Fire Gardy

Well, these last two games have been great.  I can’t remember the last time the Twins had a comeback win.  Let alone two in a row against a playoff caliber team.  I didn’t think it was possible. 

It was great to see Baker get out of several jams, although it would have been better if he didn’t get into said jams in the first place, but whatever.  We could have been down by way more than four runs.

In other news, I was reading LaVelle’s post game wrap up and found this little gem:

Funny…there was a memo on Gardy’s desk before the game talking about how hard umpires are working to get calls right and that managers should understand that. Hah!

Um, what?  Gardy should understand when an ump blows a call because they are trying?  That is bogus.  If an umpire gets a call wrong he should be held accountable.  I’m not saying take the call back, but there should be some review process.  The powers that be (umpires union, Selig, whomever) should review these calls and if the ump did indeed get it wrong he should somehow be reprimanded.  Suspension, fine, something.  It should probably depend on how much that one call affected the game.  If Jones went on to hit a homer and the Rangers ended up winning, obviously more scrutiny should be placed on that botched strike call.

I also liked the point I saw in the comments section: pitch location is completely thrown out the window when appealing down the line.  What is with that.  If the ball is in the zone, call it a strike.  I’m pretty sure that pitch Jones “checked” his swing on was a strike anyway so why the appeal?  The homeplate ump needs to ring him up there.  End of story. 

At least we won the game, unlike that one in Oakland a few weeks back.  Another case of umps not being held accountable.  I think Gardy has said it before, but umpires need to be calling balls and strikes, safe or out, not inserting themselves into the game and affecting the outcome.  The “human aspect” of the game is the goddamn players not the umps.

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