Matt Holliday never touched the plate.
Matt Holliday never touched the plate. Period. The 2007 National League Wildcard one game playoff between the Padres and the Rockies was decided on a play that will live forever in the minds of baseball fans everywhere. With the score tied at 8, and with no outs in the bottom of the 13th inning, Colorado’s Matt Holliday stood on third while Jamey Carroll stepped to the plate to face the all time saves leader Trevor Hoffman. Carroll hit a short fly to shallow right that the Padres’ Brian Giles fielded on the run before throwing home as Matt Holliday tagged up and lumbered towards the plate. What transpired next was perhaps the most influential blown call in any major sport in recent history. Watch below and judge for yourself.
As the Padres’s catcher Michael Barrett sets up for the throw, he lets Holliday have a clear shot at the plate. But at the last second, while fielding the ball, Barrett swings his foot over to block the plate from Holliday’s outstretched hand. You can clearly see Barrett’s foot go down in advance of the slide and watch as Holliday’s hand is completely blocked from the plate. Holliday slides well past home, deflected away from the baseline by Barrett’s block at an angle that makes it impossible for him to touch home plate.
But, as Barrett tries to field the short hop, the ball pops loose. Barrett scrambles after the ball and begins to crawl/lunge towards Holliday to apply the tag as Holliday just lays on the ground dazed after taking a blow to the chin during his headfirst slide. Meanwhile the Rockies’ on deck batter isn’t jumping up and down in celebration. Why? Because he had a better view of the play than the umpire and knows that Holliday missed the plate.
Then comes the blown call that decided the game. The home plate umpire, Tim McClelland, meekly signals Holliday safe and the game is over. There is no demonstrative pointing at the plate that would signal that McClelland saw Holliday touch the dish. In fact there’s not much of anything in McClelland’s call, no conviction, no emotion, and certainly no accuracy. Its as if he just sort of said “close enough, let’s all go home.” and with that the game was over. Rockies win, Padres lose, thanks for playing. If this situation had played out in the 50’s or 60’s this would have been a different story. With no clear pictures to illustrate the play, the arguments would never be settled, the protagonists would never agree, and if we were lucky we’d get some confession that the runner missed the plate 30 years after the fact. But in 2007, with TV cameras rolling, with frame by frame analysis, and with the video clip spreading across the web, there’s no avoiding the plain simple truth. Matt Holiday never touched the plate.
McClelland’s statements are admittedly lame and lacking the directness that everyone would prefer. People can be very cagey in sneaking up on a point. Even Dan Patrick falls short of asking the question point blank: Did you see Holliday’s hand touch the plate?
Given the limitations of the camera angles, the key to a correct (or probably correct) inference is Barrett’s left foot—not what it seemed to prevent Holliday from doing, rather what Holliday’s momentum and left arm did to it.
Barrett’s foot doesn’t clamp down decisively on Holliday’s hand and wrist. The placement of Barrett’s foot is dramatically altered primarily by the force of Holliday’s thrust toward the plate, and secondarily by his own effort in starting to go after the loose ball.
From the non-trivial shift of that foot, I feel compelled to think that McClelland—who really had the only workable angle—saw something (and took an extra second to persuade himself that he’d actually seen it) that the available shots don’t allow us to see—Holliday’s left hand, or a part of it, sweeping over a few inches of the plate and propelling a tiny bit of dirt ahead of it.
The criticism I have of the analysis you offered is that it doesn’t give due weight to where Barrett’s foot ends up. By the time the force of Holliday’s thrust is fully expended, Barrett’s foot has been projected
all the way across the plate to its far side. Does that settle anything? Admittedly, no. It has to be acknowledged that the resistance of Barrett’s foot limited the progress of Holliday’s hand and caused Holliday’s left arm to fold back toward his body as the tape shows and as you described.
This wasn’t a pure collison; it’s a wrenching twist (or twisting wrench) of things that are moving.
WHERE, precisely, did Holliday’s hand stop its movement toward the corner of the plate?
That’s the huge problem with every video I’ve seen so far. The bottom of the video’s frame rises as the critcal moment of the play develops and crops off the view that would have shown where the progress of Holliday’s hand stopped, either catching a little chunk of the plate, if, in fact, that occurred, or peeling away a few inches short.
As for Holliday’s look back at McClelland… it doesn’t necessarily mean: “Ooops, I hope you didn’t notice that I never touched the plate.” It could mean: “I know I didn’t get much of it, but don’t force me to scarmble back there to do something I already did. Tell me you saw that.”
