He Did All He Could, But Team USA Just Wasn't Good Enough

Bob Davidson deserves a Medal of Honor for everything he did to help his country this week.

And they still shit the proverbial bed.

Davidson blew his second major call of the World Baseball Classic, this time as the first base umpire, but the United States couldn’t be saved as they were defeated by Mexico 2-1. The loss eliminated Team USA from the competition.

In the third inning, Mario Valenzuela hit a Roger Clemens’ pitch clearly off the foul pole for what seemed like a solo homerun. But Davidson decided to award Valenzuela with a ground rule double, a rule he basically made up.

There were only two possibilities here. If the ball hit the foul pole, it was gone. If the ball hit the fence, it’s live. A ground rule double has nothing to do with either circumstance. What’s sad is the ball even had paint on it from the yellow pole.

Luckily, Jorge Cantu drove in Valenzuela with an RBI single.

On Tuesday, Davidson ruled that a Japanese runner had left third base early on a tag up play that would have given his team the lead. An inning later, Alex Rodriguez delivered a game winning single for the United States.

Now I’m not saying that Davidson is some type of anti-rest of the world extremist or anything, but for him to make two unusual calls like that in a span of two days is unheard of. Never mind the fact that he blew both of them. I mean what are the odds of that?

All kidding aside, this was a dismal nine days for Team USA. To go 3-3 in a tournament you created, hosted and made all the rules for is inexplicable.