Don Denkinger Passes

Despite the negative attention, Denkinger handled the scrutiny with grace, later reflecting on the call ahead of the 2014 World Series between the Royals and Giants — Kansas City’s first since the ’85 Series.

“It’s life, and it goes on,” he said at the time. “I’m obviously reminded constantly that I made a mistake. You know what? I was an umpire for more than 30 years in the Major Leagues. I know I made a lot of mistakes. That one was just blown out of proportion.”

So a professional umpire blunders a relatively easy call with the World Series in the balance, and after three decades of reflection his conclusion is that the call was “blown out of proportion”?

(Bleep) him. He can burn in Baseball Hades forever, with the Black Sox, Bonds, and Bud Selig.

I won’t speak ill of the deceased but yes that call will be one for the ages.

I always felt that the baseball gods made up for 1985 with 2011 considering we were down to our final strike twice.

This topic also makes me think of Jim Joyce’s blown call to end Galaraga’s perfect game. Or should I say to extend Galaraga’s perfect game? It really is the only 28-out perfect game in history. Unlike the Denkinger call, I was not watching Joyce’s call live, but it was also terrible and in such a critical situation that it is along the same line of infamy. Either call would be hard a pill to swallow for an ump who takes pride in doing an accurate and fair job. Joyce cried about it after the game.

Of course replay would fix either of those now, but part of the problem is the umpire culture over the years that refuses to talk or budge on practically any instantaneous and razor close ruling they make. Errors are going to happen, but they maintain an arrogant culture about it all. Maybe it’s necessary in some cases. However, the more emphatic an ump is on a close play, the more skeptical I am.

If the ump culture was more willing to consult among themselves to make sure they got it right, these wouldn’t have happened. Certainly in both of these cases, one of the other umps would have told Denkinger/Joyce they blew it and it’s going to be a bad look if you don’t reverse it. Instead, many umps seem to double down and take it personally that the manager/coach/player objects. I realize umps can’t have a conference after every close play, but using context to consider the criticality of the situation would have served them better in some cases. Instead, they get to take being known as having made one of worst calls in history and the associated ridicule/scorn/death threats/etc. all the way to their graves.

I watched both of those live on TV, Euro, and my mind’s eye has always illustrated the Denkinger call to be much closer than the one at 1B adjudged by Joyce. Both were obviously wrong, but the former was obviously made during a vaslty more important point in time. I’ll add that although the blown Denkinger call had a lousy influence on the outcome of that ’85 WS, it wasn’t even close to being the sole reason the Redbirds weren’t able to secure their 10th WS Championship. The primary reason was a collective .185 BA, but many more failures during and after that 6th game can be cited starting with an easy pop foul that Clark and Porter allowed to fall into foul territory on a miscommunication on the ensuing hitter, Balboni, who singled immediately after receiving a second life. KC then botched an attempted sac-bunt that left the 2 KC baserunners at 1B and 2B with 1 out and a chance for a GIDP to end it, after which the Redbirds immediately squandered their good fortune in the form of a PB which allowed the 2 runners to move up to 2B and 3B. Then, after an IBB to PH’er, McRae, our old friend Iorg ended it. But it doesn’t stop there. The Cardinals had another game to win that WS and we all saw how they responded in that 7th game. In my estimation, the Cardinal’s poor performance and failure to respond and overcome some adversity had a much larger influence towards blowing that ’85 WS, than did Don Denkinger.

I like to think that there is no such thing as luck with any kind of sample size. I figure it is the same with bad calls. It evens out. So in the end it doesn’t matter.