It has been a pretty wild couple of days to kick off the 2016 baseball season. It only took three days to have a controversial call, or lack thereof. Of course, you leave it to the New York Yankees to do so. During the 8th inning of the Yankees/Astros game, with the game tied, a ground ball picked up by Dellin Betances was overthrown to first base allowing the runner on third base to score. This turned out to be the game winning run. Manager Joe Girardi immediately came out to argue the call because the runner was not in the base path causing Betances to try and throw over the runner. The runner, Carlos Correa, was clearly on the grass which the replay showed. This is not reviewable by replay, if it were to be overturned the umpires would have to unanimously agree on it. They didn’t, the call stayed the same, and the Yankees immediately called for a protest of the game.
Yankees Protest Called Off: Why?
Now the bad news for the Yankees is that no protest of a game has been upheld since the infamous George Brett pine tar incident, which coincidentally was against the Yankees. The good news for them was that the evidence was clear, Correa was in the grass and not the baseline and that caused Betances to have to make an errant throw. If there were any time to uphold a protest it would be now, with replay readily available at all different angles it would be easy to do so, especially since viewers can clearly see it just off the angle shown on TV.
So why call off the protest? I don’t care if it’s the first game of the season, the team lost because of that. If it comes down to missing the playoffs or not winning the division because of one game, it’s going to be because of that game. The Yankees had a chance to win the first game protest in 33 years, but they balked on the opportunity and decided to walk away with their tails between their legs. I can hear Yankee fans saying “if George were alive he would’ve never let this happen.” But they have every right to say that because I don’t think he would have let that happen. He would have protested the game like they should have.
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