That was an absolutely horrendous call. Bob Davidson wasn’t even in proper position to make the call and replays showed him calling it foul before the ball even crossed third base.

As you noted, it could wind up being a factor in the NL East race. What if the Phillies wind up winning the division by one game? There have been two other games this year where bad umpiring calls have cost teams games. In both cases, the teams screwed are contenders: the Giants and Twins. What if those teams miss the playoffs by one game?

I posted about this today at SB Nation Chicago. It’s time for replay. NOW. What if a bad call like these costs a team a win in the postseason?

And the way things are going this year, you just know that’s going to happen.

…. I note you say “ball bounced foul about 5 feet from home”. That doesn’t make the hit a foul ball! The ball then hugged the line and clearly crossed right over third base. That makes it a fair ball.

In any case, put replay in and get these calls right. Bob Davidson blew it last night.

But as long as Bud’s in the “chair” it’s gonna remain the way it is. If last year’s playoffs obvious blown calls and Jim Joyce’s botched call on the “perfecto” didn’t sway Selig, I’m afraid nothing will. Didn’t he announce he’s retiring soon?

The commish. The owners. Front office staff. Umpires. Managers.

I for one will be thrilled when the old guard dies off and younger people with modern ideas start taking over. And it that makes me a practitioner of ageism, I stand guilty as charged.

But Davidson needs to be forced to resign. He has been one of the worst umpires in the league for as long as I’ve been watching baseball. This just adds one more moment of embarrassment to his resume.

What if the NL East is determined by 1 game?

Oh it won’t matter. See, it’s still early – so that loss won’t end up counting as much at the end of the season.

Supposedly, the league has “umpire supervisors” at every game. Incidents like this, the Jim Joyce incident earlier in the season, last year’s postseason, etc. always beg the question, “what the hell do these supervisors do?” Are they basically pencil-pushers who spent their day just filling out forms and essentially becoming enablers for this kind of crap to keep happening? Or do they really have power over the umpires that they “supervise”? In other words, do the umpires, including the crew chief, actually report to the supervisors?

Umpires seem, to me, like tenured college professors. And supposedly having these people supervised by the league is like the meaningless evaluation forms that college professors would have the students fill out at the end of each semester. We all knew that these evaluations were meaningless unless it was a grad assistant that we were evaluating, so what’s the point? Maybe they do take disciplinary action against umpires and it’s all handled internally. If that’s the case, OK. Maybe we don’t have to make fines or suspensions against umpires public knowledge. But I just have a hunch, and I admit it’s only a hunch, that the umpires’ union protects them to the point where they almost never have to worry about being disciplined. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I do know that things are not improving in terms of quality. If anything, it continues to decline.

Since the Cubs’ only postseason activity this year will be watching it on TV, to me it’s something of an academic question.

i would not let this one call determine in my mind the season. they had an unfair advantage with 84 home games, that to me is a bigger ordeal

Perform surgery on Bud Selig without anesthetic.

Just for demonstration purposes, of course.