Really close. On Sunday in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, with first and third basemen both out in the top of the first inning, one-time future playoff hero Jorge Polanco hit the third baseman’s bouncer. The runner on third was making contact, but the runner on third was Cal Raleigh, and while relatively fast for a catcher, the Squat Sultan wasn’t known for his speed. If the ball didn’t hit directly anywhere but the corner infielder, he would probably have had an easy hit. Instead, Addison Barger’s throw beat Raleigh by at least three metres (the game was in Canada, after all). But it’s still pretty close.
The pitches come in plenty of time and are never off target. To ensure he didn’t risk hitting the runner, Bugg wisely threw the ball to the right side of catcher Alejandro Kirk’s body (the first-base side). The throw isn’t very high either, but it does reach shoulder height. Rowley was running as hard as he could and by the time Kirk swung the catcher’s glove from high on the right to low on the left, he had shortened the distance to about a meter. Then Kirk made an important decision. He chose not to continue swinging his glove down toward home plate as Raleigh advanced on him. He reached up and grabbed a tall tag while sweeping the left side of his body away. Self-preservation undoubtedly played a role in this decision. It cost him precious centimeters (gosh, this didn’t feel right), and it almost allowed Rowley to sneak his right shoe between Kirk’s legs before his torso hit the mitt and landed at home plate. For the briefest of moments, the two catchers look like colliding galaxies, shattering and then spinning together as their gravitational fields intertwine:
In fact, the game went from looking like a sure win to an incredible close call. Maybe Raleigh was already involved, maybe he wasn’t. The call on the field was over and, incredibly, the Mariners declined the challenge. The video was never carefully analyzed by the New York replay room. The chief marketing officer of Zoom Communications, Inc. must have cried.
In theory, teams are supposed to stick with their challenges unless they’re sure the call in question will be overturned, but in practice, they’ve had two challenges in the playoffs and being able to ask the referee for a challenge means there’s actually no penalty for wasting a challenge. This would never have been wasted. This game looks to be as close as it gets, and it offers the opportunity to take an early lead in Game 1 of the AFC Cup. This is a given.
After the game, there were seven replays in a span of 55 seconds. Two of the replays were duplicates, so we got a total of six angles of the home plate game. Americans and Canadians leaned in front of their televisions and watched the 55 seconds intently, but even with some slow-motion replay, there wasn’t enough time to be sure. Did Kirk’s tag catch Rowley’s arm, or travel the extra distance to his midsection? Raleigh’s cleats are obscured by a clump of dirt and chalk. Did they get stuck on the front of the plate or fall off of them? Which happens first? The video below shows exactly what viewers at home will see. It’s impossible for anyone to say with certainty what happened after watching these clips:
First, obviously, we get live action, starting with the midfield camera and switching to the high camera once Polanco puts the ball into play. Even if the game is slowed down, distance and angle may make it impossible to tell when Raleigh touches home plate and when Kirk touches Raleigh:
Next, we got the view from behind home plate again at full speed. Rowley’s body blocks the view of Kirk’s glove, so it’s impossible to tell when the tag occurs:
The play happened too fast to tell what was going on at game speed, so the next shot was in slow motion. It’s shot at a low angle from down the left field line, meaning the camera is behind Rowley’s body, which again blocks his feet and Kirk’s glove:
The next slow-motion replay is from a bird’s-eye view above home plate. It was a nice shot, but Kirk’s left foot blocked the corner of home plate, making it impossible to tell when Rowley’s foot hit bottom. The high angle also makes it difficult to tell whether Kirk’s glove caught the base of Rowley’s right arm or went under it and touched his midsection, a distinction that certainly looks like the difference between an out and a safety:
What follows is a beautifully oversaturated shot from the first base dugout, likely using a super slow-motion camera to capture the swing check. Unfortunately, the angle means that this time, Kirk is between the camera and the glove, blocking the tag’s view. The low angle also shortens home plate so much that it almost disappears. It’s hard to know when the foot touches the invisible plate:
The final shot shows the home plate umpire’s angle of play (so much so that the umpire is almost completely blocking the camera’s view). As we’ll see later, this proved to be the decisive angle, but even in slow motion the human eye has trouble tracking the progress of the foot and the moment the glove actually touches the runner. Notice the look on Rowley’s face. He looks like a three-year-old who finds labels as disgusting as broccoli:
After the next batter threw out the first pitch, the broadcast cut to shots of an impassive John Schneider in the Blue Jays dugout and a relieved-looking Bugger at third base, then repeated the replay from an overhead view and the umpire’s perspective. Then the game continues. By then, no one in the family was sure if that decision was the right one, or if the Mariners’ risky decision to let the game go unchallenged would prove to be disastrous caution:
That was the decisive angle, and judging by the replay of the broadcast, it was even slower. Even at this slow speed, and even zooming in on feet or gloves, the difficulty of the call is noticeable. The replay official likely did not have clear enough footage to take any action but to uphold the call. Rowley’s bat sent a wave of dirt and chalk from the front of the batter’s box. You’ll want to watch this a few times before you start to understand where the chalk ends and the splints begin:
The view of the label is clearer, but not that clear. It’s obvious that Kirk did tag Rowley’s wrists instead of his belly, saving him precious centimeters. But because you’re looking at it from behind, the only way to tell when the tag actually occurs is to watch when the pressure on your wrist starts to deform the tip of the glove. The first sign is that the back half of the glove (finger side) starts to pop over the front half (thumb side). But even from this angle and at this speed, it’s still not as obvious as we’d like:
The dust cloud reached the corners of home plate just as the glove began to buckle. In fact, the white cloud of dust on the front of Raleigh’s heel really fools you into thinking it’s part of the shoe, and that cloud of dust is safe! But Rowley’s heel didn’t hit the exact corner of the plate. It deflected a few centimeters to the right, crossing the front of the board just a frame or two after Kirk’s glove began to deform, and another frame or two after a burst of dust. Raleigh lost by as narrow a margin as you can imagine. (Okay, I’ll say: Raleigh is a few millimeters behind.) Below is a side-by-side shot, with each moment of the action marked with a big “Now.”
Reasonable people might disagree even after seeing this video, but it’s the best we can get without having to physically go into a replay room. Now that we’ve got that out of the way and we’re about to get that out of the way, let’s go to Tim Horton’s.
