Baseball's decline as an important part of the lives of the majority of America's sporting public was emphasized again late on Saturday night. It wasn't based on the conclusion of the Cardinals' 5-4 victory over the Red Sox, but rather the reaction to the play in question.
Third base umpire Jim Joyce and plate umpire Dana DeMuth made the decisions that allowed Allen Craig to score the winning run based on the "obstuction" of Boston third baseman Will Middlebrooks.
Joyce, DeMuth and crew chief John Hirschbeck explained the decision fully in a postgame news conference. The accuracy of the umpires' rule enforcement was indisputable, but then we started hearing this from the footballl crazies/baseball casuals crowd:
"Well, it's a bad rule."
It's not a bad rule. It's a proper rule. It's an importanrt rule.
You can't have fielders tackling base runners as they attempt to advance. You can't even have fielders tackling base runners as they attempt to retreat, unless it happens to be a first baseman named Kent Hrbek, and he makes himself look oafish enough to pull Ron Gant away from the base, and get away with it, and help the Twins win a World Series.
When that happens, we're all for it here in Minnesota.
I made it through the Cardinals' tie-breaking two-run bottom of the seventh, and the Red Sox' tying two-run top of the eighth, which only took about a combined hour, and was still hanging with it in the bottom of the ninth.