Tartans

Friday night, Yankees-Royals. 2-1 Kansas City, bottom 8. Two on, two out, two strikes on Giambi. Now, keep in mind that I'm rooting for the Royals here. But Giambi takes maybe 1/8 of a swing. Not even close to going around, no matter how you define it. I don't even know if Moeller was going to ask for an appeal.

Home plate umpire calls it a swing, inning over. Way to be, Ed Montague.

This just happened again (Joba! is pitching), with the feared Mike Aviles at the plate. Today's version wasn't nearly as egregious-- it was hard to tell on the replay, although I don't think he went-- but that's not the point.

Is it a power thing? If you're the HP umpire, you have to be pretty much positive before making that call. You are taking away the opportunity for someone with a much better angle to make it. It is essentially like an NFL ref 20 yards away from the play overruling the ref who was 10 feet away, and getting it wrong.

I guess this is probably unrealistic, but wouldn't it be cool if the batter could appeal? Just like the catcher does, the batter can ask to get a ruling from the 1B/3B ump after a bad call on one of these. This would make sense because, well, they have a better angle.