Carl Crawford was up with Reed Brignac at first in the Rays-Orioles game last night. Crawford quite obviously checked his swing at what appeared to be ball four. Brignac begins trotting down to second base as is right and proper.
Except home plate umpire Kerwin Danley quite slowly and quite incorrectly ruled that Crawford went around, transforming Brignac’s trot into the slowest steal attempt in recorded history. Matt Weiters threw down to second to complete the rare not-strike-him out, shouldn’t-have-thrown-him-out double play.
The video can be seen over at MLB.com. As can a reference to the fact that Danley had taken a ball off the mask earlier in the game which both Carl Crawford and writer Bill Chastain seem to think led to the slow, wrong call.
