Officiating mistakes can be the difference in a game

As crazy as it might sound to some people, I think the jobs of sports writers and the men and women that officiate athletic contests are somewhat similar.

Both jobs require attention to detail, and in some ways demand perfection from the athletes and fans we deal with on our respective jobs. Each profession requires a certain ability to put aside our personal biases and go about our jobs with complete objectivity.

Believe me, sometimes that’s easier said than done.

Maybe that’s where the similarities of the jobs end.

If I make a mistake, and I have made more than my share of them in writing a story, I have the luxury of the next issue to make a correction.

Being a sports official is a job where, as the old saying goes, “You have to be perfect the first day and improve from there.”

Yes, officials will miss calls, and I honestly don’t think they want to make a mistake any more than I do when I blow it.

And when they do blow it, they usually don’t have a chance to correct their mistake with something as simple as a few words in the next issue of the paper apologizing for the mistake.

Saturday’s District 2-5A baseball game between Crestview and Fort Walton Beach was, in my opinion, a game in which the umpires made two crucial decisions that went against the Bulldogs in a 5-4 loss.

The first decision came in the fifth inning as the Vikings rallied for three runs. The rally started when Mac Barton drew a one-out walk.

As Barton reached first base, Bulldog coach Tim Gillis alerted the umpires that Barton had batted out of order, which seemed to be true looking at the lineup card Fort Walton Beach coach David Garner had turned in at the start of the game.

In that lineup, Barton was listed as number 19 when he was in fact wearing the number four. Morgan Langley was listed on the lineup card as wearing number one when he was actually the player wearing 19.

If the umpires had ruled Barton batted out of order he would have been called out and the inning would have ended a few minutes later when Dale Smith flew out to Bulldog centerfielder Tyler Henderson. Instead the umpires accepted Garner’s explanation for the mistake and the Vikings ended up scoring the three runs after they had made two outs.

I have known Garner for several years and I don’t believe he intentionally did anything wrong, but by the same token there should have been some sort of penalty imposed on the Vikings for the mistake. In basketball if a coach puts the wrong number in the scorebook it’s considered a technical foul and the other team shoots free throws.

Things continued in Fort Walton Beach’s favor in the seventh inning.

The Bulldogs held a slim 4-3 lead and were trying to mount a two-out rally of their own with Nick Brown on first base and Tyler Davis at the plate.

Davis lifted a blooper pop fly into no-man’s land in shallow right field that dropped between three Vikings just in fair territory sending Brown to third base.

As Brown stood on third and Davis on first, the Vikings threw the ball back to the infield, which went into Crestview’s dugout, located down the third base line.

The umpires originally rightfully awarded Brown home and sent Davis to third. Brown’s run temporarily gave the Bulldogs a 5-3 lead. And the lead was very temporary.

Garner came out of the Viking dugout and argued that Davis, while standing on first and the ball still in play in right field, had asked for, and been awarded a timeout. With the play halted by the timeout there would be no run for Brown and Davis would be returned to first base.

After a rather lengthy discussion, the umpires ruled that time had been awarded wiping off the Bulldog run.

Down by a run, the Vikings got a two-run homer from Blake Becnel in the bottom of the inning to end the game.

I’ve been around baseball all of my life. I’ve covered hundreds of games and attended hundreds of other games. And that’s not even numbering the countless games I’ve watched on television.

The only way I know how to put it is the umpires made a bad ruling. I’ve never seen an ump award a timeout when the ball was still in play sitting on the ground between three fielders. In fact, there is no place in the rules of baseball that I know of for an umpire to grant time during a live ball situation.

The Baseball Almanac rules section defines time as, “The announcement by an umpire of a legal interruption of play, during which the ball is dead.”

Notice, the rule states the ball must be dead for time to be called.

The fact that Brown was originally awarded home and Davis third on the play raises more concerns about the way the ruling unfolded. At least one member of the three-man umpire crew thought the ball was live at the time the play took place.

If you ask most coaches about a questionable decision about the officials, they won’t say much for fear of drawing the wrath of, and a fine from, the Florida High School Athletic Association.

When asked about the ruling on the timeout, Gillis would only answer that the umpires do a good job and that was the call they made. When pressed on the issue, Gillis admitted that he had never seen a similar call.

Maybe Brown’s run would have been the only run Crestview would have scored in the inning, and the Vikings would have won the game any way. Maybe is a big word when it comes to guessing what might have been.

There can be no disputing that we will never know the answer to what might have been. We do know Becnel’s homer would have only tied the game if the umpires hadn’t taken Brown’s run off the board.