TarpGate is over: San Francisco Giants win protest

Aug 19, 2014; Chicago, IL, Chicago Cubs manager

and San Francisco Giants manager

discuss the condition of the field after a rain delay in the fifth inning at Wrigley Field. Mandatory Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

TarpGate is over and we can all go back to normal baseball things. Gordon Wittenmyer, beat writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, first reported that the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs would be able to resume play from Tuesday’s rain shorted game.

Right before this news broke, Larry Baer had just finished up with Tom Tolbert and Ray Ratto on KNBR telling them that he thought the Giants had a really strong case in this protest. The general consensus from everyone was that the protest being upheld was very unlikely. The last time a protest was upheld was in 1986 and the last 8 protests were all denied. The game in 1986 was between the Pirates and Cardinals and had 2 rain delays with the game being called in the top of the 6th. The Pirates protested that the umpires failed to wait long enough to call the game and the protest was upheld the next day. You can check out the details here from Retrosheet.

MLB released a statement about the protest stating that this was considered to be under Rule 4.12(a)(3) as a malfunction of a mechanical field device.

Dave Flemming said during his pregame show on Wednesday that a big reason why this protest was upheld was because the Cubs were behind the protest with the Giants and also felt Tuesday night’s fiasco should be treated as a suspended game. After the teams were granted the request to resume play, it was decided that first pitch would be on Thursday at 2:05pm PST before the start of the series finale on Thursday at 5:05 PST.

I believe that the Cubs cooperation in all of this speaks to the fact that they genuinely felt responsible for the outcome of Tuesday night’s absurdness and wanted to do the right thing. I personally appreciate them being willing to go to all of these lengths to make things right and I’m sure everyone else does as well. Common sense finally made a difference!

The Giants need to keep the fire lit though and take advantage of this rare and golden opportunity that could make a difference in where the Giants end up in the playoffs come October.