CLEVELAND — Nearly three hours removed from his first ejection of the season, Yankees manager Aaron Boone was still heated as he explained his side of the story from a controversial sequence that did not end up costing his team a win.
The play in question was a seeming catch by center fielder Aaron Hicks that turned into a double play and appeared to end the bottom of the first inning against the Guardians.
But Boone believed that the replay being shown on the huge scoreboard at Progressive Field — which revealed that Hicks did not actually make the catch — and the reaction of the crowd swayed the umpires to discuss the call, which then gave the Guardians an extended opportunity to challenge the play.
“I just think it completely bailed [the Guardians] out,” Boone said, his voice rising in his office as he recounted the fallout of the play after the Yankees’ 4-3 win.
“It gets thrown up on the scoreboard. I’m not saying [the umpires] looked at the scoreboard, but obviously you could feel the emotion in the building. Then it’s them getting together to get it right and then going to Cleveland, I think, in the end bailing them out. I obviously took exception to it. They got the play right, I will say that. But there’s no way that the environment did not create, in my opinion, the end result.”
The Guardians had runners on second and third with one out in the inning when Josh Naylor hit the bloop to center field.
Hicks made a sliding play and appeared to catch the ball.
He then threw to second base to double off a runner, with second base umpire Larry Vanover holding up his arm to signal the out.
The umpires’ initial call on the field was that Steven Kwan had tagged up from third and scored before Hicks’ throw got to second base, which would have given the Guardians the 1-0 lead with the inning over.
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But after a brief delay, the umpires decided to huddle up to determine whether the runner had scored in time.
That meeting negated the 15-second review clock that teams normally get to challenge a play.
Once the crew decided that the run did not score and that the catch had been made, they brought that call to Guardians manager Terry Francona, who immediately called for a challenge.
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“There was a very complex play, there was a lot of moving parts, so we wanted to make sure that we had everything,” home plate umpire Chris Guccione told a pool reporter, speaking for crew chief Vanover, who was taken to a local hospital for a CT scan after he was hit in the head by a throw later in the game.
“The [challenge] clock never got to start. It started the in-between innings clock. So I’m glancing up there. It’s hard to glance at the clock and also explain to Boone what just happened. That was when Larry goes, ‘Hold on, we’ve got to fix this. Let’s get together as a crew.’ ”
But Boone, who sent his well-wishes to Vanover, disagreed with how the umpires handled it.
“The answer that I’ve gotten from Major League Baseball is that they did it the right way,” Boone said. “If you were all here … no chance.”
