Holliday Never Touched the Plate

As the Rockies get set to take on the Red Sox in the World Series, the key replay of the play that got Colorado into the post season remains missing. The “reverse angle replay” of the Rockies’ Matt Holliday’s slide into home vs. the Padres is still missing despite the fact that it could potentially provide a one viewpoint conclusive proof of the fact that Holliday never touched the plate. In a show of sympathy, Dairies across America have placed pictures of the missing replay on milk containers everywhere.

If you have any information about the whereabouts of this replay you are urged to contact this website.

Or, if you just want to know more about this play, then please check out the rest of the site.

Tags: Conspiracy?, MLB, TBS by admin
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Just how did the replays of Matt Holliday’s slide come to be described as “inconclusive?” On October 2nd, the day after the game, two major media outlets, one in print, and one in video, went with the “inconclusive” description. One of those outlets was ESPN whose coverage changed markedly from the TBS’ announcers call of the play. The other outlet was the Associated Press who went with a story that contained the description of inconclusive within the following sentence “Replays were inconclusive on whether Holliday touched the plate with his left hand or was blocked by Barrett’s left foot.” Together these two assessments carried the message to America that there were in fact no replays that showed the play clearly.

While its hard to create a chronology of how the description of “inconclusive” came into being with 100% accuracy, I’ll try to outline what I feel are the major points in the days right after the game.

1. Oct. 1st - The TBS broadcast: When the play was reviewed live on air during the TBS broadcast of the game, the key comment was: “the hand never got home plate.” If you click the “Carroll drives in Holliday” link on this page under the More Coverage related links section you will hear the comments PLUS you will see the only still frame I have been able to locate from the “reverse angle replay” first base camera.
2. Oct. 1st -ESPN post game Sportscenter: It was during this broadcast that the word “inconclusive” first appeared. When showing the replay in slow motion the key comment was, “More importantly Michael Barrett sticks out his left foot blocking Holliday from touching home plate. Did he touch home? Yeah ,Ump says yes but we look at it again, and inconclusive to maybe no.” While the word “inconclusive” is used, its clear from the context that ESPN thought it was highly possible, or at least more likely, that Holliday missed the plate.
3. Oct. 2nd - AP story by Arnie Stapleton: The AP story by reporter Arnie Stapleton contained the fateful phrase “replays were inconclusive on whether Holliday touched the plate with his left hand or was blocked by Barrett’s left foot.” What we don’t know is if Mr. Stapleton ever saw the reverse angle replay from the first base cameras. This story is widely featured in online and print media and represents the dominant assesment of the replays at the time.
4. Oct. 2nd - Bud Selig weighs in on the play: On ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption, Tony Kornheiser notably railed against the call deriding it as a blown call. Significantly however, later in the program (here is ESPN’s podcast link) Bud Selig offered his opinion on if Holliday touched the plate, ” I really believe he did, but if I supose somebody said they were inconclusive that would not be a bad answer.” So here you have the commissioner of baseball stating for the record that he feels a description of “inconclusive” would not be a bad way to describe the replays. It’s impossible to know if this pronouncement colored ESPN’s view of the play but that can’t be ruled out.
5. Oct. 2nd - ESPN next day Sportscenter: The following day, when many were tuning in to see the play for the first time, ESPN changed its assessment of the play. In this clip Steve Levy, Orel Hershiser, and Tim Kurkjian debate the slide before Kurkjian offers the final pronouncement of “I don’t think he got to the plate either, but its inconclusive.” You’ll notice that ESPN uses a heavily cropped set of replays this time, even cutting out the plate in some spots. The message sent on Oct 2nd by ESPN was that you could have an opinion about the slide but that the replays would be inconclusive. Sadly I don’t know the taping times of these two shows but if PTI were taped first, it is possible that Selig’s comments helped shape Kurkjian’s opinion.
6. Oct. 3rd - AP story by Jim Litke: This story by Jim Litke covered commissioner Selig’s appearance on PTI and was widely syndicated in print and online media. The pertinent excerpt from the article is ” ‘But if somebody said it was inconclusive,’ Selig said during an ESPN interview, his consensus building side peeking through again, ‘that would not be a bad answer.’ ” Litke seems to insinuate that Selig’s message is designed in part to lay down MLB’s official position on the play, that the replays were inconclusive.

