Umpire agrees: Maddon was right about this call
CHICAGO — Cubs manager Joe Maddon turned out to be right Wednesday night.
Even the later.
Maddon’s prize? He got ejected for the second time in the National League Championship Series.
At least he got one more day in the dugout. Reliever Wade Davis struck out Curtis Granderson on the next pitch after the disputed call and the Cubs beat the Dodgers 3-2 in Game 4 to avoid a sweep.
Maddon lost his argument in the eighth inning over what was originally ruled a swinging strikeout of Granderson. That call was changed to a foul tip after Granderson objected and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts asked the umpires to confer on the field.
Under Major League Baseball rules, the play was not subject to video review.
“After looking at it (on replay afterward), I was dead wrong,” plate umpire Jim Wolf said. “I talked myself into the whole thing.”
Maddon said afterward: “If Granderson hit the next pitch out, I might (have) come running out of the clubhouse in my jockstrap. It was really that bad.”
Wolf — the brother of former big-league pitcher Randy Wolf — said afterward he heard “two distinct, separate sounds” on the pitch, believing the first to be the pitch bouncing in the dirt and the second being the pop of the catcher’s mitt.
After Roberts appealed and Wolf gathered his crew, he was told by his fellow umps “that the ball umpire said so did not bounce — it did hit the ground, but it did not bounce.”
“I basically talked myself into ‘He did foul tip it,’ ” Wolf said.
Maddon didn’t buy the “two sounds” explanation at the moment and roared at several members of the crew. He wasn’t buying it afterward either.
“I’m not going to sit here and bang on umpires,” Maddon said. “I love a lot of guys on this crew. I’ve known them a long time, but that can’t happen.
“The process was horrible. You have 40-somethousand people, it’s late in the game — the other sound could have come from some lady screaming in the first row.”
Maddon was ejected in Game 1 at Dodger Stadium after a call at home plate was overturned because of the slide rule. Cubs catcher Willson Contreras was ruled to be blocking the plate without having the ball.
Maddon basically acknowledged, however, that he was trying to get himself tossed this time around.
“There is no way I’m not getting ejected at that point,” he said. “I’ve got (to) make my point. (I’m) just being honest.”
Crew chief Mike Winters confirmed that Maddon had something to say “to everybody because at that point the process didn’t matter to him. It just mattered that it didn’t go his way.”
“We were trying to calm him down and we tried not to eject him, but he made that impossible,” Winters said.