I've been familiar with the baseball rulebook since I was about womb and a half, but that interference call surprised me last night. I don't mean the fact that Youk was easily within arm's reach of second and shouldn't have been called for interference. I'm confused about that, too, but I'm referring to moving the other runners back to their original bases.

I was under the impression that if you fuck with the fielder at second, they call you out and call the batter out at first, end of story. And that if they get the batter at first anyway, well, that's all the defense gets. But apparently even if the defense overcomes this egregious infraction and still gets the most it could have possibly gotten (which kinda proves the interference call was a little much, huh umpy?) out of the play, they get even more: runners going back to bases they never would have stayed on.

In football, when the other team commits a penalty, you can have them march backwards, or, if their play failed anyway, you can just take the result of the play. You can't have both. In hockey, I'm pretty sure when you score on a power play, the other team gets their skater back on the ice at that point--you've already benefited from the violation so that's all you get. I guess I thought baseball had the same kind of deal but I was way, way, way off.

Rays at Us, 7:10. Rays go to Hellickson, we roll the Dice. I was gonna go to this game, as I was excited for Manny's return. But now, screw it, I'll go to a different game.