Grading PolitiFact: George Will on perfect game umpiring

Sometimes PolitiFact fact checks claims about sports.  I guess it beats delving into whether or not Sen. Barbara Boxer is certifiably insane when she claims the Deepwater Horizon oil spill serves as an example of the harmful effects of "too much carbon."  That in the context of defending the EPA's claim to regulatory power over carbon dioxide emissions.


The issue:

While arguing that Major League Baseball should not overrule the baseball umpire, Will stated that the last pitch in Don Larsen's World Series perfect game was "a foot and a half, probably, high and outside."  My transcription is better than the one PolitiFact used, for the record.



The key portion occurs at about the 2:15 on the video.  PolitiFact chose to fact check the distance factor on Larsen's third strike to Dodgers batter Dale Mitchell.

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Morris Kennedy:  editor

Analysis:

While providing the background information on the fact check, Louis Jacobson took a curious step outside the normal realm of objective reporting.  "This Week" host Jake Tapper had introduced earlier portions of the Round Table segment by tipping the audience and the panel that the later discussion would include the much-publicized baseball controversy.  Jacobson wrote that Tapper asked Will about the perfect game that wasn't.  Note how Jacobson starts the subsequent paragraph:

Will -- a bestselling author on baseball and one of the game's most prominent fans -- took Tapper's bait as if it were a hanging curve ball.

Hanging curve ball?  A hanging curve ball is mistake.  Tapper wasn't trying to strike anybody out.  He was pitching batting practice.  It wasn't "bait."  It was just another part of the buffet.  The implication that Tapper was out to somehow trap Will is ridiculous.

Jacobson never really recovers from the bad beginning:

"In the most important perfect game ever pitched -- 1956, Don Larsen in the World Series -- the 27th out was made by Dale Mitchell," Will said. "A wonderful batter's eye he had. He struck out 119 times in 4,000 Major League at-bats. The umpire (Pinelli) -- it was his last game, by the way -- called strike three on Dale Mitchell. It was a foot and half probably high and outside. He was so eager to get the game over."

A foot and a half outside the strike zone seemed to us like a pretty badly blown call. We thought it would be worth checking to see if Will was correct in how he described Pinelli's call.

I have no problem with PolitiFact placing a focus on the amount of space between Larsen's pitch and the strike zone.  But the fact check will not be complete without keeping to the context of Will's remarks.  Even if taken literally rather than as hyperbole, Will is reasonably entitled to the normal imprecision we employ with numbers.  "A foot and a half" is a reasonable expression of 15 inches.  That is, it represents the standard round-up from the halfway point between one foot and "a foot and a half." 

I wonder what sort of measuring tape Jacobson will use to fact check Will?

Jacobson tried to contact Will to see if he had viewed the game.  That was a sensible move, but Will reportedly did not respond.  Jacobson then started picking over other aspects of Will's statement, such as the claim about Mitchell's sense of the strike zone:

Let's note that Will is correct about Mitchell's career statistics -- he struck out only 119 times in 3,984 at bats -- but did not mention that Mitchell was at the end of his career, with some baseball experts saying he'd lost a step. Mitchell's plate appearance against Larsen was the second-to-last of his career, and he batted just .204 (11-for-54) during the 1956 regular season and went hitless in four at-bats in the World Series.

Losing a step doesn't typically affect a player's sense of the strike zone.  Taken literally, it makes him slower to first base.  Taken charitably, it makes his bat slower.  The latter can make a player more susceptible to striking out even if he has a good sense of the strike zone.  But none of that, including the stats provided by PolitiFact, seems to affect Will's point that Mitchell had a good sense of the strike zone.

Jacobson then takes up a second distraction, noting that Will was not correct that Larsen's perfect game was not the last as umpire for Babe Pirelli.  It was his last game as a home plate umpire.  I'd say that was probably what Will meant, but PolitiFact doesn't show much of a propensity for using charitable interpretation.

Next, Jacobson provided a series of quotations from expert sources affirming that the called third strike was outside the strike zone.  Jacobson's assessment followed:

But none of this proves that Pinelli's call was as flagrantly out of the strike zone as Will suggests.

Barbaric grammar aside (Pinelli's call might have been flagrantly wrong, but the issue isn't whether the call was outside the strike zone), Jacobson is correct that the expert sources do not confirm the distance figure offered by Will.

Jacobson finishes by noting that the bulk of the experts he contacted agreed that Will was exaggerating but that the pitch was likely not a strike.  Some experts defended the call on the basis that the pitch was "too close to take."  With that, Jacobson is ready for his conclusion:

So let's recap. There's ample evidence -- including the players' eyewitness testimony -- that the pitch was not a down-the-middle, obvious strike. In all likelihood, it was somewhat out of the strike zone. But we found wide agreement among our experts that Will is exaggerating when he says that Larsen's pitch was a foot and a half outside the strike zone. And if it wasn't a flagrantly bad call like Joyce's earlier this month, then the example's value for Will is reduced. As umpire, we rate Will's statement Half True.

Note Jacobson's assertion that "the example's value for Will is reduced" if the call was not as blatantly wrong.  Jacobson appears to have missed the point of the example.  Will, after describing the bad call by the World Series umpire, went on to suppose that baseball's commissioner was in the stands and that he might move onto the field and call a do-over.  The example drew its strength from the critical (and now historic) situation more than from the degree of poor judgment from the umpire.

As always, I have no problem with noting exaggeration where it has likely taken place.  But PolitiFact would improve its service to its readers if it more often recognized the legitimacy of hyperbole in normal communication.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Morris Kennedy:  F

The sheer amount of ridiculousness easily overshadows the potentially valuable survey of expert sources.  And it could have been mentioned that Will himself is arguably as expert as any of the others.

Afters:

I was bugged by one particular aspect of the video material for the Don Larsen's World Series perfect game.  The camera angle for every pitch except the final pitch was from directly behind the plate.  The camera angle for the final pitch--the one allegedly high and outside--was from the right of the plate.  The altered camera angle makes it more difficult to gauge the degree to which the call was blown.

I find it hard to imagine that the cameraman suddenly decided to move over to the right (and back?) in between pitches during what might turn out as the final out of a World Series game.  Most likely a different camera angle was used to make it less obvious that the call was questionable at best.

Follow this link to see an at bat by Duke Snider in the same game.  Every pitch matches the camera angle at left in the image above.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has viewed the third strike to Mitchell from the left camera angle, or who knows the story behind the different camera angle we see on the right side.



July 22, 2010:  Clarified Pirelli's "last" as umpire.