Did you see Nathan Karns' first strikeout?

If you said no, don't worry, home plate umpire Tom Hallion missed it, too. If you said yes, well, while technically Nathan striking out Yamaico Navarro in the second inning was his first, you still didn't really see his first.

I emailed Tom Hallion* a link to my site, and told him I had a post dedicated to him, and asked him to please stop in. I'm going to take this moment to address a certain at bat with Mr. Hallion, so you guys just blend into the background of wherever you are, as to not scare Tom. Also, if you have gum in your mouth, please don't snap it, and make sure your ringers are on silent.

So, Tom, it's the top of the first inning. Manny Machado, the second hitter of the ballgame, steps in to face Nathan Karns. (Real men use their entire first name, Manny Manuel.) The count gets to 0-2.  And, well, here's the video tape:

That pitch looked good to me, dummy!

Need more? Here's the pitch track, which plots where the pitches are in relation to the strike zone. Green squares are pitches you called balls. Red squares are pitches you called strikes:

You called the pitch in question a ball, when it was clearly not a ball. At no point in looking at this plot does it even appear it could ever be construed as a ball.

Are you with me, Tom? Look, here's the pitch track with arrows pointing to the ball in question, Tom. See, you need those arrows cause you all blind and stuff, apparently.

So, you blew it. Machado should have been sat down after three pitches. Case closed. End of story. Finito Santiago. Frankly, Tom, a little league umpire could have got that right. (A little league umpire would also think your strike three call is garish...

... and have you seen some of their strike three calls?)

Jerk.

*I did not email Tom Hallion. Mostly because even if I did email Tom Hallion, Tom Hallion would move it to his spam/trash folder, because Tom Hallion is really, really, really bad at identifying good things from bad things.