"Chicken sh*t" call leaves Twins manager fuming after Blue Jays win

Aug 8 2022, 2:45 pm

The Toronto Blue Jays chalked up another one in the win column on Sunday, but not without a little bit of controversy. 

Whit Merrifield was thrown out at home plate in the top of the 10th inning on an attempted sacrifice fly by Calvin Biggio, but the play was later overturned after a review ruled that Minnesota Twins catcher Gary Sanchez didn’t allow a clear lane for the slide. 

Suffice to say, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli wasn’t pleased. 

“In all of baseball, the thousands and thousands of games and plays at home where the catcher actually does block the plate over and over and over again, that play has virtually never been called,” Baldelli told reporters postgame. “And for someone to step in in that situation and ultimately make a decision that that was blocking the plate — that’s beyond embarrassing for our game, for all the players out there on both sides of the field working their ass off for the entire game. 

“It’s completely unacceptable. I can’t even believe I’m sitting here talking to you guys about this right now. It’s one of the worst moments I think we’ve seen of umpiring in any game I’ve ever been a part of in baseball, and I think it was pathetic, what just played out. I could go on and on and on about this.”

Baldelli did. 

“I wasn’t given an explanation because, truthfully, there’s no explanation to give on that play,” Baldelli said, according to Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com. “That was probably one of the most chicken shit things I’ve ever seen on a baseball field.”

Suffice to say, the Twins didn’t rally in the bottom of the 10th to tie, or win, the game. 

The win, which earned Toronto a series split in Minnesota, pushed the Blue Jays to 60-48 on the season and within 9.5 games back of the first-place New York Yankees in the American League East.

Toronto has a 2.0 game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the first wild card in the AL. 

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