One of the best things about baseball is that no matter how often one follows the game, one can always see something that is fundamentally new. This happened today, as today's Dodger game had one of the weirdest baseball plays I had ever seen. Unless my memory is failing me, I have never seen this in 30 years of following baseball closely.
Here is how it is described in the recap:
The Dodgers tied it at 1 on an unusual play in the second.
Los Angeles had Andre Ethier on third base and Pierre on second with one out when Wolf hit a line drive that was caught by Haren (0-2). He wheeled and threw to Lopez, who tagged Pierre for an apparent inning-ending double play.
Ethier was running on contact, and he crossed the plate before Pierre was tagged out. The Diamondbacks left the field, apparently thinking the run didn't count.
But the umpires said it did -- and by then it was too late for Arizona to appeal that Ethier had failed to tag up.
Wolf was credited with an RBI on the play, which was recorded as a 1-4 double play.
Adding to the confusion, the correct score -- Arizona 1, Los Angeles 1 -- wasn't posted on the scoreboard until the Diamondbacks came to bat in the bottom of the inning.
Note that Ethier did not tag up. Two things had to occur for this scenario to happen: (1) Lopez had to tag Juan Pierre after Ethier crossed the plate, and this happened because he went over to tag Pierre rather than tagging the 2nd base bag; and (2) Arizona was not allowed to appeal the play (namely, Ethier not having properly tagged up before crossing the play) because they had already left the field. Weird.
I'm sure ESPN writer Jayson Stark will have a lot more to say about this play, which Vin Scully (who has been broadcasting baseball games for 60 years) apparently has never seen before either.
By the way, we won.
Update (4/13/09): As Vin Scully mentioned last night and this article reminds me, the mechanism by which the Dodgers got their run is apparently known as "the fourth-out rule" (which is a new term for me). (Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer.)
That's bizarre! We had a strange play in high school involving a runner called out for not tagging up -- but he was called out twice! It's a long story; after 10 minutes of arguing, the ruling stood and we played out the game under protest and lost. I wrote our team's appeal to the league and our stance was upheld (namely, that a runner can't be charged for two outs on the same play -- DUH). Sadly, when we replayed the game, we still lost. Alas.
ReplyDeleteScoring note -- according to my understanding of scoring rules, Wolf should not have been awarded an RBI; an RBI cannot be awarded on a double play. I guess I need to double check that now.
I believe that he was awarded an RBI initially. I don't know if that got reversed. There is a way to get an RBI on double plays, however (though then the term 'double play' isn't really apt): Say somebody scores on a sac fly, but then the throw is cut off and a guy on first base is tagged (after the runner scores) trying to advance to second on the throw. So I suppose Wolf could be awarded an RBI based on the play being a somewhat more intricate version of that? I'm not really sure.
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