CB Bucknor sent everyone home early after waiting through a 3 hour rain delay. Screengrab via X.
By Awful Announcing Staff on

The Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals went to a rain delay with two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning with the ChiSox hanging on to a one-run lead. It took three hours for play to resume. Imagine waiting that long for one batter to potentially win or lose the game. And then imagine waiting that long for an ump show from C.B. Bucknor to decide it on a blown call.

Bucknor rung up Iván Herrera on a pitch that was juuuuuuuuuust a bit outside to Tanner Banks to end the game just four pitches after the rain delay was over.

Needless to say, the Cardinals announcers were not happy about having to sit around just to wait three hours for that with a simple, “You’ve got to be kidding me” the only thing that could suffice to express the sheer amount of frustration and exasperation for everyone involved in St. Louis.

On the flip side, the call from the White Sox booth didn’t make any mention of the strike call being wide of the plate. While we’ve seen both sets of announcers be willing to make note of bad calls this season, you can’t blame anyone for being excited to go home after a three hour rain delay.

You have to feel for the Cardinals players and fans and everyone else that had to wait it out through that entire delay just to end on such an unsatisfactory and unsavory call. The MLB umpiring crisis isn’t getting any better, whether it’s the first pitch or the last pitch. Bucknor might as well have started preemptively ringing the strikeout up before the ball crossed the plate like he was Enrico Palazzo back there.