Mike Matheny‘s Cardinals got a break Wednesday night, with an umpire in Game 1 of the World Series giving St. Louis an out on Pete Kozma‘s flubbed catch in the first inning.
But one umpire does not a final decision make anymore, and Matheny was undone by some simple math when he tried to argue the Cards’ case after Red Sox manager John Farrell successfully won an on-field appeal of the play.
Umpire John Hirschbeck gathered the umpires, and five of them — all but the one who made the incorrect call, Dana DeMuth — agreed that no outs should be awarded.
They explained after the game how they came to their decision, but FOX also caught live action of Hirschbeck’s reasoning, and it was pretty solid.
“There’s five of us out here,” Hirschbeck can be heard telling Matheny. “OK? And all five of us say we are 100 percent sure that that was not a catch.”
Matheny can be heard interjecting something like, “How many?” when Hirschbeck cuts back in.
“Our job is to get it right,” he says.
Ultimately, they did. Check it out in the video below.
