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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Greg Gibson Reminds All Umpires: Patience is a Virtue

Pro baseball rule 9.05 (General Instructions to Umpires) takes a break from the technical ball or strike, fair or foul rules of the sport to offer up some philosophical advice to umpires, ending with, "Finally, be courteous, impartial and firm, and so compel respect from all."

In the paragraphs prior, the General Instructions coach umpires to remain professional, remain active and alert, employ courtesy and represent baseball with class and to exercise "much patience."

Naked Gun, which stars Leslie Nielsen as
Frank Drebin as an umpire who had some wild
calls of his own, was filmed at Dodger Stadium
Yes, patience—the General Instructions spend quite some time discussing the concept: "Do not call the plays too quickly ... Wait until the play is completed before making any arm motion."

Looks like Greg Gibson will be reviewing Rule 9.05 tonight.

With the Los Angeles Dodgers leading the San Diego Padres 6-5 with two out, two on and a 2-2 count on Saturday night, Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen received a throw from catcher A.J. Ellis and paced around the mound, pondering his next move, as baserunner R3 Everth Cabrera pondered a move of his own.

The deuces weren't the only items that were wild. (Video: Gibson's interesting call at the plate)

For as Jansen retreated with his back toward home plate, Cabrera dashed down the third baseline as teammates gathered their pitcher's attention, Jansen throwing high to home with Ellis jumping and applying the tag just before Cabrera touched the plate.

"Out!" was the call by plate umpire Gibson and as Cabrera protested the call, the Dodgers had escaped with their 10th straight home win against San Diego—or had they?

For as Gibson affirmed his call to Cabrera, Ellis ran to the backstop behind home plate toward a wayward white orb as baserunner R2 Will Venable motored around third base.

"Safe!" was the call by Gibson, now convinced that the home team had missed the play. And "Safe!" again as Venable slid under the pitcher's tag, alertly taking two bases on the F1 error.

Patience is a virtue, as legendary broadcaster Vin Scully showed the umpire his interpretation of the officiating axiom: "And lookee here—he's gonna be safe after the plate umpire missed, another run will score." And then as if to acknowledge that everyone is prone to the occasional error, Scully proceeded to call our umpire by the name, "Greg Carlson."
UEFL Video (Including CF Angle)

20 comments:

  1. Greg's lucky Jansen isn't Brian Wilson or another closer that does one of those turn-back-to-plate tributes after collecting a save or otherwise, after that out call, you'd have a pitcher thinking the game is over and completely not paying attention. Then you have a Dale Scott situation and... yikes. What is with umpires and wrong mechanics these days?

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  2. Very premature. Not quite as bad as Leslie Neilsen's strike three call in Naked Gun, but had that been AJ Pierzynski back there... I'm pretty confident he would have milked that thing for all it was worth, tossing glove & helmet in the air so that when Gibson sees the ball back there (if he ever did see the ball back there), there would be a glove somewhere near it. Then you'd REALLY see why this crew in Los Angeles has two crew chiefs (Cousins & Davis) on it!

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  3. Everyone fell asleep on that play - Jansen, Ellis, Greg Gibson, the entire stadium...

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  4. And no one was ejected.....

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  5. ^Amazing that, especially given Jansen's excuse for what happened: "When I saw the umpire call him out, I froze from there," Jansen said, explaining why he wasn't covering home in time. my wager is the play was so horribly bad that Don Mattingly didn't think it was worth getting ejected over - his players screwed the pooch so badly and so obviously, it would have served absolutely no purpose to argue about it.

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  6. Wow... Dick Enberg is a real... Enberg. Listening to the Padres feed, you'd think the Dodgers already won the game, even after the play was over. This play is really a pretty significant miss if you think about, especially because Jansen says the umpire's out call messed him up. Still, the only thing worse than Gibson's bad call was the Dodgers bad play.

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  7. What would he argue? Was clear that the runner wasn't out?

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  8. So this is yet another example of don't trust the umpire's call because it will just get reversed anyway, even if the ump has declared the game over.

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  9. Jansen's excuse is idiotic. He saw that he threw the ball to the screen, after all.

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  10. I said last night greg gibson should not assume!!! Gibson's thinking last night If you think the tag was applied before the runner touching home-plate than you still need to see if the catcher has the ball, even if the ball didn't hit the back stop, and the catcher still has it close to him but not in his glove than the catcher needs than to pick it up before the runner touching homeplate. I saw Gibsons facial expressions after he made that call, and he was a little surprised. Positioning is key for umpires. I would still like most of the umps to ask if players catchers pitchers etc if they have the ball in their glove, ask them you have the ball don't assume.

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  11. Ellis should have just headed off the field. He didn't ask to see the ball. Then we could have some more fun like the Hannigan ejection a couple weeks ago ;)

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  12. http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=15515801

    remember this play. He's a pitcher he didn't know!!!!!!!!!

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  13. Checkign that condesed clip, saw sam holbrook called a balk on Happ. How do you know if its a balk or not?

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  14. At 9:10 gibson looks at davis, what is the call?

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  15. I get a feeling that there will some ejections today. perhaps timmons ejecting buck showalter

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  16. There goes 1 ejection for the day, another one for the Mets, and another one for Dale Scott's crew. This time it is pitching coach Dan Warthern by CB Bucknor

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  17. Its amazing how bad Bucknor is. Play yesterday at first, time out call today and then missing the pitch down the middle....Ugh.

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  18. I think even if the catcher had come down with the ball Cabrera still would have been safe. I remember a day when the umps checked to see if the catcher holds on to the ball before signalling safe or out. Gibson's call was absolutely PATHETIC. I hope he finds a job he's good at some day.

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  19. Aside from the fact that the Dodgers simply quit playing ball at least one out too early, I'm really stuck on one technicality here that I am hoping someone would please explain.

    Two outs when Gibson call R3 out(errandtly), right? So that's the third out, game over. Who really cares what happens next--the game is over.

    Now, I'm sure there's some rule about the ump immediatley changing his call or something that you're all familiar with more than I, but even so, if the Dodgers started celebrating win because the ump told them they won and Padres are still running the bases after the ump told them the game is over; how can two of them score after the ump says the game is over...really makes no sense. Can somebody help me?

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  20. As for the comment above about what happens when the umpire changes his call - nothing. There might be a protest if it affected the game, but I would not hold my breath awaiting that verdict. This is simply part of the human element to the game.

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