We don’t want to alarm anyone, but it looks like referee Jim Wolf gave Houston’s Yordan Alvarez four shots in today’s game against Rich Hill and the Boston Red Sox. See for yourself.
The score was 1-1 when Alvarez fouled Court No. 3 from Rich Hill, which made two shots. At that point, both points error on the screen and probably Wolf himself also seems to be on the same page. But then Alvarez received three hits on the No. 4, and that’s when things got weird. Because both Wolf, Hill, nor anyone else present, including the players on the field, seemed to notice that Alvarez was absent. So Hill kept throwing.
To be fair, triple attack points to the top corner of the area, but Wolf calls it an attack and then everyone keeps playing. Alvarez is top on the next court, so there’s no danger of fouling, except that all of our shattered faith in the men in blue (umps, not Dodgers) is further shaken. Three hits is like, FIRST RULE you learn in baseball. You get three. Teenagers know this. Kids who play kickball at recess know this. My mom, who never played or cared about baseball knows this. So how did at least twelve major League Baseball pros (fourteen if you include the announcers) miss it, is a question someone needs to answer.
Alvarez is unlikely to come off the field with a three-attack allowance. Giving him four is the violent option. And that’s before we get to poor Rich Hill, who these things always seem to happen with. Do we need to regenerate the argument for #TeamRobotUmps? Is this the “human factor” that people are always afraid to get rid of?
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