– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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BALTIMORE — The best compliment baseball umpires can receive after a game, like almost all sports featuring referees, is that there isn’t a need to bring up their names at any point — outside of a human interest story, perhaps — because the contest moved on without any controversy. Or, better yet, a questionable call was ruled correctly and that fact, and not the official’s name, ends up being mentioned in highlight reels.
Sports fans, meet Major League Baseball umpire Will Little. His call on Wednesday evening was crucial in the result of tonight’s baseball game in Baltimore, and it has the Orioles still fuming. Goodbye, anonymity!
Little called Pete Alonso’s towering shot down the left-field line in the bottom of the seventh inning a foul ball, keeping the game tied before the New York Yankees scored two runs in the next half inning to come away with a 5-3 victory inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
George Lombard Jr. broke the 3-3 deadlock with an infield single with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth as New York has won both games so far in the three-game set between the AL East rivals.
Who knows how the game would have turned out if the Orioles had scored that fourth run first instead, which they thought they did when Alonso crushed a pitch to left that had him skipping down the first-base line à la Carlton Fisk in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series hoping the ball would stay fair. Little, the crew chief amongst the umpiring crew, was the third-base umpire who officially was responsible for making the call, and his arms pointed emphatically to his left — as opposed to circling his finger over his head to signal a home run — after it sailed over the foul pole.
Alonso, the Orioles’ dugout and all of the Baltimore fans cried foul, figuratively. After replays were shown on the big screen, appearing to show the ball fly right over the foul pole from a couple of angles, the expectation was that the call would be overturned after the umpire’s review was over. But it wasn’t, as the call was upheld.
Three pitches later, Alonso struck out swinging. Then the Yankees struck soon thereafter.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Wednesday evening’s game, with photos taken by staff photographer Cory Royster. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are XX pictures in total.
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