MILWAUKEE -- Josh Bell is three parts tight end, one part first baseman. He's 6-feet-2, 230 pounds, with a steep, sleek athletic build and shoulders so broad that Mike Tomlin, upon spying Bell for the first time in Bradenton this past spring, marveled, "I'm sure there's something he can do for us."
Do for the Steelers, the man meant.
So now, imagine being Bell steaming around Miller Park's basepaths Tuesday night, striding into third on Adam Frazier's two-out single in the fourth inning, aggressive as ever, seeking to force a throw and maybe tie the score for the Pirates.
And then, imagine being Bell as that throw eluded the Brewers' third baseman, Travis Shaw, and skipping into foul territory. The Little League dash was onto its final 90 feet.
And then, imagine being Bell as he bore down on the Brewers' catcher, Manny Pina, who'd be conceding a couple inches, a couple dozen pounds and 100 percent of the force.
And finally, imagine being Bell and knowing that the home plate collision's basically been knocked out of Major League Baseball:
Yep. Out as out gets.
Right?
Hello?
That's not all that cost the Pirates this 3-1 loss, their third in a row and fourth in the past six games. But it sure felt pivotal at the time and well afterward, for so many reasons.
For one, as Bell would tell me, home plate umpire Andy Fletcher advised Bell following the play that, if he sees a catcher blocking home plate -- per the new regulation generally referred to as the Buster Posey Rule installed in 2014 to reduce catcher injuries -- then that catcher is fair game. Not for a cheap shot, but for a hard slide. Much harder than the one Bell took.
"If he's in your way," Bell remembered of Fletcher's advice, "you can truck him."
And as a result ...
"Yeah, I'd do it differently."
OK, but here's where it gets weird. The relevant clause in the Posey Rule, or Rule 7.13, per this play, is the following: "The catcher may not block the pathway of a runner attempting to score unless he has possession of the ball. If the catcher blocks the runner before he has the ball, the umpire may call the runner safe."
That's the part everyone knows. Or at least we thought we knew it.
Because if one looks back at that sequence up there, Pina has his left foot up the baseline and his right foot back on the plate, combining for an odd-looking Spider-Man stance. By any interpretation, because of that left foot turned sideways, he's blocking the plate.
I asked Bell, plain and simple, if he saw any of the plate.
"Nope."
OK, so, going back to the rule, the blocking of the plate calls for the umpire to automatically award a run. Fletcher, obviously, did no such thing, simply raising his right thumb when Bell slid softly into the out. And after Clint Hurdle challenged, Major League Baseball's replay officials in New York upheld Fletcher's call.
Apparently with no explanation. In fact, afterward, Hurdle told me he'd be waiting deep into the night to receive any communication on the matter from the league offices.
"I'm looking forward to finding out what the call was and why it was made," Hurdle said. "The definition that we have ... I thought he was clearly set up in front of the plate."
Meaning Pina, of course.
"Now, the throw's coming from the foul side," Hurdle continued. "Could he take the throw inside and then go make the tag? That one, we felt by the definition as we understood it, he was blocking the plate. Now, that wasn't the call that was made by the crew in New York. I'm definitely looking to find out why."
Sufficiently confused yet?
The rule has comes with many virtues -- fewer concussions is as noble a goal as exists in professional sports -- but it's still not taken a good grip on its participants, on the flow of a game that does not easily bend or waver over time. So now imagine, once again, being Bell on those final 90 feet. When the game he'd known all through his childhood and development years called for him to deploy that big frame the best way he knew how.
The plate is the end goal. It's everything in baseball. The runner has to want to reach it. The catcher has to want to defend it.
And now?
Now, we've got a player who's sure he didn't do anything wrong, as I confirmed -- "Oh, no, absolutely, I know that" -- but at the same time is already contemplating how he'll annihilate the next catcher who tries what Pina did, but, at the same time, just might show up to the ballpark this morning to find out that either his manager or the umpire or the people in New York didn't fully grasp the rule, either.
Yikes.
DK'S THREE THOUGHTS
1. Bell was central in so many other ways, too.
In a game that came with a playoff feel partly because of the teams' places in the Central standings -- the Brewers are 1 1/2 games behind the first-place Cubs, the Pirates 4 1/2 back -- but also because of every single play seeming so magnified with the low score, it didn't help that Bell's throwing error in the Milwaukee second handed contributed to the first run, or that he was a little too eager to cap what would have been an extraordinary play by the infield in the sixth.
The score was 1-1 when Pina's high bouncer skipped off the glove of a diving David Freese but fortuitously right to a nearby Jordy Mercer. The shortstop snow-coned it, then fired a bullet across the diamond to Bell, who stretched every sinew in that linebacker's frame ... only to pull himself off the bag:
That put the Brewers up, 2-1, and for good.
Hurdle emerged from the dugout, anticipating a possible request for a challenge -- he'd already burned his challenge on the Posey Rule play -- but he heard from video coordinator Kevin Roach back in the clubhouse that "it would be a close call," and backed off. Which was a good thing, since further replays powerfully indicated a challenge wouldn't have been successful.
I asked Bell about his mindset there:
