veritek made the tag, took a couple steps, hit the ground and the ball came out. he had total control of the ball for the duration of the tag. though why he didn't simply throw to the third baseman and let him make the tag i'll never know.

the reason this case is different, king, is that it has to do with the idea of control. those other cases you mention involve a fielder making a catch. of course it's necessary for him to demonstrate that he has the ball in his glove beyond just the motion of catching it (though it sounds to me like bell got jobbed on that one).

veritek had the ball the whole way, only dropping it at the very end after the play was over, and not because of jarring from the tag. if we were to start expecting "continuation" of the type you mention in every circumstance, it seems to me that puts even more onus on the umps to stare myopically at every play trying to decide how long the ball is held, so i don't see how that makes things simpler.

nothing could be a more amusing epilogue to the sinking of the good ship smear and this whole right wing nutjob nightmare we've been living than this story -- i demand visuals! if this were a comedy film, we'd have a shot of this hoser during the closing credits as the bars slam and 50 hardened criminals close in on him in the darkened cell... of course, i wouldn't actually wish that on anyone, but still.

alas, real life intervenes, and the race isn't over, and so on and so on.

no, really. so the race would inevitably "trend obama"? glad to hear it, but it sounds like schmidt et al. are laying the groundwork for a major do-over in '12, perhaps with palindrone at the top of the ticket.

look, the reason the race is still shockingly close despite all the issues that favor dems is that the country has been, is, and will be hardened along partisan lines in ways that have been building for a generation.

also, all the "shocks" that schmidt was planning in the campaign pale in comparison to the major economic shock that everyone's feeling. it's fireworks in the midst of a tsunami.

though i'll admit to some bosox bias, i didn't really blink at the call. comparing it to a play at the plate is apples and oranges, dude, for the same reason comparing it to a play in the outfield is.

a play at the plate implies that the catcher has just received the ball and must control it at the moment of impact with an incoming runner. fair enough. explain to me how that compares with varitek catching the ball, running with it for 90 feet, tagging willits and only then dropping it.

bottom line is, it was the right call. sure there ought to be precedent somewhere, but the principle seems sound to me.

and then it's back to work, i swear. and again, jason g., you're confusing this with a play in which "catch-and-control" is at issue. varitek caught and controlled the ball for a good 5 seconds / 90 feet prior to the tag.

i agree with the previous poster, though, who wondered why more people weren't questioning this strategy. with a runner on third and one out, only two things can go wrong: a pop up or a strikeout. anything else and you've got a reasonably good shot at getting the runner home. you've got the same batter at the plate who just singled home the game winner the night before, for god's sake! suicide squeeze was a cool idea, but too many things can go wrong -- as we saw. ironically, the grounder aybar then hit would probably have scored the run, even with a drawn-in infield.

finally, am i crazy, or did willits have a better shot at lowrie at first base than bay at home? given how fast he closed on the ball and the fact that lowrie was not running hard, i think he had a good shot. of texiera had abandoned his base, but if he hadn't...

aka elephantman, troll, tiberius, whateveryournameis:

i have a few more "closing credit" sequences on the great tragicomedy that has been the republican hegemony these past eight years (this, to go along with the scene of corsi bending over in kenyan prison):

scene: long shot of mccain cursing and throwing out his back as he's beaten in shuffleboard by some geezers in Sun city, az;

scene: overhead shot of palin losing it as she struggles to scrape her ice-covered windshield in an empty alaskan parking lot a la william h. macy in fargo;

scene: side shot of george w. bush shuffling uncomfortably at the ribbon-cutting ceremony to his new library at smu while a smattering of nervous weasel administrators skitter about the otherwise empty room;

scene: quick cuts of greasy rightwing nerds all over the country cursing at their computers as they read the results election day

----end credits

far funnier and nastier images scroll through the mind, but these seemed appropriate for now...

did this suddenly turn into a foreign policy debate? i thought we did that two weeks ago.

nice job choosing the questions.

is really where it's at. one word for you: greed.

if teams would play double-headers like they used to, we could get through the season two weeks earlier, still have all the playoffs, and finish by mid-october.

baseball won't do it because they don't want to give away anything for "free."

likewise with the series start dates: we don't need to wait till thursday or friday every time a new round begins. and they don't need to be at 8 or 9pm. i remember sitting at home watching AFTERNOON world series games during the week. if you're a baseball fan, you will find a way to watch them.