I guess this is kind of a streak that went under the radar, but I thought it was pretty cool. Dating back to last season, Ichiro had stolen 45 straight bases without being caught. That’s pretty impressive when you think about it. He was only 5 away from tying Vince Coleman’s record, that is, until he got thrown out on Thursday night. Jose Vidro was up with nobody out and Ichiro on first in the bottom of the 7th and the Mariners trailing 6-3. Then, in what was an obvious hit-and-run play, Jose Vidro botched the sign, failed to swing, and left Ichiro hanging out to dry. Just check out Vidro’s reaction — he completely drops his head in disgust, fully knowing that he screwed up. And Ichiro isn’t even in the picture when the ball arrives at second base. It’s very clear that it was a botched hit-and-run:
Not surprisingly, the Angels announcers completely missed it. Rex Hudler was going on and on about how good Jose Molina is behind the plate, how tough it is to run on him and Colon. Well, that might be the case in general, but it wasn’t at all the case Thursday night. They played the replay again in the 9th, and Hudler went off again, “out by a mile.” Man Rex, you played the game, you’re supposed to be the analyst. Aren’t these plays just the sort of thing you’re supposed to recognize?
UPDATE: It’s been confirmed by the Seattle Times that it was a busted hit-and-run play
Related posts
More Hot Stories at larrybrownsports.com
This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 and is filed under Policing the Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I’ll be the first to comment on you being the first to analyze it correctly. Nice. You should somehow get Rome to read your article or just get someone to tell him about it
maybe he can plug you in again.
Leave it to Rex to forget about real commentary and just root root root for the Angels.
Yup. I noticed it immediately. I wasn’t at all surprised to see in the paper the next morning the players confirmed it was botched.
You get total credit for noticing immediately that Vidro’s body language indicated he’d screwed up.
Hudler, on the other hand, never noticed because all he ever does is prattle on about the most trivial things. I wonder how Physioc stands being with him for that length of time. I have to turn the sound down or turn the game off because of Rex.
When will Arte Moreno do Angel fans a favor and make a change in the color commentator position?