"The park didn't have any foul poles. You had the foul line on the field and then there was a fence with a yellow line on it and then about an 18-inch gap and a wall with a yellow line on it and that was it. In the second game there, the first night game ever in the World Series, of the National League was behind the plate. I was working the right-field line. In the middle of the game, Roberto Clemente hits this wicked line drive down the right field line. It went into the stands right in the area where there was no foul pole. When you have to make a call like that, it's a killer-diller. I called it foul. Everybody told me afterward if there had been a foul pole, it would have been a home run. And the next year, they put up a foul pole."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
John Rice, re a crucial defect in the construction of , which was famously exposed—much to the embarrassment of Pirates brass—during Game 4; as quoted in Umpires: Classic Baseball Stories from the Men Who Made the Calls (1997) edited by John C. Skipper, p. 26
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/1971_World_Series
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
1971 World Series
23 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by 1971 World Series →
Related Quotes
"It all began with Clemente hustling to first. He knows only one way to play this game."
"I want everybody in the world to know that this is the way I play all the time. All season, every season. I gave ever…"
"After we lost the second game in Baltimore, Clemente came into the clubhouse and he starts screamin’ and said that we…"
"During the Series, after arriving in Baltimore, Roberto practiced for hours, studying how the ball caromed off the ri…"
"Leppert’s only regret is that Clemente didn’t have the chance to truly excel in the field. Other than his eye-popping…"
"I never really pitched against him until the World Series. The scouting report said you can go up and in with him, bu…"
"I've already had a colonoscopy by Blass."
"He's been popping off about ballparks and he's played in a bleeping coal hole over there at all his career. Clemente'…"
"They got on his back, and he carried the team. He said, "I’m not going to let my team lose.""
"It all boils down to Blass, to pitching being 90 percent of the game. Blass couldn't have been better. He didn't get …"