It wasn't a championship game or a potential perfect game, but I blew a call once.  Badly blew it in fact.  Now I am not implying I only made one bad call ever during my time as an umpire.  That would be silly and wrong.  What I am saying is that there was one particular instance where I made a call and as the words came out of my mouth I knew them to be incorrect.

It was so completely surreal for me too.  I was working the bases one night as part of a two man crew and a kid tried to steal third.  I moved into a perfect position where the whole play happened in front of me.  The catcher slid out from behind the batter and made a snap throw down to the base.  The kid stealing slid into the bag and was easily tagged out by the third baseman.  Yet for some reason I have not been able to figure out for the nearly twenty years since this happened I called him safe.  I did it loudly too.

I quickly turned to walk away from the play which was something I learned early on as an ump.  Make the call loud and walk away to reduce the chance there will be a complaint.  Well, this call was so blatantly wrong a complaint was inevitable.  The worst part was the coach I had screwed over was one of my favorite coaches around.  I had worked many of his games and I loved how he treated his players.  He ran out to me and quietly asked, "Jeff what happened there?  He looked out by a mile."

I lifted my head up and made eye contact and simply said, "I fucked up.  He looked out to me too and I have no idea why I called him safe."

Dumbfounded the coach just stared at me for a second.  Then he asked, "What do we do about it?"

I just shook my head and said, "I have no idea."  By this time the home plate ump was out there with us.  I asked him if he had seen the play and he said no.  I turned to the coach and said, "I guess the play stands.  I'm really sorry."

He stared at me for a second and as he turned to go back to the dugout he dropped this on me.  "You are better than this Jeff."

Most of the time I would like to think I was better than that.  On this particular play I wasn't though and like I said above I have no idea why.  My brain just flat out failed me. 

Obviously the events of last night have brought this story back to mind for me and I write this down because I want to hear feedback from both sides of the table.  Personally I would prefer rules be in place to easily reverse such a blatantly missed call.  I think umpires should not be so proud that they cannot accept being caught being wrong. I also feel that since replay exists at a level where the umpire is going to be scrutinized then they should utilize it.

However there is a sizable number of folks who think that such brain failures are a positive part of the game experience.  Tell me why you feel the way you do.  If it is some romantic notion about humanity then tell the story of that romance.  I am genuinely interested because I feel sorry for everyone who was involved in that game last night.  An evening that should have been special for players, coaches and fans turned into a sad affair.