The unbelievable baseball being played between Clemson and Florida during last weekend’s sensational super regional at Doug Kingsmore Stadium was worth the price of admission. The ump show that came with it was not.
Frankly, I have had to wait several days to write about it because in the moment my fingers would have hammered out words and thoughts that I would probably come to regret. What I regret the most, along with every fan in attendance on Sunday in Clemson, was the utter debacle of officiating that we all had to witness.
Make no mistake. The umpires did not cost Clemson their season. Florida did what they had to do to take it. They are a great team whose record was overtly deceptive.
But, the Tigers and Gators deserved better.
The officiating on Saturday was not good. What everyone witnessed on Sunday was an entirely new level of baseball masochism. Time after time, call after call, the three-man umpiring crew let their egos and lack of discernment and discretion get in the way of what became one of the great college baseball games of all time. Florida would win the game, 11-10, in 13 innings. Everyone in attendance, though, lost.
For five hours, the three men charged with fairly and accurately adjudicating a game between two of the country’s best teams made a mockery of themselves. But their loss of control started long before head coach Erik Bakich and the legendary Jack Leggett were pathetically ejected in the top of the 13th inning.
Trailing 2-0 in the top of the second inning, a two-out double by Jack Crighton brought freshman infielder Nolan Nawrocki to the plate. Nawrocki hit a dribbler down the first base line which was fielded by Florida pitcher and power-hitting sensation Jac Caglianone who proceeded to shiv Nolan with the tag, prompting the benches to empty.
In the short-lived fracas that followed, Crighton, who was running on contact with two outs, stopped at third before turning and jogging toward the Clemson dugout. After the teams were separated, and 18 excruciating minutes of replay review later, Crighton would be the only casualty of the altercation.
His egregious crime? The umpires somehow determined he had “left his position” to join the fray. Well, where did you expect him to go? What was his position? It sure as hell was not third base because the inning was over. So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it was his own dugout. The very direction he was headed.
So incredulous was the ejection that an incensed Bakich forced the home plate ump to tell Crighton himself that he had been tossed. So weak was that dishwater that the umpire actually wanted Clemson’s head coach to clean his mess up for him.
Give me a break.
And then there was the strike zone. You know that mystical place that exists between a batter’s knees and waist and covers the width of home plate? It’s existence to the home plate ump must have been as mystifying as the Bermuda Triangle because a lot of baseballs thrown by Tiger pitchers that entered its confines disappeared without a trace and with nary a hint of a strike call.
It was that way for the Gators, too. And it lasted for the duration. All 13 innings and five hours of it. Just ask Clemson reliever Billy Barlow who threw at least seven pitches right down the centerline of Perimeter Road that resulted in two walks to Florida batters in extra innings. The ump show would not end there, unfortunately.
The game was sent to extra innings thanks to Cam Cannarella, who by the way, played the game of his life. The Tigers’ sophomore outfielder tied the game 9-9 with a three-run homer in the ninth inning and made one of the greatest catches of all-time to momentarily save the Tigers’ season in the bottom of the 10th.
Those moments will, sadly, be relegated to a bittersweet memory because the final act of the ump show was getting warmed up. Then, in the top of the 13th, the tinderbox ignited.
With two outs and the bases empty, the theretofore 0-6 Alden Mathes cranked a go-ahead home run over the batting cages in right field, spiking his bat toward the Clemson dugout in jubilation as Doug Kingsmore Stadium erupted with volcanic decibel force.
But as Mathes crossed home plate, all fiery hell would break loose. Before anyone could process what was happening, Leggett and Bakich were both on the field pursuing the three-man umpiring crew around the infield in a pirouette of rage and frustration. It would only be later than the cause of the eruption was learned.
The umpires had initially considered ejecting Mathes for his celebratory bat spike but had decided to have their conference in foul territory in front of an already on edge Clemson dugout as if they did not (or did) expect something to go wrong.
When Florida’s Caglianone hit a towering homer in the first inning, he had spiked his bat, too. The only alteration was the Gators’ star was never so much as tsk’d by the home plate umpire. Perception, they say, is 90 percent of reality and the crew on hand had lost their appearance of impartiality long ago.
Like a black hole, the tipping point to chaos had crossed the event horizon and was past the point of return. It was bound to happen, and it did. Leggett and Bakich were run almost simultaneously as the crowd at DKS roared in unbridled umbrage. And rightly so.
Had Clemson won the game, both Bakich and Leggett would have been suspended for game three of the super-regional and the first game of the College World Series had Clemson made it that far. Bakich, by rule, was barred from speaking to the media postgame by the NCAA.
Both are so far beyond ridiculous that finding the words to describe such insanity has been difficult.
Florida won the game. For two days in Clemson, the Gators were the better team. This is to take nothing away from a talented and motivated team. But in what will go down as one of the great games in the annals of college baseball, both teams were victims of an umpiring crew that made it all about themselves, who became lost in the brevity of the moment, and ultimately in the game itself.
It was a joke to anyone watching the game. The complete lack of accountability after was laughable. That the NCAA has in place a rule to control the narrative by silencing Clemson’s head coach in the aftermath was maddeningly comical. But in the end, the ump show witnessed by everyone at Doug Kingsmore Stadium was no laughing matter. It was a travesty.
Clemson, Florida, and the fans all deserved better.
