Making the Right Call

While Gilda tried to fall asleep beside me Saturday night, I watched the end of the third game of the World Series with the sound off. As the last play of the tie game in the bottom of the ninth inning unfolded, I said to myself, “Runner interference should be called.” I was wrong. It wasn't interference. Rather, it was obstruction. The umpires ruled the Boston Red Sox third baseman impeded the St. Louis Cardinal runner from advancing unobstructed toward home. It didn't matter if he did it inadvertently or with intent. The rule book makes no distinction.

The result—the Cardinals edged the Boston Red Sox 5-4, taking a 2-1 lead in games in the best of seven series. It was unfortunate timing for Boston, but a clear case of obstruction. Despite what Bosox diehards believe, the umps had to make the call. (For those not familiar with the disputed play, read about it or watch any newscast today. It no doubt will be shown.)

I can sympathize and empathize with the umpires’ plight of having to decide the outcome of a game rather than letting the players determine it outright. I, too, made a critical call during a game I was refereeing that cost Dan’s basketball team a victory.

Dan was 12, playing on a school squad of fifth and sixth graders. As fate would have it, the paid referee failed to show up for a game. Having reffed some while a counselor in summer camp two decades earlier, I volunteered my services. As both coaches knew me, my integrity and ability to be impartial as a ref were not questioned.

The game was a nail biter. With just seconds to go Dan’s team led by one point. The other team’s best player had the ball near the foul line. He faked a shot and started to drive toward the basket. He shot, and missed, but I had blown my whistle. He had been fouled in the act of shooting. Parents of Dan’s team, my wife included, went ballistic. How could I call such a foul with only a few seconds left on the clock?

The ride home after the shooter made both free throws to propel his team to a one point victory was not a pleasant one. No amount of explaining could console Dan or reassure him and Gilda that a foul is a foul no matter when it occurs and it is the obligation of the ref to call it. 

Later that season the same two teams played for the league championship. I didn't ref that game. Dan’s team won.

Tigers Lose; Yanks, Mets Win

The Detroit Tigers did more than just lose the World Series to the San Francisco Giants Sunday night. They purged New York baseball of two forgettable, embarrassing memories.

Detroit reached the series this year by emasculating the Yankees. They swept the Yankees four straight, limiting New York’s scoring to just three innings over four games (39 innings). Their chief nemesis was a former Yankee, left-handed relief pitcher Phil Coke. He completely shut down the Bronx Bombers in all four games. Miguel Cabrera, this years triple crown winner and certain most valuable player, catapulted the Tigers into the World Series by smacking a home run in the final win over the Yankees. Detroit’s starting pitchers—Doug Fister, Anibel Sanchez, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer—manhandled the Yankees. Yankee fans were depressed.

Oh how emotions can change in a week. Detroit’s bats went as silent as  the Yankees’. San Francisco’s pitchers shut them out in two games. Detroit scored runs in just four out of 37 innings. They were as inept as the Yanks had been when hitting with runners in scoring position. Fister, Sanchez, and Verlander lost games. In perfect payback, Coke lost the final game.

The Yankees and their fans could feel a little less frazzled by the team’s failure in the playoffs.

And for good added measure, the NY Mets, their former all-star outfielder Carlos Beltran and their fans may sleep a little easier after watching Cabrera take a called third strike to end the Series when all of Detroit was hoping for a home run to tie the game, or at the very least a hit to prolong the contest. Shades of Beltran standing immobile at the plate, his bat on his shoulder, to end the seventh game against the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2006 National League Championship Series.

Vindication?  No. Absolution? No. Just recognition that hitting a baseball, especially at a critical time, is among the most difficult sporting feats. New York baseball, once the home of the Giants, salutes the world champions for giving us back some measure of sanity and acceptance that every season cannot end with a salute down the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan.

Painful Notes

Stand Up: Gilda left me an article from the local newspaper about the health benefits of working at your desk while standing instead of sitting. I’d seen TV news reports several months ago about the idea (some of the set-ups even include a treadmill) but had not acted upon it.

However there’s nothing like the incentive of your spouse asking, “So, what have you done about it?” to propel one into action. I took two plastic storage bins, propped them on my desk and, voilá, I am now typing while standing. I feel healthier already.


