HOOVER, Ala. — In the end it was moot, but in the moment it was everything.
South Carolina baseball lost 12-11 in 10 innings to LSU in the semifinals of the SEC Tournament, but for a few chaotic moments, the Gamecocks had an 11-10 lead thanks to a highly controversial play.
With runners on first and third and two outs, Parker Noland was at the plate for the Gamecocks against LSU reliever Griffin Herring. With an 0-2 count, runner Blake Jackson took off from third base on what appeared to be a straight steal of home. Herring made the toss to his catcher Brady Neal, and the inning ended.
South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston went out to talk to the umpires and after around 15 minutes of confusion, the umpires ruled that there was both a balk on Herring and interference on Neal, allowing Noland to reach base and the other two runners — including the go-ahead run on third — to move up a base.
The highly controversial play led to LSU head coach Jay Johnson getting ejected arguing the call and with no official announcement in the stadium, the conference decided to hold an official press conference with umpiring coordinator Paul Guillie. Starting off, he addressed the actual rule in question.
"If you do have a rule book, if you go to Rule 8 and baserunning, section 3B, it says that on an attempted squeeze play or a steal of home plate, the catcher steps on or in front of home plate without possession of the ball or touches the batter or the bat (indiscernible), and the catcher with interference, hence the reason for the balk call scores the runner from third; the interference on the catcher moves the batter to first base."
Clearly, LSU had more to gripe about in the moment. In one call it went from a momentum-changing out at home plate to being three outs away from elimination. In fact the decision was so late that South Carolina’s defenders had already collected their gloves and jogged out to their positions for the bottom half of the inning, only for the umpires to call them all back into the dugout and send LSU’s defenders onto the field for the suddenly continuing inning.
This was when the normally calm-headed Johnson started arguing and eventually home plate umpire Derek Mollica handed him just his second ejection in three seasons as LSU head coach.
“I think I was upset because it's not a reviewable play,” Johnson said. “Now, the foundation of umpiring is always to get the call right, and I do respect that. I'm going to have to look at it again and get an explanation and all those types of things.
“I’ve never seen that called before, I’ve got to be honest. Long time coaching college baseball, 24 years now or whatever. I've never seen that called.”
Mark Kingston and his team ended up benefitting from the call and nearly using it as the propellent to the SEC Championship Game, but even from his perspective it was still one of the strangest plays imaginable in a baseball game.
"That's not a comfortable situation for umpires to be in,” Kingston said. “Nobody wants that. I know they don't want to be at the center of attention, but it was a crazy play. There was a very similar play recently that was kind of almost — if not the identical play — very, very similar. I think we drew on watching that on television and having seen it already. We just thought, ‘hey, let's bring this up; let's see what happens and see if we can get the interpretation in our favor.’”
Steven Milam ended up saving the day for the Tigers with a walk-off two-run home run in the bottom half of the frame, relegating the call from a game-deciding play to a footnote in one of the tournament's all-time strangest games.
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