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June 30, 2024 • 14 mins
Zach & Zack fill in for Levack & Goz to discuss the putrid game managment, plus baseball trivia.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's love Ack and Gaze on theVoice of the Capitol Regions Sports Fan Fox
Sports ninety five, nine and nineeighty. It is love back and Gaze
here on Fox Sports ninet eighty.Here going through everything going on in the

(00:23):
world of sports, Zach as peoplethat are big fans of sports, do
you know what's the worst part ofthem? What's the worst part when the
management of them overrides the actual gameyou're watching. And that's something that's become
all too prevalent in a seemingly everyleague of sports that we're watching at this

(00:43):
point, whether it's MLB, NFL, NBA, UFC, everyone is having
an issues with officiating, with umpiring, with everything going on, and kind
of the big whats review we wantto take right now? Has there's always
been the issue? Is this acurrent issue? What changes can we make

(01:07):
or are being made to kind ofnegate the problems of umpiring, officiating and
everything else. Now I think watchingbasketball, football, baseball has become increasingly
more difficult from the standpoint of there'sso much interference coming from the refs,
the umps, whatever you want tocall them, in that's typical sport.

(01:30):
Is it really this bad? Oris it the fact that we have all
this technology, social media, everythinggets slowed down, everything gets magnified,
that it is now magnifying how horribleit always has been. And I think
that that is very possible. Imean, we've always whether it was you

(01:53):
know, I'll take it from abaseball perspective. In the media space,
you've always seen stuff about Joe budhCebe Buckner, Angel Hernandez, who were
just some of the worst officiators ofthe game. Two of them are still
are. One of them is stillgoing, which is Buckner. But you
know, it's just it's one ofthose things where, especially in the day

(02:16):
and age of video replay and socialmedia, and you know how focused we
are on kind of finding things totalk about during games where you can sit
there and just watch as officiating fallsapart before your very eyes, and all
you can sit there to say isaren't you a professional? Like this is

(02:39):
the highest level of the game,and yet I'm watching a strike that's in
the others batter's box and I'm seeinga guy get wrung up. See,
my issue isn't necessarily the bad calls, because it's human error. My issue
is the consistency we all know,playing little league baseball completely different than playing

(03:04):
major league baseball. But when youare playing baseball, learn to strike zone
as a batter. Mm hmm.Each MP has their own strike zone.
Now, I could tell you allright, from shoulders to knees, that's
my strike zone. That's how it'ssupposed to be for any batter everywhere.
But no, they have their ownpainted corners. Some umps are widening that

(03:30):
corner, some are shortening the corner. So if you're going to call it,
call it consistently. My problem istoo often, especially in baseball,
where we are seeing balls called strikesand strikes called balls too often in back

(03:52):
to back innings different ways. Ohyeah, that is my main function.
And I agree wholeheartedly on that issue. And I'm so glad that people have
started to do some things online tocounteract these points. I'm gonna shout out
a Twitter user who started this pagecalled umpire Scorecards, where he releases an

(04:13):
accurately counted scorecard of how the umpiredid the consistency of their strike zone.
It'll show the strike zone that theycalled or where they kind of went outside
of their strike zone on a consistencybasis, and it evaluates how much of
an impact the umpire had on thegame. Did the calls he miss matter,

(04:35):
Did the calls he miss make adistinctive difference in the outcome of the
game? And in doing that,we've seen umpires who have almost borderline perfect
scorecards, and those umpires have beenpraised online. But so and so often
do we see just awful calls thatlead to the outcomes of games. I

(04:58):
mean, look, what was it? The Rockies game the other night got
determined off of a a pitchclock violation? Yep, come on, And because
and I say that, because thedistinction of when a batter is looking up,
or when guys are ready, orwhen the clock should start counting,
all that is down to the distinctionof the umpire, yep. And it's

(05:18):
that it's this this need, thisconstant need of over officiating, and like
we need every part of the gameto be managed, where it just feels
like we've were losing some part ofit. Now could one argue that players
are becoming bigger, faster, stronger, it's harder to umpire the game to

(05:42):
an extent, but overall it's stillthe same game. And the fact of
the core concept has always been letthem play. You know, these athletes
are paid millions of dollars, peoplepaid to fill out those stadiums to watch
them play. And yeah, sofrequently we're constantly annoyed about the outcome of

(06:04):
games based off of calls that happened. I think that's always been the case
though, because going back to biasednessfrom fans. We expect you to call
gain a certain way, and thenthe fourth quarter comes, the ninth inningcomes,
m hm, we expect you toswallow that whistle. We expect you

(06:28):
to what you were calling consistently throughthe first three quarters, first six innings,
now the last couple innings, lastquarter, we expect you to swallow
that whistle. Like it has alwaysbeen a certain way about reffing or umping,
and I think it's just now scrutinizedmore because of the technology, because

(06:48):
of the instant replay, because ofthe coach's challenges, Like there was never
any of that at back then day. If I may argue one last thing
before we move on, give thedamn man is perfect game back? Angel
her Nan absolutely like, because thishas been a thing too that DAMILB has

(07:08):
been doing, is they have startedto look back at games where determinations may
have been wrong, the way thatcertain things were ruled may have been incorrect,
and the revising certain decisions. Thatis a perfect example. It was
a Tiger's pitcher who got robbed ofa perfect game where it was the ball

(07:29):
was at first, it wasn't evenclose, the guy was out. Umpire
in the moment called him safe,and that has never been overturned, it
has never been addressed. The umpirehimself came out and said, I made
the wrong call. This should bea no brainer, This should take two
minutes. We have that ability.Just do it, major League Baseball.
We're calling you out. We are. And to the fact that to be

