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Mizzou Softball drops final regular season series after umpire misses HR call

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Mizzou Links for May 9, 2022.

It’s never the umpire’s fault. Unless……

There’s a saying you grow up hearing when you play baseball and softball (and probably any sport at the amateur level): “It’s never the umpire/referee’s fault.” I heard it from countless coaches and parents, even if not everyone wants to believe it. And for the vast majority of cases, it’s true. Even if a referee makes a poor call, there are always more things than not that you can blame from your own performance.

But I suppose every rule has an exception, right? During the rubber match of Mizzou Softball’s key series in Tuscaloosa, Alabama was on the fortunate end of that very exception.

That’s atrocious. That’s the kind of thing that gets people fired and gets entire sports to rewrite their replay handbook. I understand the concept of “judgment calls,” but what is and is not a home run isn’t a judgment call. It’s a very objective thing that can and should be overturned if the call is clearly incorrect. If a player popped up to the second baseman and the umpire called it a home run, does the player get rewarded the home run? That may sound hyperbolic, but it’s also not that different of a case. Umpires don’t arbitrarily get to decide what is and isn’t a home run… and this was certainly not a home run.

Whether or not Mizzou Softball should’ve scored more than one run is certainly a question worth exploring. But when the final score directly reflects the incorrect call that went against the Tigers, it’s worth putting in a call to the SEC offices.

For her part, Coach Larissa Anderson was a little more diplomatic.

Casidy Chaumont on the other hand? Not so much. At least not on her Twitter profile.

I don’t blame her.

It’s not the end of the world for Mizzou, who played Alabama tough on their own turf. But it’s a tough way to close out the regular season. They’ll have a chance to start building momentum in the postseason when they open the SEC Tournament against Auburn on Wednesday.

Yesterday at Rock M

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“I knew it was the place for me when I was on the phone with coach Bush and he started making the plan for me to come down there as fast as he did which set up the official,” said Johnson. ”I feel it’s special they wanted to get me on campus so fast with me being so far away from the school.”

Johnson also said all the things you want to hear from a hyped QB recruit. He plans on recruiting other playmakers in his class, wants to enroll early, etc.

  • Mizzou Baseball ended their weekend with a resounding thud on Sunday, losing their third straight game to Ole Miss by a score of 10-2. It dropped the Tigers to 25-20 on the season.

“I think we played very tight, very reserved trying not to make mistakes rather than attacking the game and that was really the whole point to the team after the game [said Head Coach Steve Bieser.] You hate to learn things from the loss, you’d much rather learn from the win, but we have to learn, we have to grow from this – the way that we played this series and do better than what we did.”

  • Matt Michaels did some digging on Mizzou Baseball’s statistical improvements and showed off his findings in this illuminating thread.
  • Former #TigerStyle wrestler Michael Chandler was hyped after his UFC 274 win this weekend.
  • Former Mizzou RB Simi Bakare is set to finish his career at Sam Houston State. Good luck, Simi!
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