Controversial interference rule was a game-changer

Published 6:00 pm Thursday, June 29, 2017

OMAHA, Neb. — As soon as the umpire started making a big commotion at second base, I instantly knew it was a lot more disastrous for LSU than most could have imagined.

I’m not smarter than your average bear.

But I had a flashback to 2001, Skip Bertman’s last season, when almost exactly the same situation mumbly-pegged out of control in the ninth inning of the semifinals of the SEC tournament.

That’s about as often as it comes up. But that’s the only way I already knew about the dumbest rule in baseball.

So let’s get this out of the way early.

Umpire Steve Mattingly made the right call. Or at least he made the correct call. Sometimes there’s a difference, and it’s often a gray area.

By now it’s been explained.

Seventh inning, LSU trailing by one, runners first and third, no outs, ground ball to second. Florida is conceding the tying run for the double play, and Josh Smith trots leisurely across the plate.

When the smoke clears, Jake Slaughter is called for interference sliding into second base.

And he probably did. There were no life-threatening injuries. But it looked like he hooked the defender going in.

OK — the chance for a big inning is probably shot, and it quieted the rabidly pro-LSU crowd a tad, but at least the Tigers finally tied it, right?

Not so fast.

It doesn’t come up often. But there’s a little-known clause that the run that the defense was conceding must now go back to third base.

It is mind-boggling, but it is, in fact, an officially sanctioned baseball rule. A stupid one, yes. But a rule nevertheless.

Baseball allegedly is all based on logic, but that rule defies several chapters of any logic class you want to take.

It may be the worst example in all of sports where the punishment far exceeds the crime.

It’s 40-to-life for a speeding ticket.

It’s a shame it would decide any game, let alone a national championship.

It’s a rule, no matter how illogical.

Given that, you could make the argument that, unless hammer and tong and maybe mustard gas are involved in the interference and the double play is still turned, maybe the ump could leave the flag in his pocket.

Yeah, when you go Zapruder film on it, there was interference at second base.

But I doubt Florida would have squawked too loudly if there had been no call. Happens all the time.

But the umpire made the correct call. Mattingly can sleep well.

Paul Mainieri surely has conceded that after he got around to seeing the video.

And he knows the rules. He said he makes sure all of his players know it.

Consider it a freshman mistake by Slaughter, who could have borrowed a Sherman tank to run over Dalton Guthrie and it wasn’t going to stop them from getting the slow-footed Michael Papierski at first.

So LSU has no excuses.

But there are untold situations where umpires are forced to decide where runners would end up under normal conditions.

Why couldn’t that be one of them?

If the nutty rule had any sense of decency, Smith would have been allowed the sit in the dugout with run No. 2 in his pocket.

At best, maybe some good will out of this.

Maybe, with it playing a

controversial role on college baseball’s biggest stage, this is the incident that gets that idiotic rule re-examined.

If so, LSU did not lose in vain for the first time in seven College World Series national championship appearances.

And, yes, I understand that LSU managed to suffer more frustration with the same situation in the eighth inning, without getting blind-sided by an illogical rule.

You give the Gators credit for a strike out and a fine defensive play to nail Kramer Robertson at the plate on that buzz kill.

The first incident just dumbfounded, frustrated and angered the Tigers and all but a couple hundred of the 26,607 fans who were turning Omaha into Alex Box North again.

The second took absolutely all of the air out of TD Ameritrade.

Florida scored four more runs in the bottom of the eighth and the game was effectively over.

Maybe that happens anyway.

But my guess is that, with the momentum that was building with LSU’s invading fan base and Cornfield Alumni, it’s a different game if LSU ever ties it.

We’ll never know.

So LSU, after all these years, finally got to experience how the other half lives in Omaha championships with that whole agony of defeat thing. 

The positive?

With an impressive run to the final round, the Tigers put to rest the notion that Omaha had forever neutered their favorite adopted team by building an unwieldy TD Ameritrade Park.

The wind suddenly blowing in at gale force didn’t help Tuesday. 

But it was probably blowing in for Florida, too.