LOS ANGELES — Maybe if the Cubs could have seen it, they would have had something to be upset about after Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Dodgers on Cody Bellinger’s ninth-inning home run off rookie Keegan Thompson.
But when it came to Jason Heyward’s opposite-field shot over fence leading off the top of the seventh, not even the umpires saw it well enough to agree on anything.
And so what was originally called a go-ahead home run by third-base ump D.J. Reyburn eventually became a foul ball that a video review “confirmed.”
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“It’s a game of inches — or, I don’t know, it could be centimeters or millimeters,” said Heyward, who responded to the two-minute delay for the review by lining a single up the middle on the next pitch.
“I never saw it,” he said. “I never saw the ball actually leave; I didn’t see where it landed. I didn’t see where it hit. I still haven’t seen the replay yet at this point.”
Reyburn told a pool reporter after the game, “Originally, I thought the ball went around the pole.”
But after his home run signal, the crew huddled, at which point the ball was ruled foul, which brought Cubs manager David Ross from the dugout to ask for the play to be reviewed.
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“I had doubts on the original call, so I wanted to get together with the crew,” Reyburn said “Based on the information they gave me, I wanted to change it.”
Despite a rush of Chicago-based social media outrage at the final “confirmed” verdict, the Cubs had trouble mustering enough certainty between the shadows and imperfect angle to get too worked up about the call.
“We still couldn’t say 100 percent to know it’s foul,” said Heyward, who went 3-for-4 in the game, including a double that led to the tying run in the fifth.
Ross said Heyward’s pole dancer looked like a homer to him, but also: “It’s hard to see from my vantage point,” he said.
“All we can do at that point is trust in the video.”