No one has responded to the major points that has been made over and over by the former players who have been analyzing the play. 1) AJ had this play in mind because he got burned by it last year while catching in SF and made the same mistake Josh Paul did; 2) AJ was in front of this umpire the whole night and was fully aware of the verbalizations the guy was using to call people out--especially on strikeouts---Josh Paul was new into the game. The only Angels catcher they quoted about the thing was Benjie Molina who was not catching last night (but was in the lineup). Jose Molina has been conspicuously silent through this whole thing--PERHAPS because he knows the same thing that AJ does--the ump was verbalizing his out calls in a particular way all night; 3) in real time, the delay by AJ was very slight (much less of a delay than it looked like when I first saw it)--he didn't hear the out call and it suddenly registered with him so he took off.
That said, the ump didn't steal second base for Ozuna, nor did he throw the hanging splitter that Crede rapped to the wall on an 0-2 count. It was unfortunate that there was any doubt put into the White Sox win, because the LAA simply played worse than the White Sox for most of the game last night and were somewhat lucky given their mistakes to even have a bottom of the ninth (though the White Sox made enough mistakes also to get them to the bottom of the ninth). Bottom line is that Buehrle really deserved to win the game the way he pitched.
