Mets overcome YoTU, or Marvin Hudson is a punk bitch

I have learned that you can’t stop YEAR OF UMPS, you can only try and prepare for it the best you can and hope it doesn’t cost your team a (perfect) game.  We at the NeoGAF OT MLB Thread have seen a lot of crappy umpiring in the last two years which resulted in the creation of this blog, where we hope to document the truly egregious stuff.  Take tonight, for instance.  The New York Mets (currently playing thier best ball of the year) played against the Nationals in Washington D.C., home to the White House and the hub of the nation’s political machine.  It figures that an ump would try to rob them in this game.

With one out in the eighth and the Mets down 2-1, Jose Reyes came up against Nationals righty Tyler Clippard and ripped a gapper to the left-center wall.  As Reyes rounded 2nd and headed for 3rd base center fielder Rick Ankiel made a tremendous one-hop throw from the wall to Jerry Hairston Jr. trying  to get Reyes at third.  The throw arrived seconds too late as Reyes slid in safely before Hairston Jr.’s tag, and immediately signaled for time as Hairston tried to check if Reyes was on the bag.  The Mets would now have the tying run on 3rd with 1 out, with a red-hot Daniel Murphy up… except for one problem: For some reason Marvin Hudson called him out.

Marvin Hudson confuses the timeout request with the punchout signal...

Reyes, of course, went batshit insane. He jumped up and yanked off his helmet, threw it to the ground and had to be forcibly restrained by Mets 3rd based coach Chip Hale.  I stood in stunned disbelief as it looked like Reyes’ hand never came off the bag in realtime, and Hudson wasn’t screened by anything and had a clear view.  As Reyes attempted to assault Hudson with his dreadlocks and Terry Collins picked up the argument, the slo-mo replay showed Reyes’ right fingers stayed on the bag even as he slid through the tag.  His hand never came CLOSE to coming off the bag, and YEAR OF UMPS had just struck again.

So instead of the Mets a productive out away from tying the game, they had 2 outs and Daniel Murphy up with no one on.  As a pissed-off Reyes paced in the dugout, Murphy then crushed a a solo shot to right field, tying the game.  The Mets would relinquish the lead the next inning in typical Mets fashion (dropped fly ball and no one covered 2nd base, passed ball, sac fly) but exploded in the 9th, scoring 4 runs to take a 6-3 lead.  The inning was punctuated by Daniel Murphy’s 2 RBI double; in which after Reyes slid into home plate he bounced up and threw his arms wide apart in an exaggerated “safe” motion, then appeared to point right at umpire Marvin Hudson as he walked to the dugout.

The funny thing here is that as adamant as Marvin Hudson was that he made the correct call, he had to know he was wrong. If not, why wasn’t Jose Reyes ejected for  flipping out? When was the last time a MLB player carried on to that extent and NOT get tossed from the game? I’ve seen Ozzie Guillen get thrown for less and if you saw the last video, he’s not pointing at Daniel Murphy walking back to the dugout there. In conclusion, sometimes you can escape the clutches of YEAR OF UMPS and overcome it I cannot effing wait until female androids replace human umpires.  Good Lord…