(07:50):
honest though it has made that nohitter in particular, probably more famous than
all of the other ones. Butalso just get it to him. Bring
them up on stage when you're doingthe awards this year and just go how
hard would it? Just go?And in recognition for a mistake that was
made by us, the MLB,we are going to be awarding this no

(08:13):
hitter that was incorrectly ruled by usso long ago, and we're going to
wrong that right, right that wrong? Yeah, absolutely, And with TikTok
and all the social media and thetechnology. I did want to ask you
a trivia question. So, ohboy, you know, when you're late
at night, you start scrolling andyou keep scrolling until it's time for your

(08:37):
eyes to just say. I hadenough. I came across talking baseball and
they asked a question that I wantto pros to you. Seven ways to
reach first base? Okay, listthem all. So a walk that's one
hit two, this home run countis a hit that yeah, okay,

(09:01):
And you wouldn't be reaching for space, you'd be reaching reaching all the basis.
Uh past ball? Would that bewild pitch? Would that be because
third strike? You can take drop? Third drop? Third strike? You
were on the right line? Yep? Uh boy? Uh hit by pitch

(09:22):
four? Oh no, oh no, uh oh no, you can't.
I don't if I put the ballinto play and I don't get out.
Oh fielder's choice. Yep, that'sfive catchers interference six one more. Oh

(09:52):
no, I fumbled the bag error. There you go. Oh wow,
we got there. Oh my.I definitely needed the help. It was
painful, but absolutely we still gotthere. Now, one other thing I
wanted to ask you. We're notgoing to go through every single one oh
god, there are twenty three differentways to record an out. I'm not

(10:15):
going to ask you to no,but it's still just crazy that there's that
many. Did you know there isa rule in place that if you run
the bases and reverse, it isn'tout. I'm sorry. What? So
let's say you know how you havea man on the corners. Yeah,

(10:37):
first and third. You want toget that man home. So what do
you do? You try to getyourself caught in a pickle, so you
go from first to second. Thethrow is never made. Third, the
guy in third never leaves. Okay, well I really want that run score.
Let me try to steal first basefrom second base to try to get

(11:00):
them to make that threat. Ohmy gosh, that is an automatic out.
Interesting. I mean, I guessfair, but it's just odd.
Interesting. That happened in nineteen eleven. August fourth, nineteen eleven. Oh
my god. Runners on the corners. Man took off for second, hoping

(11:22):
to steal. Attempt would draw athrow and allow the guy on third to
score, but they did not fallfor it, so he simply tried to
run back the first I thought thatwas very interesting. It's definitely an original
idea as far as a way toto try and get it because you're not

(11:43):
gaining you're losing a base. Butit does definitely change the ideas of what
you're allowed to do on the field. Well, I mean, it reminds
me of a I remember if youif you know the Javi Bayez play where
he's he's going to first on aground ball and there's a guy coming home
yep, And so he starts like, all right, well I'll turn around

(12:05):
and walk back to home play becauseI'm about to get out because you're gonna
just throw the ball to first,and he walks the guy. He walks
the first baseman back to first.The first baseman tries to be slick and
throw it to the catcher to getthe guy going home out, catcher misses
him. Hobby Bye is all excited. He takes off for first. No
one backed it up, so noone covered it. Then the second baseman
came over to try and cover first, so then he went to second base.

(12:28):
One of those fun circus plays whereyou gotta play in ten time speed.
But yeah, but it's kind ofthe same starting idea where it's you
know, guy who wants to confuseyou and throw you off. So all
right, I'll go back home.One other unique way, And I think
a lot of us know this ifwe played baseball in our youth or Babe

(12:50):
Ruth or whatever little league batting outof order and often forgotten rule. Oh
yeah, batting out of order.That is a way to record and out.
Interesting. That's one I always forgetas well. Batting out of order,
on the other hand, isn't asrare as you think. It's happened
at least a dozen times since twothousand. Isn't that crazy. I don't

(13:16):
know what's the crazier part. Thefact that it's happened a couple of times,
the fact that professionals forgot where thatwhen they were supposed to go out
and play. And I'll give youone more and we'll move on. Passing
the lead runner. This is actuallyone I did know about, and it
was one that we were actually wasfunny enough Mets fans were laughing. This

(13:37):
was last year, I believe,where it was Nemo and Marte who were
both gonna go from Marte was tryingto do I don't know if he was
trying to do an inside the parker, but they were going from first to
home and Nimo started at second base, and Marte had caught him by the
time he was going home, butdidn't pass him, luckily, but he

(13:58):
did have to slow down or elsewas gonna do that rule It was mentioned
multiple times that's when you grab themand start pushing them forward, like go,
I'll be the caboose. Let's gogo, go, go, go
go go. So that that oneI thought was interesting as well. There's
a lot of them, twenty threedifferent ways to record an out, including

(14:18):
runners, interference, caught in apickle, thrown out, trying to take
an extra base, But those werethe three most interesting ones, and I'm
glad you knew one of them,at least I know I knew at least
one of them, guys. Sowe're having fun here on Levak and Guys,
obviously filling in Zach and Zag Zachsquared, Uh Baby Levak Baby,

(14:41):
Guys. We'll be back for onemore segment, and it wouldn't be fourth
of July weekend without one in particularevent, but it will be missing something
why Netflix may have done it right. We'll talk about it next
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