TORONTO -- The Blue Jays would like to have a normal day at the ballpark Tuesday. No stoppages in play, no calls to New York, no rule books and no fourth outs.
Monday’s ruling against the Red Sox, which allowed a Boston run to hit the board 15 minutes after the inning had ended, was still dominating conversations 18 hours later. Those who knew Rule 5.09(c)(4) spoke as if they’d been waiting 50 years to pull out this obscure fact. Those who do not hold a doctorate in the official rules of Major League Baseball were still shaking their head.
The Blue Jays have the luxury of laughing about it because they won.
The most incredible thing about Monday’s game was not the ruling itself, the rarity of that play or the spectacle it turned into… it’s the fact that John Schneider spent a good 15 minutes on the field without getting ejected.
“I actually asked [Blue Jays general manager] Ross [Atkins] for a cash advance for not getting thrown out yesterday,” Schneider joked.
Schneider reiterated that “the rule is the rule” and said that the umpiring crew explained it to the best of their ability, communicating honestly with the Blue Jays and Red Sox dugouts throughout. Schneider didn’t agree with how the ruling was handled and still insisted that his defenders had not “left the field of play” -- which negated their ability to make the necessary appeal to third base -- but that’s all water under the bridge.
It was actually Tuesday’s first-base umpire, Nestor Ceja, who knew the rule off the top of his head after running into it a few years back. Schneider was primarily dealing with crew chief Chris Guccione, though, who you saw address the crowd multiple times.
“Guccione actually said, ‘Do whatever you’ve got to do, man. If you’ve got to get mad, I’m not going to hold it against you,’” Schneider said. “And I thought… I’m managing a two-man bullpen right now, I’ve got to stay in this game.”
The “apparent fourth out” is a thing of legend, an obscure rule few have lived through. Ernie Clement said he’d never seen that rule in a game, but noted that Max Scherzer has. Of course he has. This is Scherzer’s 19th season in the big leagues.
“Max has seen that play before because he’s 42 and he’s seen everything,” Schneider said.
This actually happened in a game between the D-backs and Dodgers during Scherzer’s second season in MLB. Scherzer was in the D-backs' dugout with Dan Haren on the mound for Arizona. Haren snagged a comeback liner and threw to second base for the double play, but since that second out came on a tag, the apparent fourth out entered the picture and allowed the run to score from third.
It gets even wilder, though. Schneider himself had a link to this play, which was flagged by Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, broadcaster of the Lansing Lugnuts. In 2016, the Lugnuts were the Single-A affiliate of the Blue Jays and managed by a young Schneider when the same type of play -- and ruling -- landed in the middle of a game.
A decade and several jobs later, this was news to Schneider.
“I literally had no idea. I try to block out some of those days,” Schneider joked. “Apparently it was against Fort Wayne, I was told? I wasn’t thinking about that last night, no.”
If everything goes the way the Blue Jays hope, Schneider won’t go to bed thinking about the MLB rule book Tuesday night, either.