SAN FRANCISCO–The crowd at AT&T Park was in shock. The dugout was stunned. Brandon Crawford was floored.
On Thursday evening, Crawford launched a flyball toward the right field arcade at AT&T Park that was clearly going to land atop the brick Levi’s Landing wall before a fan reached a glove out and caught the ball on the fly.
On the field, umpires called Crawford’s smash a home run. But thanks to a challenge from the Cardinals’ dugout and a lengthy replay review from league offices in New York, Crawford was sent back to second base with a double. The replay ruling cited “fan interference” as the rationale for second Crawford back to second base. The Giants’ shortstop wasn’t having it.
“I would love to see that camera angle, because every single person that was physically at the park tonight felt that was a homer,” Crawford said after the game. “There’s no way there would’ve been conclusive evidence that it wouldn’t have been a home run.”
On Friday afternoon, Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy had an opportunity to respond again to the botched replay review, and the official Major League Baseball apology that came forward on Friday.
“They made a mistake, it happens,” Bochy said. “We all make mistakes so I think the best thing to do is be honest about it and they were.”
Did the apology make the ruling easier to swallow?
“I don’t know, maybe for Brandon it was,” Bochy said. “The fact that they owned up to it. Yeah, you do appreciate it. As I said, we all make mistakes. What makes it worse is when they stand behind that mistake and we’re positive that it was a home run and it was pretty obvious that it was a home run. They owned up to it, it’s behind us now and we’ll move on. But I think for Brandon, I’m sure he was glad to hear it.”
Bochy was asked Friday if he thinks MLB should be allowed to change stats after the fact, and award Crawford with a home run. He admitted he was in favor of that idea, but acknowledged that it creates a slippery slope, citing Armando Galaragga’s near-perfect game that never materialized thanks to a blown call on the final out.
“I think they should be able to, unfortunately, now you’re getting in a situation where you go back to the perfect game where they couldn’t change it,” Bochy said. “They get in the situation where it’s a game-tying home run, hey, it was reviewed. They overturned it. So now, you’re not going to be able to go back all the time.”
On Friday, Bochy said that if given the opportunity, he would have challenged the result of the replay review, essentially challenging a challenge. Though he knows that’s never going to be a possibility, Bochy was clearly frustrated by the ruling that resulted from Thursday’s review process.
“If they’re going to open it up to where you can challenge that challenge, which I probably would have done if I could have done that, I would have said, you know what, I’m going to challenge that,” Bochy said. “But you can’t do that. It’s hard to overturn that now.”