Bobby Abreu trotted to first after earning the 1,400th walk of his career, third-most among active players.
No big deal right?
Well it is if you’re counting balls and strikes, something the umpire crew in this game obviously wasn’t doing.
Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez had a 2-1 count on Abreu and threw the next pitch outside the strike zone. Abreu tossed his bat aside and trotted to first base with no response from home plate umpire Gerry Davis and no argument from the Mariners’ dugout or manager Eric Wedge.
This isn’t calculus, people!
Two plus One equals three and I bet there were a few 1st graders in the stands who even had the count right.
And for the record, this is the second time in just nine days this happened without Mariners’ manager noticing and opposing the incident. In that game against the San Diego Padres, Cameron Maybin took first base after taking three balls and ended up crossing the plate for the winning run in the 1-0 game.
After that blunder, Wedge apologized to the team for missing the count but to do it twice is mindboggling.
Abreu has had a few “firsts” happen this past week. Besides getting his first career three ball walk, he was ejected for the first time in his career in a week that saw the umpires going for a record heave-hos.
When Abreu was asked after the Angels’ 4-2 win about the three-ball walk he said:
“I guess I got confused, too. It’s funny, and it’s weird at the same time. You’ve got the professional umpires that know everything, and it still happened.”
“Umpires that know everything”?
There’s not enough space in this column to debate that topic.
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Used with permission of the author.
Jay Donetelli is a Tampa-based freelance sportswriter and contributor to Sports Climax. With an opinion sharper than an Ovechkin skate blade with the sting of an Ali jab, Donetelli has a loyal cult of readers who have found a way to love him.
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