"Boys, I'm one of those umpires that misses 'em every once in a while so if it's close, you'd better hit it." Cal Hubbard
That's how I saw it too. If the umpire had just walked away after throwing him out nothing else would have happened. He looked like he wanted a fight to me. Chad Fairchild is one of the worst umpires out there, especially behind the plate. He was on one of the worst all time crews last season with Joe West and CB Buckner. It seemed like the Reds got that crew a lot last season and very night there was some sort of scrape with that crew.
Reds Fan Since 1971
Well I must apologize for that stinker last night. Every game I go to, I take a picture of the field and post it on Facebook, usually commenting on how beautiful a night it is, etc. Last night? I wrote, "I don't think we've had a bad night at the ballpark all season." Fate responded, "Signed, sealed and delivered." Oops!
As for the plate umpire, I wasn't surprised Mez got tossed. His strike zone was just awful, mostly in the sense that it seemed to move from pitch to pitch. When there are a total of 17 walks (11 for us, 6 for them), that's fairly farfetched, IMO. Ultimately it forces the pitcher to groove pitches and the Padres tatooed just about everyone of them. Yonder made himself right at home, didn't he?
As an aside, on the pitch Mez chirped about? I know the diagram showed it up and in, but that's where it finished. Watching the replay, it looked to me as if it cross the corner of the plate before arriving in that final spot. What little I could read from his lips, the first response was essentially "where was that?" and then I'm thinking he tossed in something about him missing them all night. Obviously I'm not a lip reader, but it would be great to find some of the deaf folks who were there and see what they thought he was saying.
And who has ever been to a game where both catchers leave early? I'm assuming Grandal tweaked something. Mez went down for the team.
So it was a lovely night for a ballgame. Hopefully we've gotten that hiccup out of the way. Fun people watching last night, and a family leaving at the end asked if we had regular tickets. Their son, maybe ten, only had the print out one and he collects tickets to the game's he's been too. They came all the way from San Francisco, so it was fun to give up my ticket for a memory, even for an egg like last night's game.
“In the same way that a baseball season never really begins, it never really ends either.” - Lonnie Wheeler, "Bleachers, A Summer in Wrigley Field"
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