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 Wacky seventh on 9-9-99 Umpires lose track of outs in Padres' 10-3 rout of Expos
Posted: Friday September 10, 1999 01:39 AM
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Maybe it was jet lag or the muggy, overcast day. Or even something funky having to do with the calendar, which read 9-9-99. Whatever the reason, at least 13 people on the field didn't realize the Montreal Expos had just gotten the third out in the seventh inning of the San Diego Padres' 10-3 victory on Thursday. Nine of them were the Expos. The others were home plate umpire Jerry Layne and his crew. Oops! In a colossal blunder, the inning didn't end when Reggie Sanders struck out. Even the scoreboard tally was changed to "3" before it automatically kicked back to "0" for the top of the eighth. When the Expos didn't run off the field, Phil Nevin walked up to the plate. He ran the count to 2-1 against Montreal pitcher Ted Lilly before Layne finally called time to double-check the situation. Layne said he thought there were three outs, but his indicator only showed two. He said he had asked catcher Chris Widger, and he thought there were two. "In my mind I thought it was three, but when nobody flinched, I thought, 'Not everybody can be wrong,' is my theory," Layne said. "My theory didn't work. "I was mad at myself more than anything," said Layne, a fulltime umpire since 1989. "I was upset that it happened. You know what, it's nothing but pure embarrassment." And these weren't even baseball's newly hired umps. "I think the Expos would be embarrassed as much as I am, but I should have caught it. I didn't. Nobody else did," Layne said. "Maybe they do things differently in Canada, with the exchange rate," Nevin quipped. Lilly, a rookie, also lost track. "I thought there were two outs," he said. "I thought, 'If it was three, the ump would know.' I figured if the ump didn't call it, then ... well ..." Widger said he thought there were three outs and took one step toward the dugout. "But no one else was moving so I just tossed the ball back to the pitcher. I thought I had made a mistake so I was trying to cover it up," he said. It apparently was the first time this had happened -- on the big league level, at least -- to those involved.
"It's just one of those things," Expos manager Felipe Alou said. "It's September. But you should know how many outs there are. The ump should know how many outs there are." The Padres weren't about to squeal, although had Nevin, say, hit a two-run homer, it would have come off the board. When players strike out for the third out, they usually toss their helmet and bat toward the dugout and head to their defensive position. But when Sanders noticed the Expos weren't running off the field, he played along and headed back to the dugout. Game on, the Padres thought. "I mean, nobody flinched," Sanders said. "It looked like it just wasn't the umpire." Nevin said Layne even asked him how many outs there were. "I said, 'Two, right?'" Nevin said. "I looked up at the scoreboard and there were no numbers up there. They cleared the scoreboard. He said, 'I think there's three.' And I said, 'Well, the inning's over then, isn't it?'" Nevin and Layne lingered for a minute after the inning finally ended, and Nevin laughed. "I asked him if I got to start [the next inning] with a 2-and-1 count," Nevin said. "He said, 'No, oh-and-2.'" After Wednesday's games, the Padres had flown from Pittsburgh, the Expos from Montreal and the umpires from New York, Layne said. "That's not an excuse," he added. "The bottom line is it happened. When something like that happens you feel like crawling under the bag, but what good's that going to do?" The umpiring crew included Jeff Kellogg, Paul Schrieber, Tim Timmons and Layne. Timmons is a Class AAA umpire working in vacation relief -- the other three were members of the NL staff at the start of the year. Ben Davis opened the Padres seventh with a flyout. Chris Gomez singled and John Vander Wal hit an RBI double before Quilvio Veras hit a foul pop for the second out. Tony Gwynn hit an RBI single that made it 8-3 before Sanders fanned. San Diego's Wiki Gonzalez made it 10-3 with a two-run homer in the eighth. Buddy Carlyle got his first big league win and San Diego won for the 10th time in 14 games. Gomez matched his career high in hits by going 4-for-5, scoring twice and driving in a run. Nevin and Gwynn had three hits apiece. Carlyle (1-1), making his third start, left trailing 3-2 after allowing Valdimir Guerrero's RBI groundout and Brad Fullmer's homer in the sixth. Javier Vazquez (7-7) took the loss. Guerrero hit his 35th homer leading off the second. Notes: The Padres made their September callups Thursday, recalling OF Mike Darr, OF Gary Matthews Jr., INF David Newhan and RHP Carlos Almanzar from Class AAA Las Vegas and RHP Domingo Guzman from Class AA Mobile. Guzman made his big league debut by pitching the ninth. ... Gomez has five career four-hit games.
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