ATLANTA — The NFL replacement refs are not there to kick around anymore.
Not to worry.
A familiar target has emerged.
Instead of guys wearing stripes, it’s the men in blue.
Major League Baseball found itself embroiled in another postseason maelstrom over umpires — and renewed calls for increased use of instant replay — after a disputed infield fly call led to mayhem in the stands in the one-game, winner-take-all playoff in Atlanta.
The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Braves 6-3 on Friday, advancing to the division series against the Washington Nationals. But this landmark game — the debut of the wild-card playoff under baseball’s expanded postseason format — will long be remembered for a ruling by Sam Holbrook in the eighth inning.
Andrelton Simmons hit a pop fly that dropped safely in left field after a mix-up between two fielders, either able to have caught the ball easily. Holbrook ruled the batter out anyway under the infield fly rule. The fans at Turner Field went nuts, littering the field with beers cups, buckets of popcorn and anything else they could get their hands on, leading to a scary, 19-minute delay.
Almost as quickly as the field was covered in trash, there were immediate comparisons to the NFL’s referee debacle. Someone at Turner Field even held up what was apparently a hastily crafted sign: “Replacement Umps??”
Former Braves outfielder Dale Murphy, who won two MVP awards in the 1980s, weighed in on Twitter.
He wasn’t alone.
“Oh my,” Murphy wrote. “Not believing this. Calls an infield fly when the ball is almost on the ground?”
“One game elimination and a call like that is made? Inexcusable,” Oakland Athletics pitcher Brandon McCarthy said.
“Wow. Infield fly on a 200 footer,” added Arizona pitcher Daniel Hudson.
Even out in San Francisco, where the Giants host Cincinnati in Game 1 of the NL’s other division series on Saturday, the call in Atlanta had everyone’s attention.
“I didn’t know it was an infield fly,” reliever Jeremy Affeldt said. “I don’t even know how an infield fly is an infield fly. I don’t know where the line’s drawn.”
Maybe that’s even an issue for some folks at MLB.
Baseball’s official Twitter site had a sentence in its profile that said “We don’t understand the infield fly rule, either.” Sure, it was just somebody’s attempt at humor, but that sentence was quietly zapped from the site as the trash was flying in Atlanta.
The infield fly is a complicated but routinely used rule designed to help the hitting team. If there are runners on first and second, or the bases are loaded, and there are less than two outs, an umpire will routinely signal an automatic out on a pop-up to an infielder, largely to prevent him from dropping the ball intentionally to set up a double play, since the runners must stay close to bases to keep from getting doubled off.
At issue was whether Holbrook, who wasn’t even an infield umpire (he was working the left-field line as part of the expanded six-man crews used in the postseason), should have made the call on a ball that went far beyond the dirt — at least 75 feet, maybe longer.
The debate largely centered on Holbrook’s contention that rookie shortstop Pete Kozma was in position to make the play, which is when the ump’s arm went up — right as Kozma veered out of the way, thinking left fielder Matt Holliday had called him off, and ball dropped in the grass. Apparently, Holbrook made the split-second judgment that Kozma was settling under the ball, when he was actually changing directions to get out of Holliday’s way.
