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June 26, 2005 |
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April 18, 2010 |
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April 25, 2010 |
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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Good Series ... But ....
by Dave
Monday, June 05, 2006
I hope you had a chance to watch some of the Women's College World Series over the weekend. It's fun to watch some of the best players ever go head to head like this. There were plenty of homeruns, exciting finishes, and agony of defeat moments. As usual, there were some shocking upsets and surprises. The third biggest surprise of the tournament was a Big Ten team in the finals. The second was that the team was named Northwestern. The biggest surprise, at least to me, was the quality, or lack thereof, of the umpiring.
It is always fun to watch Cat Osterman pitch. I was surprised to see UCLA's Zaplatosch take her out of the yard in the elimination game. While not having a great year at the plate, the Bruins' catcher is a big game player so maybe that one doesn't quite qualify as unexpected. As Lisa Fernandez aptly noted, Cat was over-adrenalized and throwing her pitches through the break. You could have powered most of Oklahoma City for a week on the energy pouring from Osterman's eyes as she made her last quest for an NCAA title. You can draw your own conclusions from Texas' loss to UCLA but I think it is an abject study in a softball reality. It is not aggression which wins games but controlled aggression. Either Cat did not have ample time to warm up and take the edge off her adrenaline rush, or she didn't feel right and was trying to over compensate by throwing harder than usual. In either event, her world famous drop was staying up and that's what Zap drilled over the wall.
There were other fun performances to watch. I thoroughly enjoyed watching 5 foot 9 Stephanie VanBrakle pounding the ball in and out and flipping that incredible drop. But opponents seemed to be ready for her bread and butter pitch. When VanBrakle didn't have it, she was well replaced by Soph. Chrissy Owens showing that the Tide will rise again next year. But Owens could not hold down Northwestern's home run hitters and ultimately the Tide was knocked from the tournament by UCLA.
After last year, I fully expected a pretty much intact Michigan to make it to the great eight. But drawing Tennessee in the super regionals is a tough obstacle to overcome. With Jennie Ritter, and some others graduating, Michigan will have to fill some huge holes including the meteor-crater inside the pitcher's circle next year. Their 2005 national title, however, should provide the recruiting impetus for the team to be competitive for some time.
It was something of a surprise to see the ascension of the Northwestern University team. This was made even more surprising by their first game loss to UMass at the super regionals. For the second year in a row we have a "cold weather" school in the finals although almost half their roster consists of players from "warm weather" states including ace pitcher Eileen Canney. The team played an aggressive non-conference scheduling, often losing to top 10 or 20 teams and apparently learning from that tough schedule. They were crushed by Arizona in the second game of the year back in February (8 - 0 in 6 innings) when they were no hit by Alicia Hollowell. But Canney did not start that game and only came in to try to avoid being run-ruled. She faced just two batters walking one and giving up a hit to the other. But AZ has not really faced her yet. AZ ace Hollowell threw the entire game against Northwestern so they should be at least somewhat familiar with her. Even so, it will be one of the bigger upsets in softball history if Northwestern can actually pull this best of three series out.
Even as I go over and over the many great games which were played the past several days, one play sticks out in my mind. I cannot shake the image of UCLA Bruin Andrea Duran beginning a swing on a hard inside screwball but holding up enough to check the swing, then being hit on the right forearm, and the umpire apparently calling foul ball then seemingly changing the call to not getting out of the way of the pitch. Let me say that I was pulling for Northwestern in that game. While I totally respect the UCLA players, I don't generally root for the perennial powerhouse because I like to see other schools go for the title. But that was unquestionably a game-changing blown call. It is one thing when the batter is struck near the bat or the ball catches both arm and bat on a ricochet. But when the ball so clearly hits a batter's back arm, in such a low spot when she is so clearly holding up her swing on such a hard-thrown screwball, that's another matter. It seems to me to be impossible to not:
A) see that it hit her arm (just where was the ump looking? It wasn't even close to the bat),
B) notice the batter has held her swing (it wasn't particularly close),
C) actually hear that flesh has been hit rather than metal (you could hear it on TV, in person must have been more obvious), and
D) know absolutely that there was no getting out of the way of that particular pitch (it was thrown at an angle and screwing towards the batter at 66!).
I've seen pitches where it is difficult to know whether the body or the bat has been hit. I've seen questionable check swings. I've heard sounds which make it confusing whether or not the bat has made contact. I've seen batters not move out of the way of inside pitches. This particularly play wasn't close enough for there to be any question that the batter was hit by a pitch which she had zero chance of avoiding.
The call likely changed the outcome of that game. A badly blown call would be bad enough but that was not the only extremely poor call during the tournament. There were instances of line drives down the third base line which were clearly touched by players in fair territory before ending up as called foul balls. There were several plays at first where wrong calls were made. There were other hit by pitch scenarios in which the umps got the calls wrong. It is unacceptable to have bad umpiring influence game outcomes to this degree.
I really hope the TV ratings on this tournament are even higher than they were last year. I'm obviously a fan of softball's popularity growing. I sincerely hope we have good games for the best of three series between AZ and NW. But most of all I hope the umps do not influence the outcome of the championship round of the WCWS. And I hope this particular crew never sees this tournament from the field again. Every ump is entitled to a bad call ever now and again but the number and degree of these blown calls over the four day period was astounding. The NCAA cannot tolerate these sorts of performances at its marquee event.
 
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