From there the word “inconclusive” was cited by multiple sources and represented the dominant opinion in media accounts of the replays. Of course the use of the word “inconclusive” to describe replays of Holliday’s slide has other potential root sources. The word could have been borrowed from the vernacular of NFL replays. since no lexicography has yet been defined for the evaluation of baseball replays, it seems that the terms of Football’s replays may have been called in to pinch hit. There is also the possibility that the replays are in fact inconclusive. But before we assume that, we’d have to know what happened to the missing “reverse angle” first base camera video. And even without that missing footage, we have to explore the possibility that, while no single replay angle shows the whole play, we can in fact combine various camera angles to obtain conclusive proof that Holliday missed the plate. That is one of the things I have tried to do on this site, and despite the handicap of not having access to original footage, I feel that goal has been accomplished. Why none of the major media outlets have undertaken similar steps to prove the matter either way is debatable.

What isn’t debatable is that the initial impression of the TBS broadcast crew that had access to all of the replays including, presumably, the “reverse angle,” was that Holliday’s hand “never got home plate.” Somehow along the way, this original source assessment was discarded in favor of the term “inconclusive” and it remains to be seen if the descriptive pendulum will once again swing the other way.

Tags: Conspiracy?, ESPN, MLB, TBS by admin
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ESPN’s Sportscenter used at least two different sets of highlights when replaying Colorado’s Matt Holliday’s slide into home vs. the Padres. On the Sportscenter show that aired following the game the footage used was from the TBS feed. They showed replays from four cameras, one down each foul line, and three different views from behind home plate. The views of the slide were good, one shot even shows home plate umpire Tim McClelland still moving into position as Holliday attempts to touch the plate.

The next day another Sportscenter show aired that again used the TBS footage, but with only two angles shown, and more importantly with the framing altered so that less of the slide could be seen. Compare the shots contained in the image below.

What makes the change in framing of the replay shots curious is that they were used in a segment where the three ESPN analysts were specifically addressing the question of whether or not Matt Holliday touched the plate. You can’t see Tim McClelland still moving as the play was happening. You can’t see see the on deck hitter Brad Hawpe’s lack of celebration as he watches the play. You can’t see how far Holliday’s body moves away from the third base line as he tries do dive around the tag. After the abbreviated and altered shots were shown, Tim Kurkjian dismissed the issue by saying, “I don’t think he touched the plate either, but its inconclusive.” Really? Well it seems to me that if you are going to address the question of if Matt Holliday touched the plate, that it might be a good idea to use the best replays possible. If you’re ESPN and you’re going to tell your viewers that the replays are “inconclusive” it just doesn’t make sense to use fewer replay angles and then alter the framing of the replays you do show so much that you actually cut out the plate during the tag. In fact, I would argue that that you should make an extra effort to find the best replays and perform your best analysis possible, not to just throw some inferior clips out there and then label them “inconclusive.”

It is an indisputable fact ESPN altered the replay clips of Holliday’s slide so that they showed less detail the day after the game than they did post game. The real question is why did they do it? Here are the best possible answers that I can come up with,

1. They felt the new shots were actually better than the first set and showed the play more clearly.
2. They wanted to get rid of the MLB/TBS logo.
3. They were trying to purposely shape the story so that the replays would be considered inconclusive.
4. ?

If it was choice #1, ESPN was sadly mistaken and did not exercise due journalistic diligence. If it was choice #2, ESPN is guilty of making a choice that resulted in the footage not being attributed to MLB/TBS. If it was choice #3, however, well that’s just plain bad and opens up a whole host of shady issues. Issues like, Why are they changing the clips? Who told them to change the clips? etc. I threw in #4 because there could be other reasons so you can lump them all in here.

Just so you can see the original ESPN clips, I’ve placed links to them below as well as an embedded YouTube link to where I have extracted just the replays from both Sportscenters and compare them directly.

