The world according to Jim:
• Major league umpire Doug Eddings was back in the news this week, someplace where game officials in any sport really shouldn’t want to be. This time, Eddings upbraided young St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Hancel Rincon, insisting that he straighten his cap because no one was going to wear it at an angle on “my field.”
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(This was, incidentally, Rincon’s first big league appearance. And kudos to the other Cardinals who came out the next night all wearing their hats off-center in protest.)
But Eddings was already notorious in Orange County, thanks to the night he was duped by Chicago White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski. …
• If you are an Angels fan with a long memory – long enough to remember when the team actually played postseason games – you might still wince at this one: Game 2 of the 2005 American League Championship Series, after the Angels had taken Game 1 in Chicago. Two outs, ninth inning, a 1-1 tie, and Kelvim Escobar gets Pierzynski swinging on a 3-and-2 splitter in the dirt to, apparently, send the game into extra innings …
• Except that Pierzynski took off for first base as the Angels ran off the field. And Eddings evidently deduced that if Pierzynski was running, catcher Josh Paul must have trapped the ball instead of catching it.
So Eddings ruled Pierzynski safe at first, and Joe Crede followed with an RBI double for a 2-1 White Sox victory that tied the series 1-1. Chicago swept the next three games in Anaheim and went on to sweep the Houston Astros in the World Series.
And as Fox color commentator Tim McCarver noted at the time: “This might be the best thing for instant replay in baseball that’s happened this postseason.” …
• The late Register columnist Steve Bisheff described it as “the worst postseason botch by an umpire since Don Denkinger blew that infamous play at first base in the 1985 World Series. TV replays don’t lie, and they not only seemed to show Angels catcher Josh Paul catching the ball thrown by Kelvim Escobar before it hit the ground, they officially caught Eddings ringing up A.J. Pierzynski, who swung and missed.” …
• Or, as Angels manager Mike Scioscia described it: “It was a swing, our catcher caught it, Doug Eddings called him out. And somewhere along the line, because the guy (Pierzynski) ran to first base, he altered the call.” …
• Two nights after that bad call in Chicago, Eddings worked the right field line in Game 3 in Anaheim. I made sure to sit down there for a while and noted in my column in The Press-Enterprise that Angels fans greeted him rudely but not viciously, and by the third inning the boos and catcalls had quieted down.
Then again, White Sox right fielder Jermaine Dye, who had chatted with Eddings about that reaction, said afterward: “He thought it was kind of funny. He said he’s known now. I told him he could probably go to Hollywood now and become a movie star.” …
• And this is at once the beauty and curse of being a hardcore fan: The great memories stay with you, but so do the cruel ones. …
• This week’s quiz: When was the Angels’ last postseason victory? Answer below. …
• The latest Eddings episode – and he did apologize to that young pitcher the next night – reminded me of this classic insult: Arizona State head coach Jim Brock, decades ago during Riverside’s annual spring break tournament, referred to the plate umpire after one game as “an officious clown.” …
• So, there went that perfect Rams’ season in the very first game. And when Sean McVay gives it some thought, he’ll acknowledge what was starkly evident to anyone else who watched the 49ers’ dominant performance: His team should have spent the full week in Melbourne, too.
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Of course, if the Rams shrug this one off and put together a winning streak the next few weeks, the only people still obsessing over the opener will be Niners fans. …
• The U.S. Open invited 100 “influencers and content creators” to this year’s tournament, according to the Awful Announcing website, and let’s just say hijinks ensued and traditional tennis etiquette was ignored. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Wimbledon, unsurprisingly, has no plans to do anything similar. …
• Phil Jackson will get a statue outside the Arena Formerly Known As Staples Center in April. I say it should be directly across from Pat Riley’s statue, so they’re staring at each other in perpetuity. …
• Also getting a statue in Star Plaza will be the Sparks’ Lisa Leslie, before the Sept. 20 home game against Portland. Four days later, the Sparks will have a retirement ceremony for Nneka Oguwumike, and at some point in the future I would hope she’d get a statue as well. …
• The LIV golf tour has filed for bankruptcy now that the Saudi wealth fund spigot has dried up. If this is the end of the line, or close to it, should the PGA Tour make players grovel before welcoming them back? …
• Quiz answer: Oct. 22, 2009. The Angels rallied with three runs in the seventh inning after a six-run Yankees sixth, with Kendrys Morales’ RBI single the deciding blow in a 7-6 victory that cut New York’s ALCS lead to 3-2. The Yankees eliminated the Angels two nights later in the Bronx and went on to beat Philadelphia in six games in the World Series – and haven’t won one since. …
• Jim Mora Jr. made a successful return to the Pac-12 – well, sort of – as Colorado State knocked off Wyoming on Saturday, 35-13. Anyone wonder if things might have turned out differently at UCLA if he had stayed?
Among other things, those preseason training camps at Cal State San Bernardino were fun … as long as you weren’t enduring them in pads. …
• It was September of 1992, a conversation following a training camp session in a chilly practice rink in Blue Jay, in the San Bernardino Mountains, when first-year Kings head coach Barry Melrose laid down this marker.
“I have a one-year plan,” he said. “We want to win the Stanley Cup. I don’t have three- and four-year plans. … Every year I coach, I expect to win the championship that year. This is no different.”
Sure, it was probably easier to say that when you had Wayne Gretzky on your roster. But as we learned over the years, Melrose never hesitated to speak what he considered the truth. Darned if his team didn’t get to the Stanley Cup Final that season after all (and if Marty McSorley didn’t get busted for an illegally curved stick in Game 2 in Montreal, who knows what could have happened).
As a coach, and later as a commentator for ESPN, Melrose was delightfully outspoken, and beyond that he cared passionately about what he would refer to as “our sport.” Years later, I approached him during the 2007 Final, right after the Ducks’ Chris Pronger had been suspended for a game after an elbows-up hit to the head that wasn’t penalized on the ice.
“We’re still an aggressive sport,” Melrose said. “We’re still the meanest sport in the world. But you’re not going to be able to take liberties with another person’s health, and I think that’s a good message to send.”
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His passion is missed today, and the hockey world mourns. Rest in peace, Barry.