Officially Speaking

Being a former referee and umpire, I should be one of the last to criticize an officiating call. I have made my share. I once took away RBI's from a batter who hit a ball down the line that I wrongly called foul. I have awarded the ball and denied baskets when those calls were in error.

I confess these with the explanation that they were not game changing calls. To my knowledge, I have never made a wrong call that affected the outcome of a game. Our softball friends had to play one more inning to replace the "lost runs" and win by the mercy rule of 10 runs. Most of my other wrong calls, thankfully, were against the team that won in the end.

With that in mind, think back to the two pivotal games of the Stanley Cup series. (I will not abbreviate it "SC" because some may mistake it for Supreme Court. But I digress.) Games 1 and 6 revolved around two series of erroneous calls. Excuse me if the Pred fervor flavors this, but "egregious erroneous" calls. Wouldn't you think that denying a goal in the finals is serious? A "good goal."

In the first game, the officials vacated the Predators' and Suban's first goal on a fraction of an inch interpretation of off-sides. Not long after that, they ignored a "flagrant," in my eyes, interference by Crawsley (sic) behind the goal and the subsequent shot by the guy in front of the net scored. Call the infraction and the scoring shot would have been whistled dead as soon as the Penguin touched it.

In that game alone, the officiating resulted in a two goal swing towards the opposition. That could be defined as "game changing."

Game 6 likewise had two game changers. Clearly the first, disallowed goal, by the Predators should have counted, except for the "early" whistle. This is particularly frustrating to an "old ref" because the guy making the call was out of position. Remember the "foul call" from my confession? I made it because I deviated from officiating mechanics. Almost from my first day of being a ref, my mentors drummed two things into me. One, know the rules. Two, study the mechanics to be in position to make the application of the rules. "You can't make a call you can't see."

An official who is "good enough" to call a Stanley Cup game should be able to execute his obligation to be in "position" to carry out his assignment. Lost goal number one.

One final caveat was drummed into my head. "Do not make ‘make-up' calls." That is where an official makes a bad call, favoring one team, then makes another favoring the other team to "make up" for his mistake. "Now you have made two bad calls instead of just one," they solemnly intoned. "Bad refs make bad calls. Don't make more bad ones."

So there was a challenge to the Pittsburg goal. It hinged on whether the goal scorer interfered with the goal keeper. He bumped him going to the puck. Recall the fraction of an inch call in game 1? If we are going to be "so picky," shouldn't that standard apply to all games and plays? Here was a genuine opportunity to "correct an error" without making an erroneous call. It would have been controversial, but how about the others? Not to mention that the preponderance of "close" (being charitable here) calls went against the Preds.

This is not new to Nashville. Recall the Titans' game against Baltimore the year after we made the SuperBowl? An arbitrary reffing call erased a Titans' touchdown and "awarded" them two or three inches because a (deliberately unnamed) Raven "tried" to get the Titans to jump offsides. He failed, we scored, and the ref canceled the touchdown. The Ravens won and romped to an "easy" SuperBowl win.

The final, controlling philosophy that was drummed into young officials' heads was that we were not the determiners of the game. Calling fouls to "aid" one team is as bad as not calling fouls. Either way, we are "choosing" the winner. We call what happens; nothing more, nothing less.

Excuse me if I am a little blunt, but "Let the kids play," is a pretty stupid comment. If the officials "let them play" and ignore violations and fouls, they are cheating for the offending team. Calling things as they occur avoids the "homer" designation and overall "bad ref" category.

And, incidentally, there are "correctable errors" where a ref can admit that he was wrong and change the call. Yup, I had some of those too. Fortunately, I had a better ref with me to straighten me out. And I learned from the mistakes. No more early "foul" calls. One time a player ran all the way around the bases. I had my arms up, but no one could hear me shout because they were cheering. "It was foul. Strike two," was the call when the bedlam quieted.

Did I affect the game? Yes siree! If I had let it go, would it have affected the game? You betcha! The "kids" played and the better, or luckier team won. It was not my call.

No more, "Wait'til next year," for the Cubs. Maybe the Preds can scratch their itch soon.