A funny thing happened during Tuesday night’s baseball game between Florida and Jacksonville.
Gators catcher JJ Schwarz swung and missed at a pitch in the dirt in the bottom of the fifth inning for strike three. The ball scooted away from Jacksonville catcher Jacob Southern and into the backstop. Schwarz started toward first base, but home-plate umpire Derek Mollica declared Schwarz was out and that the play was dead.
Coach Kevin O’Sullivan was reasonably outraged. On a play like this, a batter is allowed to take off for first base. Schwarz was not afforded the opportunity. Why?
On the replay, the ball looked like it hit Schwarz on his right foot after his swing. Mollica turned out to be right to call Schwarz out, since the play was over when it struck his foot. Since it wasn’t a reviewable play, no other thought was given to it by Mollica.
Though the umpire was technically right in this case, it brings up a larger point made by one of the journalists at the game: Umpires and referees should be made available for postgame interviews should they be requested.
While they’re technically employees of the NCAA, college baseball umps still have an obligation to maintain a balanced image. The work that goes into that ought to include setting the record straight on any controversial or close calls during the game they’re overseeing.
The NFL, in its infinite wisdom, often has to do damage control over objectively terrible calls from its refs. The Jesse James catch/no-catch ruling in the Pittsburgh-New England game immediately comes to mind as one of last season’s most egregious letdowns in football. Whether it was a catch or not according to the rules as they were written, the people deserve a timely explanation.
Aside from the moral and ethical implications of this pipe dream of mine, it would go a long way toward helping the business side of things for these mega-conglomerates. You know damn well Roger Goodell can’t resist a good ratings boost, especially with the NFL seeing declining viewership over the last couple of years.
Maybe it’s the journalist in me who wants this. In my profession, both in sports and actual news, it’s important to hold powerful institutions accountable. While postgame talks with game officials wouldn’t exactly hold people like Goodell or NCAA President Mark Emmert to any higher standard than they are now, at the very least it would give fans a more clear picture of how the games themselves are governed.
Gotta learn to crawl before you walk. Gotta learn to criticize individual games before you criticize the game at large.
Morgan McMullen is the online sports editor at The Alligator. Follow him on Twitter @MorganMcMuffin and contact him at mmcmullen@alligator.org.
Game officials owe the world a personal explanation for some calls.
