Stolen Victory

May 8, 2007

By DailySkew

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For seven innings at the Stadium last night, the buzz of Roger Clemens’ return and Matt DeSalvo’s impressive debut had good feelings emanating throughout the crowd. Then, with one awful call by an umpire and one crushing mistake by Mariano Rivera, it all came crashing down. The Mariners stole a 3-2 win from the Yankees to earn a split of the four-game series, as Adrian Beltre drilled a tiebreaking home run to left-center field off Rivera with two outs in the ninth. That tie was made possible by second-base umpire Gerry Davis, who ruled pinch-runner Willie Bloomquist safe on a stolen base attempt in the eighth even though Jorge Posada’s throw beat him by a few feet. “You guys saw the replay,” a fuming Posada said. “There’s nothing to talk about.” Even Davis admitted after the game he had blown the call, likely costing the Yankees a win in the process. “I didn’t miss the call,” Davis said. “I kicked the — out of it.” Don Mattingly, managing the team during Joe Torre’s one-game suspension, did not argue the call. Perhaps he should have, since Kenji Johjima’s bloop single to right field then scored Bloomquist to tie the game at 2. “It’s hard to tell from the bench if his hand was in or not,” Mattingly said. “Until you see the replay, you don’t realize what it was. What are you going to do? It’s just part of the game; we have to accept it.” While the majority of the Yankees were upset over the call, Rivera placed the blame squarely on his own shoulders. “It looked like he was out, but I wouldn’t say that cost us the game,” Rivera said. “I cost us the game.”

The runner was out by 3 feet…one of the worst calls ever. Mattingly should have came out to at least show everyone he has some fire in his belly, but he’s too much of a good guy to argue- he’s Enlightened and inexperienced as a manager!! If Torre was there, he would have came out because Damon, Cano, and Jorge signaled that he was out. I knew Donnie wouldn’t come out for the same reason he says in this article, but in my mind, being a manager is about gaining respect of the players and umpires by not “accepting” close calls. You still have to go through the motions and argue calls. Let’s hope Joe Torre gave that advice to Donnie Baseball after the game. Joe didn’t look too well sitting in the crowd watching all of this.