MLB says A’s-Indians call was wrong, but it stands: ‘Perfection is an impossible standard’

While baseball fans continue to decry umpires after the obvious botched call in Wednesday's Oakland Athletics-Cleveland Indians game, MLB released a statement Thursday that will do absolutely nothing to appease people who want the ruling corrected or who are calling for better replay procedures.

In brief: The call was wrong, but we're sticking with it. 'Cause, hey, umps aren't perfect.

Here's what Joe Torre (hey, you know him), MLB's executive vice president for baseball operations, said about the incident:

“By rule, the decision to reverse a call by use of instant replay is at the sole discretion of the crew chief. In the opinion of Angel Hernandez, who was last night’s crew chief, there was not clear and convincing evidence to overturn the decision on the field. It was a judgment call, and as such, it stands as final.

“Home and away broadcast feeds are available for all uses of instant replay, and they were available to the crew last night. Given what we saw, we recognize that an improper call was made. Perfection is an impossible standard in any endeavor, but our goal is always to get the calls right. Earlier this morning, we began the process of speaking with the crew to thoroughly review all the circumstances surrounding last night’s decision.”

If this were, let's say parenting, this would be akin to a dad saying: "Yeah, our kid stole your kid's lunch money. We're not going to give it back to you. Our goal is for him not to steal other kids' lunch money, but we're not perfect, so we'll talk to him about it."

Here's something else you might like: A story about umpire Angel Hernandez blowing a ninth-inning call way back in 1991 when he was a minor-league umpire.

If you missed it, or if you're an A's fan who just wants a blood-pressure spike again, here's Wednesday night's controversial play:

Baseball is back. Don't miss anything.
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