However, I think the umpire did miss the call in this case and covered up by misinterpreting the rule. In their case, I guess two wrongs make a right?

Matt: Thanks for reading as well. The Knoblauch phantom tag is a different situation. That clearly was an incorrect judgment call. The Varitek play is about the interpretation of a rule. Varitek clearly touched the runner with his glove, it’s just a question of whether or not it satisfies the requirement of complete control in order to be considered a tag.

2. If the play was at home and someone ran over Varitek and he went flying back, the umpire would have waited to see if the impact of Varitek hitting the ground jarred the ball loose. If it did, he would have been called safe. Same concept should apply. Varitek had to dive to tag Willits and he has to hold on to the ball through the impact to the ground.

3. If this happened to a New York team or the roles were reversed and Boston was on the wrong end of this call, this would have been treated differently. See the instant replay controversy earlier this year. The Phillies were robbed of a game against the Cubs early in the year when a Mark DeRosa foul ball was erroneously called a homer and the Phillies ended up losing in extra innings. It barely hit the radar. It took disputed homers in Yankees and Mets games that raised a “red flag” for MLB to act.

The controversy should be that umpires consistently are too proud to ask for help when they should and the fact that five other umpires were available to help out on the call makes it an embarrassment that this wasn’t handled better.

That being said, it didn’t cost the Angels the game. That happened when the Angels allowed the Red Sox to use a three-man rotation through the extra day off and brought in K-Rod in a non-save situation. The bad call surely didn’t help things though.