Curt Schilling is a prophet
Posted on October 9, 2009
Filed Under 2009 Season | Leave a Comment
I generally try to ignore everything Curt Schilling says. He’s not going to convince me to become a right-wing political nutjob and I already know that Barry Bonds is a jerk. What could I possibly learn from him, right?
Well.. if I DID listen to him, I would have known to expect terrible umpiring before last night’s ALDS game 1. When asked about the staff for the series, Schilling responded with:
Joe West is a pretty decent umpire. Greg Gibson and C.B. Buckner? They suck. They’re horrible, horrible and they are not the only ones. The first thing that comes to mind is, on a merit system or an achievement system to be in the postseason.
His assessment was pretty spot on. Joe West made a few terrible calls behind the plate last night but that’s to be expected in a 9 inning game. What isn’t to be expected is the complete mess CB Bucknor made at first base last night. He blew two VERY obvious calls and Lester had to throw an additional 15+ pitches because of it.
Both blown calls were made on Howie Kendrick at-bats. ‘Play A’ involved Youkilis tagging him (and being ruled a no-tag) and ‘play B’ involved Youkilis beating him to first-base (and being ruled in favor of Kendrick.)
If you take a look at the picture I posted, you can clearly see that Youkilis got the tag down on ‘play A’ and even contorted his body in a way that would allow Bucknor to see the play taking place. Play B was something that Little League umpires couldn’t even screw up.. yet this professional umpire managed to get the call wrong.
CB Bucknor was voted the worst umpire in Major League Baseball by the players in 2003 and 2006. Both times he received over 20% of the vote. Why is a guy like this working in important games like the playoffs?
I guess Schilling got it right for once: “They suck. They’re horrible, horrible and they are not the only ones.”
Comments
Leave a Reply
