Umpires do not get highlight reels. Alex MacKay earned one Wednesday night in St. Petersburg, and he did it by getting out of the way.
In the first inning of the Rays-Athletics game at Tropicana Field, Junior Caminero got all of a 90 mph cutter from Oakland lefty Brady Basso and drove it just outside the third base line. MacKay, working third, had a fraction of a second to react.
He jumped. The ball grazed his right arm on the way past. He lost his balance and went down.
A half-second from something much worse
Caminero immediately looked out from the batter’s box to check on him. MacKay, 37, smiled back, got up, and went right back to work like nothing had happened.
Watch the clip and the margin is uncomfortable. A ball struck that hard from that distance gives a third base umpire almost no time to read the trajectory, never mind move his feet. Had MacKay reacted a beat later, or guessed the wrong direction, the conversation this morning would be about an ambulance instead of reflexes.
Third base is the spot nobody pictures when they think about umpire danger. The plate umpire has a mask, a chest protector and shin guards. The base umpires have a polo shirt and a hat. Their entire protection plan is reaction time.
Baseball keeps getting lucky here
The sport spent the last decade extending protective netting through ballparks because fans in foul territory were getting hurt. That change was overdue and it worked. The people standing on the field in foul territory got exactly nothing out of that conversation.
There is no clean fix. You cannot net the field of play, and you cannot ask a third base umpire to work in body armor while trying to call a swipe tag at the bag. But it is worth saying plainly that in an era when hitters are stronger and harder-hit balls are more common than ever, the sport is relying on quick feet and good fortune in a spot where the reaction window keeps shrinking.
MacKay was fine. He was also lucky, and those are two different things. The next guy standing 90 feet from a swing like that might not get both.
The Rays never broke stride
Three pitches after the near-miss, Caminero doubled. Jonny DeLuca drove him in with an RBI double of his own, and Tampa Bay was rolling.
The Rays won 4-3 for their fifth straight victory, pushing their record to 92-59, the best mark in the American League. That is a season-high 33 games over .500 and a four-and-a-half game cushion in the AL East over the Yankees.
Chandler Simpson and DeLuca each went 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI. Tampa Bay scored all four of its runs in the first two innings and then held on, which has been more or less the blueprint during this stretch.
The Rays are the best story in the American League right now, a franchise nobody picked in March sitting on the league’s top record in mid-September. On Wednesday night, though, the loudest moment at the Trop belonged to the guy in the polo shirt who never took a swing.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.