Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

It's the next morning, and I'm still not exactly sure what it is I witnessed last night.

I'm in disbelief that C.B. Bucknor called a balk in that situation. By many accounts this morning, Danny Farquhar might have flinched his left shoulder while looking in for the sign from his catcher, but it wasn't enough of a flinch to be caught by modern technology. While the joke is often that umpires need a new eyeglass prescription, C.B. Bucknor is a certified Superman if he saw the supposed flinch.

There was the play before that in the same inning, in which Farquhar essentially got to play by the rules of kickball as a ball that seemingly got away from him hit Elvis Andrus from behind on his way to first. He was indeed inside fair territory, but it was the type of ruling that, since it seemed Farquhar had a clear enough line to first base, would set a bad precedent if followed to the extreme in all cases.

There was Gary Pettis, once again exhibiting his mad base-coaching skills, first signaling for Mitch Moreland to go home, then to stop, then nevermind, go home anyways. It was the type of play that has left Pettis responsible for several outs on the bases this season, but in this one instance, it actually worked out for Texas.

These are just the kinds of things that leave you scratching your head, and then thinking to the extreme. If umpires called every possible interference, balk, or first baseman pulling his foot off the bag too soon, we'd be watching entirely different baseball games.

I know the saying goes, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." What if the horse is staring right back? Or standing upright on two legs? I'm not even sure I know what I'm talking about anymore, but I know that Game 132 of the 2013 season was really weird, and sometimes the weird can make us kick conventional thinking, like looking a gift horse in the mouth.