No. 2021.10.14 · Modern Era
The Check Swing
With the tying run on base in the ninth of a winner-take-all game, Wilmer Flores held up on an 0–2 slider. First-base umpire Gabe Morales ruled that he had swung. The Giants' season ended.
Umpire Gabe Morales, May 2015. Not the 2021 game.
EricEnfermero / CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
October 14, 2021, Game 5 of the National League Division Series at Oracle Park. San Francisco had won 107 games. In the ninth, with the tying run on, Wilmer Flores took an 0–2 slider from Max Scherzer and appeared to stop his swing. Gabe Morales, umpiring at first, ruled that he had gone. It was strike three. The series was over.
A check swing is one of the few calls replay does not review. The batter, the catcher, and the first-base umpire share a judgment the broadcast then tries to settle with a freeze frame. Morales's judgment ended a postseason series. It was the first time one had ended on a check-swing strikeout.
The Giants' season was 107 wins and this pitch. The entry is not that they lost a series. It is that the last out was a question the rulebook leaves to one man's eyes, and that those eyes said swing.
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Film
Flores strikes out on the check swing
Max Scherzer strikes out Wilmer Flores on a checked swing, and the Dodgers win the division series.
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