Projo Sox Blog

Los Angeles Angels closer Brian Fuentes, who appeared to have thrown a game-ending strike three to the Red Sox' Nick Green with the bases loaded and two out in the ninth inning of a 8-7 game, suggested afterward that home-plate umpire Rick Reed called the pitch a ball because he was intimidated by the crowd at Fenway Park. "You hear it from guys [players]," Fuentes said, according to the Orange County Register's Bill Plunkett. "Especially here and some other places, they [umpires] get a little timid to make a call. You hear it time and time again. ... It's either human mistakes or they're scared. Maybe it's coincidence maybe it's not. It's something you have to live with, I guess."

Fuentes' catcher, Mike Napoli, did not agree or disagree with Fuentes. When asked about the closer's comments, he took a long pause, then said: "I don't know. It may seem to happen that way. I don't know how to answer that."

But outfielder Torii Hunter called out his own teammates for making key mistakes in a Monday night loss at Yankee Stadium and in the first two games of this series in Boston. Questioning just who was demonstrating intimidation, Hunter said: "What happened at the end of the game ... we lost that game long ago. We made too many mistakes. We made some bad mistakes early on - mistakes that we hadn't been making all season, man. We get here and we make mistakes that we haven't been making all season. We get to New York and we make mistakes we haven't been making."

But Angels manager Mike Scioscia came back to the umpiring crew's work, asking rhetorically if the count on Green at the end of the game had been "three and four."

According to The Boston Globe's Amalie Benjamin, the commissioner's office is reviewing the comments from the Los Angeles clubhouse to determine if fines or suspensions are appropriate.

 Tags  Brian Fuentes Fenway Park

Comments

Chris Lopes said:

Brian Fuentes should question the actions of his manager and his bench coach...the check swing was borderline and the two of them stayed on that top step of the dugout and wouldn't shut up about the call. Now, I don't know how well the 1st base umpire heard them; but, I can assure you that the plate ump DID!! That was a borderline strike, and, everyone knows if you show up the ump, you don't get borderline calls

Link | September 17, 2009 4:09 PM
Report Abuse

---

Eric Olson said:

Dear Brian Fuentes,

Go study some baseball history, starting with the 1999 ALCS Game 4, before you go making a fool of yourself.

http://www.sonsofsamhorn.net/wiki/images/e/e2/Knobby.jpg

Thanks,
Red Sox Nation

Link | September 18, 2009 6:32 AM
Report Abuse

---

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.