We Have Another Strong Challenger for Worst Baseball Call of All-Time

I truly don't even know what we're supposed to say anymore. As long as Major League Baseball keeps the same umpires employed for decades, this stuff is going to keep happening. Just this season, we've seen at least three calls — Alec Bohm in Atlanta, the "obstruction" call in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago and now this — that could all reasonably be considered the worst any person has ever seen.

But with this one in Cleveland today, I guess we have umpires who just aren't watching the game anymore. That's my only logical guess as to what happened here.

It's actually the home plate umpire's fault more so than the third base ump's, because he should have obviously rung Eddie Rosario up with no problem — you know, because his body did a 180-degree turn with the bat in hand — without ever appealing down to third. I can at least somewhat excuse the guy who's 90 feet away, especially if he thought maybe he saw what happened incorrectly since the home plate ump asked for help. The third base umpire probably thought he was going crazy when the call came to him.

I mean, Rosario literally ends up with his back facing third base. I'm running through scenarios in my head of how not one, but two umpires could thing he contorted his body around like that without his bat crossing home plate. I've got nothing.

Whatever happened between those two, it's May 12 and we've already had more than a season's worth of inexcusable bullshit from the MLB umpires. I continue to hope against hope that something will be done, but I think we all know that's not going to happen. You just need to pray that your team is on the right end of more of these egregious fuck-ups than the wrong end, because they're going to continue happening.

Thank you, Rob Manfred.