Post game ESPN Sportscenter clip

Next day ESPN Sportscenter clip

Tags: Conspiracy?, ESPN, HNTTP's Videos, MLB, TBS, Video posts by admin
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Is Major League Baseball involved in a cover-up or effort to bury the story about the blown call that allowed Matt Holliday to score the winning run vs. the Padres in the 2007 National League wild card playoff game?

It just wouldn’t be the Internet without a crackpot conspiracy theory so this idea is just crazy talk, but, is it really that impossible? Or maybe it just looks like a cover-up as a result of the media not wanting to anger MLB by showing that umpires are fallible. One thing that has struck me is the lack of any major TV or media outlet showing any video clip or photograph that they claim shows conclusively that the safe call was incorrect. This fact hasn’t escaped Tim McClelland, the home plate umpire who called Matt Holliday safe. In a recent interview with Dan Patrick, McClelland used some curious logic to defend his call.

McClelland: I feel that I… got the call right. (pause) Because I’m not sure that there’s a replay that shows that I got it wrong so I think I got the call right. (pause) I believe I got the call right.

McClelland basically maintains that he “got the call right” because there isn’t a replay that proves him wrong. Of course McClelland forgets to mention that there also isn’t a replay that proves him right either. Think about that. It’s been four days since the disputed play and there has still been no definitive proof of the call yet released by MLB or any media outlet. Somehow, even with a multitude of TV cameras and full complement of photographers covering the game, nobody has yet managed to come up with a single photo or video that exonerates McClelland and proves that his safe call was correct. I guess we are supposed to believe that nobody managed to get a clear shot of the play? Sure. It’s the bottom of the 13th and the winning run is about to score and nobody got the shot? Are we supposed to think that all the cameras were somehow magically not focused on the one spot where they all should have been pointing? Or do we chalk this up to the ineptitude of the TBS crew? And while there may be no single replay that gives you a clear shot (there is no Questec system at Coors and if there was I suspect Selig would have ordered the footage burned) its easy to see that Holliday never touched plate if you combine the views from multiple cameras)

To find any potential motivation for MLB to suppress the story you only have to look at the NFL and NBA. MLB doesn’t need a scandal to compare with kennel owning QB’s and point shaving Referees. With the playoffs in full swing, MLB doesn’t want to have a controversy over the quality of officiating and the media is reluctant to start that firestorm since they have nothing to gain from it and instead they are sweeping the whole thing under the rug and hoping it will go away. I’m not the only one to have this thought. Check out this quote from Bleeding Pinstripes, a New York Yankees blog.

TBS had their baseball post-season debut tonight with this play-in game, and it ends, well…wrong. What do you do? Here they are, wanting to show everyone that they can cover this celebration, trying to prove that they can hang with their new coverage team. So there is the last play of the game, called dead wrong by home-plate ump Tim McClelland. And they are glossing it over so it doesn’t ruin their story. Sure, they mentioned it, and they’re admitting that it was wrong, but this is the story, boys. Sorry it’s not what everybody wants, and sorry it’s going to make MLB extremely uncomfortable over the next few days, probably longer.

In the wake of the recent Mike Winters suspension, MLB doesn’t need more bad coverage of the umpires and its a certainty that the media knows this. And while we don’t know why every media outlet is giving MLB and TBS a free pass on the issue of the blown safe call, we can guess that they are either censoring themselves, that they don’t consider that a blown call determining who gets in the playoffs is newsworthy, or it has been been “suggested” to them that they bury the story.

If McClelland did blow the call, and I think he did, I don’t believe it was on purpose or with any malice. He just made a huge mistake at a time when it couldn’t be overlooked or swept under the rug. In all fairness, if this blown call happens during the regular season, or in the middle of a game, it gets forgotten relatively quickly. But since it was the call that decided the game between San Diego and Colorado in the bottom of the 13th its just not going away anytime soon and you just can’t make the story disappear as much as MLB would like it to.

Tags: Conspiracy?, MLB, McClelland, TBS by admin
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