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.