If you have been following Sunday Night Baseball for any of the past twenty years, you would have noticed that one of Joe Morgan's less redeeming qualities as a broadcaster is his reluctance to accept a dissenting opinion. Now, I'm not here to say that he's alone in this regard (I still think the WB made a mistake cancelling Road Rovers. Who cares that the ratings were bad?) but today's 438th edition of the Red Sox-Yankees Rivalry (TM) this season brought about this wonderful example of Joe's stubbornness (from MLB.com):
The Video
If you can't see the video, here is what happened:
With Nick Swisher on 2nd and no one out, Robinson Cano flied out to Jacoby Ellsbury on a fairly shallow fly ball. Swisher tags up and advances to third. Given the shallowness of the foul ball and Swisher's less than blinding speed, Joe Morgan thought that Swisher may have left early. Moments later, Paul Byrd throws to 2nd on appeal and Swisher is called out. On the replay where the catch and Swisher's tag attempt are synchronized, Swisher's foot is still on the bag. At worst, he left at the same time according to that view. For some reason, instead of agreeing with that assessment as Jon Miller did, Morgan somehow thinks he has the same view of the play as the umpire.
This leads to two questions:
1) How in the world can you have the same view if you're yards away?
2) How can you not see that his foot was still on the bag? Only because he leaned as if he left early? (though not in this video, Joe insinuated this)
If you think this is his first time overstating the margin of error of technology relative to his observation, read this piece from Baseball Analysts in 2006.
It is absurdity at it's finest.
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2 comments:
I love how at the end of the clip Joe says "I think we were deceived by the slow motion."
As if the slow motion REPLAY somehow is just a mere fabrication of the original play.
Plus, he called him a cheater, and never apologized.
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