I Feel Their Pain: I can empathize with St. Louis Cardinal fans in the aftermath of star Albert Pujols’ broken wrist, suffered in a collision with Kansas City Royal Wilson Betemit. Betemit ran into the all-star first baseman as he tried to snag an errant throw. A three-time most valuable player often cited as the best in the game, Pujols will be out about six weeks. When injured, his team was tied for first place in the National League’s Central Division. It’s anybody’s guess where the Cards will be when he returns.

Pujols was hurt on Father’s Day. Some 25 years ago, on Mother’s Day, my softball team’s slick fielding first baseman, David L., had his elbow smashed on a similar play trying to catch a ball in the path of a batter running to first base. Now, the rest of this story is all hearsay as I was out of town at a business convention. But numerous sources corroborate the essential facts: we were playing Harrison JCC, at their field. With David writhing in pain and teammates organizing efforts to take him to the emergency room in White Plains, Harrison players kept pressuring our team to get back on the field to continue the game. Not the most sportsmanlike of conduct. We never really liked their attitude to begin with, but this iced the cake, so to speak.

Anyway, David never played again (though his two sons did when they grew up). His injury came back to haunt us in the championship game that year. On top of his injury, our second, third and fourth string first basemen were away, so we had to play a scrub, Alan, at first. The first two batters hit ground balls to short. Alan could not handle either throw from the shortstop. By inning’s end we had given up three unearned runs. One of our wayward first basemen arrived before the start of the second inning, we played flawless ball thereafter, but the deficit was too much to overcome. We lost 5-3. We finally won the league title some 23 years later.


Trouble Comes in Threes: That’s a popular saying and in this case true as it pertains to the name Weiner.

First there was Anthony Weiner. No need to dwell on that walking disaster, or should I say, tweeting disaster.

Second was the Saturday small plane crash that took the lives of pilot Keith Weiner, his wife, Lisa, their daughter Isabel and her friend Lucy Walsh shortly after taking off from Westchester County Airport on their way to Montauk. A real tragedy.

The third Weiner-related trouble came to my attention while scrolling through the Internet. Are you familiar with Michael Savage? To me, he’s a really despicable right-wing radio talk show host. How despicable? Well, the British have barred him from entering their country because of his invective. The Savage Nation is our third most popular radio talk show, which, again to me, says something about our country.

What’s this got to do with the first two Weiner items? Michael Savage’s original name is Michael Alan Weiner.


Wal-Mart Fallout: Does Wal-Mart discriminate against women in its employment practices? Thirty-two years of covering retailing, much of it spent watching Wal-Mart grow into the world’s largest retailer, leads me to say the Bentonville, Ark., company does not have a corporate policy favoring, or even tacitly condoning, discrimination. Do I believe bias occurs within its ranks? For sure.

Wal-Mart is no different than almost all other retailers, except in size, of course. By no different I mean that from time and memoriam retailers have favored male workers for almost all of their managerial posts. Women were to be tolerated as clerks on the sales floor and in the back office, but hardly ever given control of an enterprise or a department within it. Throughout most of the 20th century, few women reached the corporate suite, unless they started a company, like Frieda Loehmann did 90 years ago in Brooklyn.

I’m not going to review the reasons why women, who make up the majority of customers and often the majority of workers, fail to secure better paying and more responsible jobs within retail companies (they’re often similar reasons to what goes on in other industries). Rather, let’s understand that in a company such as Wal-Mart with some 3,400 stores in the United States, there are bound to be some managers who are less sophisticated, less open to change and progress, more set in the old ways than the ideal the law seeks to promulgate.

Does the existence of a few bad apple managers, okay, even a bushel of bad apple managers, justify a class action lawsuit? My sympathies lie with the women, but my intellect sides with the company. I agree with the Supreme Court majority ruling rejecting class-action status to the 1.5 million women who have worked for Wal-Mart. I encourage each and every women who feels she was a victim of discrimination to continue to challenge Wal-Mart in court.

(PS—I hope siding with the Supreme Court majority doesn't mean I'm getting conservative in my old age.)