Anti-Christ of the week ending 10-15-05 is:

Doug Eddings

Eddings was the umpire on Wednesday night in game 2 of the A.L.C.S. when White Sox player A.J. Pierzynski, ran to first base with two outs in the ninth Wednesday after he swung and missed strike three, a pitch Eddings ruled hit the dirt. The problem came when Eddings signalled the third strike in a consistent manner that he called other strikes earlier in the game with the traditional fist not overtly displayed.

I saw the replay numerous times (even on ESPN’s SportsCenter when everytime it was time to see the crucial part, they flashed words at the bottom of the screen for Reynolds, Kruk, and Bowa to talk about) and I am convinced that Angels catcher Josh Paul did catch the ball. I believe the only think that touched the ground was the catcher’s mitt.

Even though it appears that Josh Paul caught the ball, I still fault him for performing the bonehead move of first rolling the ball to the pitchers mound before tagging Pierzynski. Why do I fault the Angel’s catcher? Because I talked to a friend of mine who played organized baseball for many years and he told me that it was part of a catcher’s basic training everywhere he played (little league, high school, college, and AA minor-league ball) that if the ball was close to the ground but never touched the ground or if the catcher placed the mitt on the ground to trap the ball, to still tag the batter no matter what to be safe.