Many times when a batter leaves the box on what he thought was a ball but was actually called a strike, that turns into a batter-umpire confrontation, but that didn’t happen between Chicago Cubs’ first baseman Anthony Rizzo and umpire Angel Hernandez Wednesday night.
In game four of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers Wednesday, Rizzo left the box for first after receiving what he thought was ball four, but it was actually called a strike. However, his conversation with Hernandez was much more civil than we often see, as shown by FS1 replaying it later:
Rizzo says “My fault on that, my fault on that,” and Hernandez says “Come on, you’re good, bro, you’re awesome with us.” Rizzo says “I don’t like…” and Hernandez says “No, no worries, you’re competing, I understand, no worries. And you know what’s best of it? You come back and you tell me, that’s how good of a guy you are.”
It’s cool to see Rizzo apologize that way and explain he wasn’t trying to show Hernandez up, and Hernandez’s response is pretty great as well. It would be terrific to see more player-umpire interactions be as civil as this.
