Arizona Diamondbacks' catcher José Herrera helps finish a strikeout by catching a foul tip with his crotch. Arizona Diamondbacks’ catcher José Herrera helps finish a strikeout by catching a foul tip with his crotch in an Aug. 2, 2023 game.
By Andrew Bucholtz on

The Arizona Diamondbacks-San Francisco Giants game Wednesday saw one of the more unusual baseball situations in a moment. That game saw Diamondbacks’ pitcher Slade Cecconi making his MLB debut. And he got started in strange fashion indeed, recording one of the weirdest strikeouts in a while against the first batter he faced.

In the bottom of the first inning there, Cecconi faced Giants’ leadoff batter LaMonte Wade Jr. to start. On a 3-2 count, Cecconi threw a pitch that was initially ruled as hitting Wade. But Arizona challenged, and review showed it was actually a foul tip; the ball hit the knob of Wade’s bat, then hit catcher José Herrera in the crotch. But Herrera hung on for the catch (while doubling over in pain) and the strikeout without using his glove, and that prompted some notable commentary from Giants’ announcers Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow on the NBC Sports Bay Area broadcast:

Kuiper’s line of “That would be the oddest first strikeout in this young kid’s career” is notable, as is his later description of the play: “Take a look at where the ball gets lodged right there in his crotch.” Both announcers then note some issues with the umpire’s explanation of “After review, the pitched ball hit the bat and went into the catcher’s glove. The call is overturned, it’s a foul ball, it’s strike three.”

Krukow says “But the ball didn’t go into the glove” and Kuiper says “That’s right. I mean, that’s bad information given to the fans.” The announcers then note that Giants’ manager Gabe Kapler is talking to the umpires on this, and wonder if he can ask for further review. Krukow then hits on sort of what the actual situation is here:

“I mean, if a ball caroms off on a swing and miss or a foul tip, and hits the catcher, bounces into the glove, there’s a lot of interpretations of that rule. But I’ve never seen it happen where it gets caught in a guy’s crotch before. I guarantee that’s not in the rulebook.”

In truth, it sort of is and sort of is not in the rulebook. There isn’t a specific discussion of crotch catches, but there is a discussion of foul tips counting as strikes if the catcher gets the ball by hand or glove before it hits the ground, unless it hits the umpire first or lodges in the catcher’s equipment. And that can include using the body. But, interestingly enough, as Gordy Foley noted on Twitter, that rule used to require the ball to hit the catcher’s glove first, and changed sometime between 2019 and 2023:

The 2023 language there (confirmed in the current online rulebook, available on MLB’s site here) is “If a foul tip first strikes any part of the catcher’s body or paraphernalia and is caught by hand or glove against his body or protector, before the ball touches the ground, it is a strike, and if third strike, batter is out.” And that’s pretty clear that the eventual call here was correct, even if it was poorly explained by the umpire. So the crotch catch was actually in the rulebook, albeit not explicitly about crotches.

But given how unusual this situation is, that isn’t necessarily a specific rule announcers should be expected to know without reference. And that’s especially true with the glove-first dimension of the rule (which would have mattered here) only changing recently. Krukow and Kuiper generally handled this discussion well in this clip, and they at least weren’t definitively wrong. And this produced much more crotch discussion than we usually get on a broadcast (and a lot of social media discussion), so that’s entertaining at least.

[Awful Announcing on Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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