Over the past few years, the wide world of baseball has been blessed with some truly amazingly terrible strike calls. Calls so bad that the very fabric of America's Pastime begins to frays. Calls so bad that baseball Twitter collapses in on itself like a dying star. Calls so bad that we can't help but watch them again and again and again. Enter professional MLB home plate umpire Marty Foster, who delivered one of the worst strike three calls in the history of organized baseball on Monday night, sending Tony Kemp to the showers in the away ninth of a two-run ballgame with this big, fat matzo ball.
You hate to see it. Really you do. Now I love a good ol' punch out as much as the next guy. I also love watching the Cubs lose. But with every wonky strike call MLB umps ring up, the arrival of RoboStrike only hastens, followed closely by a machine uprising and eventual enslavement at the cold, titanium hands of our own creation. The fate of humankind quite literally rests on the shoulders of guys like Angel Hernandez and Joe West, which is to say we're absolutely f—ked.
Now being an umpire is not an easy job, and the harder pitchers throw and the more movement they're able to put on the ball, the less easy it gets. Clearly to anyone not named Wonder, Stevie, however, there was nothing borderline about this up-and-away blue-light special. It was closer to painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel than the black. It was so far off the plate that J.T. Realmuto was already tossing the ball back to Héctor Neris before Foster dialed up an act of absolute charity. According to ESPN Stats & Info, well, just read the tweet...
Now look at this picture. I SAID LOOK AT IT!
Graphic stuff, I know. But the truth isn't always easy to see. Except for in this case. This was very easy to see.
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