Last comment. See if you can pick up a a very thin trail of dirt on the plate that is there for a fraction of a fraction of a second and then disappears. I don’t think I’m seeing things. Something puts that trail of dirt there, and something sweeps it off a millisecond later.
By the way, I’m a lifelong Phillies fan.
Paul,
I admit that if you look at the play from the behind home plate angle it looks like Barrett’s foot does get driven across the plate since when the camera pans down you do see his foot behind the plate on the first base side. If Barrett’s foot had moved to that position in a straight line from where he planted it originally then I would have concluded that Holliday was safe. But the shot from third clearly shows that Barrett’s foot didn’t travel in a straight line to the point where it stopped moving. Instead his foot traveled in an arc. Look at that third base side video and you’ll never see Holliday’s arm extending towards the plate or Barrett’s foot crossing it.
I think McClelland blew it, but I can’t agree with calling this the most influential blown call in major sports in the last few years.
It was a blown call, but I don’t think it changed the outcome of the game.
There is no good reason to believe that Trevor Hoffman would not have lost the game by giving up another base hit to the very next hitter. He had nothing that night — every single batter hit the ball hard against him.
This is not the worst call in baseball, not by a long-shot. The Padres deserved to lose that game, as their star closer basically gave the game to the Rockies.
This is the worst call in baseball history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Denkinger#The_Call
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ADMIN RESPONSE: I agree that Denkinger’s call was worse than this one. I think my words about this call were “perhaps the most influential blown call in any major sport in recent history” and by that I meant the last 10 years or so. But the book still isn’t closed on this one, with every game the Rockies win the magnitude of this call increases.
padres fans are big babies, even though matt never touched home, barrett dropped the ball, so does it really matter that he never touched? by the time barrett grabbed the ball and tried to tag holliday he would’ve touched home plate by then.
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ADMIN’s RESPONSE:
Actually I don’t think so. Holliday looked pretty groggy after knocking his chin on the ground and made no effort to move towards the plate. Look at Brad Hawpe run up telling him to touch the plate and he just stays there lying on the ground without making a move towards the plate. Meanwhile Barrett is ready to make the tag when McClelland signals safe.
Bad call.
McClelland’s ‘explanation’ shows he tightened his thinking to a situationally erroneous judgment paradigm too simplistic for the actual event.
McClelland’s admittedly delayed thought process constricted to make the call based on whether or not Barrett still had the ball. At that point whether or not Holliday touched the plate was inconsequential to his call.
Every one in the video, with the exception of the umpire, demonstrated with their body language that Holliday had not touched the plate.
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ADMIN’s RESPONSE:
Quoted for truth, “Every one in the video, with the exception of the umpire, demonstrated with their body language that Holliday had not touched the plate.”
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So where is the analysis of Garrett Atkins’ homerun in the 7th?
If that had been called correctly, the Rockies would have won in 9 innings.
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ADMIN’s RESPONSE:
What did you expect this site would be about given its title? It about Holliday missing the plate. For the record (again) I think Atkins’ ball was a home run. I also think it was a harder call seeing as how the nearest umpire was at least 150 feet away. On the Holliday slide, Tim McClelland was standing maybe ten feet and he missed the call. About the Rockies winning, you can search this entire site, read every word, watch every video, and you will never even hear me speculate about who would have or should have won.
You sure have spent a great deal of time on this and you make a great case. You sound like Jim Garrisson talking about the second shooter on the grassy knoll during the JFK murder.
This is a none point. You would have never got the the 3rd out before we got another run….If the Padres did not get the call on the Atkins HR then the game would have never gone into extra innings.
This happens some calls are questionable and some are clear. Calls go both ways at times..but in the end it’s a balance and it’s part of the game.
I admire your passion though…
What a waste of real estate on the World Wide Web. I guess I should start a website titled “GarrettAtkinshitahomerunsoitdoesntmatterwhetherHollidaytouchedtheplatebecausethegameshouldnthavegoneintoextrainnings.com” Why don’t you take a cue from some left-wing nutjobs and MoveOn.
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ADMIN’s RESPONSE:
You are missing the point. The point is to expose the truth that Holliday missed the plate instead of accepting the ESPN opinion that the replays were “inconclusive.” When you start your site let me know and I’ll link to it.