometimes lost in the story is that the Yankees had every reason to believe that they could take a hit away from Brett this way. A few years earlier, Thurman Munson lost a hit in Minnesota when his bat was challenged for pine tar. It was a single early in the game, so the Yankees didn’t make a big deal out of the ruling.
Umpires in another game had not disallowed a home run on a pine tar violation, and Lee McPhail agreed, noting that the rule was intended to keep balls clean, not prevent an unfair advantage to hitters. I tend to disagree. If the league wanted to keep balls clean, it should have been up to the umpires to notice too much pine tar and tell the hitters the bats were illegal. If the league wanted the other side to call hitters on this, then an out is an appropriate penalty.
These type of things irk me. The batting out of order rule is extremely convoluted, to force an opposing manager to form a strategy when the opposing team is doing something illegal.
Rule 6.07 Comment: The umpire shall not direct the attention of any person to the presence in the batter?s box of an improper batter. This rule is designed to require constant vigilance by the players and managers of both teams. There are two fundamentals to keep in mind: When a player bats out of turn, the proper batter is the player called out. If an improper batter bats and reaches base or is out and no appeal is made before a pitch to the next batter, or before any play or attempted play, that improper batter is considered to have batted in proper turn and establishes the order that is to follow.
A much simpler rule would be “if an improper batter sees a pitch, the improper batter is out.” That rule would be enforced by the umpires, which after all is their freaking job! Same with the appeal play when a runner advances on a fly ball. If he leaves the base early, the umpires should not rule him safe at the base he attains. Stop wasting time making the other team do the job of the umpires.
I totally agree. I also don’t understand if an umpire sees the wrong call made by another umpire, he keeps it to himself unless specifically asked about it by the umpire who made the call. Aren’t we supposed to get all the calls right?
And on this, the hallowed, round numbered, 30th anniversary of the historic and very TV-friendly moment in baseball… The Bat Boy is fresh news. For the 35th, I expect we’ll hear from the groundskeeper.
The Kangaroo Court of baseball – they’ve practically got their own appeals circuit out there – is frankly hilarious. From the Wiki about the Pine Tar Game:
Before the first pitch to Hal McRae (who followed Brett in the lineup), pitcher George Frazier threw the first ball to first base to challenge Brett’s home run on the grounds that Brett had not touched first. Umpire Tim Welke (given incorrectly in some sources as Tim McClelland, the original home plate umpire) called safe, even though he had not officiated the July 24 game and seen the base touch. Frazier then threw to second, claiming that the base was touched by neither Brett nor U.L. Washington, the other player scoring on the home run, but umpire Dave Phillips signaled safe.
Billy Martin went on the field to protest, and Phillips pulled out a notarized affidavit, produced by MacPhail’s administrative assistant Bob Fishel, signed by all four umpires from July 24 indicating that Brett had touched every base. Fishel had been the official to anticipate — or gain word — that Martin would protest the base touching and the umpires’ personal knowledge of it.
Martin claimed to be surprised by the affidavit because he had spoken by telephone to the first base umpire from July 24, Drew Coble, and Coble had said that he wasn’t looking at first base when Brett had circled first base. As he exited the umpires announced that the game was being played under protest by the Yankees. After leaving the field, Martin sat in the players’ clubhouse watching the television police comedy Barney Miller.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_tar_incident#Base_touching_affidavit
WeWanttheFunk » At least Martin had good taste in sitcoms. 🙂
I think the batting out of order rule is to keep the managers on their toes and is in fact a legal tactic that allows you to skip a weak batter in favor of a better batter if you can get away with it. If not, the worst that happens is the weak batter is out, something he would do 70-75% of the time anyways.
Of course, today is pretty unlikely you get away with it with all the coaches, but this may not have been the case years ago.
As for the pine tar rule, that rule supposedly was in place to protect hitters since pitchers can make balls with pine tar on it do funny things. Unless the pine tar makes the ball travel farther when hit why would you want to take away a HR. That said it is a silly rule in that there is no incentive for the pitchers team to challenge pine tar on the bat unless they get some benefit (eg an out). It would make sense if the ump can on his own make a hitter replace the bat, which is probably the case but they were too lazy to enforce it like they are so many other rules.