Blood on the field

Another Capitol Hill umpiring shift, another player bloodied.

Last night's three games were largely unremarkable, save for (a) me blowing more calls than I find acceptable and (b) someone getting hurt. In the first game, the guy catching for one team was chatting with me about the umping gig, asking about its pitfalls, and I said that generally it's fun; the exceptions come when players get too obnoxious or riled up and I have to threaten ejections or when someone gets hurt (I left out the office politics shit that's been more of an issue this year), but that thankfully neither of those things has happened in a while. Jinx. Because (b) came in the second game of the night, when a batter for Thunderhanded fouled a pitch straight back into the catcher's face. As I was crouching down to call the pitch—I tend to get a better angle on pitches I think will be strikes by getting my eye level to the middle of the strike zone—I had a great view of the swing, the foul, and the impact to the bridge of the catcher's nose.

I immediately fetched the first-aid kit, but there's not much in there for this sort of thing, just some gauze. I also grabbed a couple of faux-ice packs. In short order the catcher's teammates were surrounding her at the plate and took her off the field, but she declined my offer to call EMTs and said it was just bloody, not serious. She sat out a couple of innings and then came back to the game. Having seen a few broken noses on such plays in my time, not to mention the seriously damaging play that happened in my first shift of the year back in January, I was glad she didn't feel like it was more than a nuisance, but at the same time I wonder if I wouldn't have gone to urgent care anyway if it had been me.

Not quite Curt Schilling's bloody sock, but blood on the turf. Which, come to think of it, would be a good title for a pulp detective mystery.

Anyway, with that occupying part of my brain we resumed play, and perhaps due to that distraction or perhaps not I botched a couple of things. Nothing that made a difference in the outcome of the games, but as a perfectionist it still rankles me.

I'd already made a questionable call in the first game—a close tag play at third base that also involved a slide that might have been illegal—but it was at the end of a blowout game and thus harmless and just a matter of it being a close call. The second game's botches were the kind that annoy me: One was a misapplication of rules, the others a result of me being too quick to make a call. Fortunately, the mistakes didn't just favor one team, so at least there was parity...

Anyway, the rules-based call involved a runner being hit by a batted ball while standing on the base. I ruled fair ball in play, nothing further, when the correct call would be runner out, batter to first, dead ball. There is an exception to runner-out-when-hit-by-batted-ball, the runner is safe if on the base when hit, but only in an instance of the infield fly rule. Knowing that exception confused me. This was a liner down the first-base line, not an infield-fly, so the exception doesn't apply. The team benefitting from my mistake got a couple of runs out of it (but they still lost handily). The too-quick call was on a close play at first, the batter-runner was clearly going to be safe had she continued in a straight line to the safety base and in my head I had already "seen" it happen as extrapolation and was preparing the safe call. Except she didn't keep on on a straight line, for some reason she veered away from the base and had to reach back, just enough time for the throw to beat her there. But I was already calling safe. I suppose I could have reversed myself, but it had been a rather emphatic call and it was super close, so I let it go. Later there was an opposite call, I called out on a close play at first and immediately thought, "um, was that right?" and replayed it in my head; I can't be sure, but I think I was wrong there too. Players in the first-base dugout were razzing me about it, doing the headset gesture that big-league managers do when they want to invoke an instant-replay challenge, but thankfully all involved were in good spirits and not taking it seriously. Helps that the score was pretty lopsided. Oh, I also signaled a deep fly was a home run but the baserunner stopped at second base figuring it had actually bounced first on the turf. I let that be, figuring if they didn't want the homer that was fine and I wasn't 100% sure it had cleared the turf line anyway, and besides I knew those runs were going to score anyway (they did, next batter singled them in).

It's a lot for one shift. Too many wrong for my standards. I can't blame foggy-head depression symptoms or anything like that, I just had a bad night. I guess these things happen, I'm just glad it happened when I had completely agreeable players all having a good time.