He twitched!

That wasn’t a balk.

During yesterday’s Mariner game vs. the Florida Marlins (ahh, interleague play, otherwise known as the ritual humiliation of American League pitchers who are forced to hit), the umpire called a balk on Jeff Nelson in the bottom of the eighth inning. While it didn’t ultimately change the outcome of the game (Mariners win!!!), the Webmaster and I, thanks to the wonder that is his company’s product, watched the supposed “balk” a few times on the evening news to see if we could even see it.

As best as I can tell, Nelson’s head twitched toward third base by about 5 degrees for 2 seconds. The ump jumped on it and sent all the base runners a-movin’. Yikes. Talk about a touchy ump.

Since the M’s won, I guess I shouldn’t complain. But I don’t like nitpicky umpires, and the balk is one of the hardest rules to “get’ in baseball, and I don’t think that I can explain it fully here. But it’s a tricky rule, and this time, I don’t get the point.

Note to all M’s pitchers – if you have to sneeze or cough, make it look good for the umps and the cameras, because blaming it on allergies or something like that is better than a balk. And the rest of you M’s – do you think that when Ryan Franklin starts a game, you could score the runs BEFORE he’s pulled out? Just a thought.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 8th, 2005 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Sports.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Both comments and pings are currently closed.