St. Louis Cardinals advance to NLDS; Braves protest disputed call

[Walter Cronkite]

David Freese and the St. Louis Cardinals rediscovered their postseason touch. Chipper Jones and the Braves kept throwing the ball away. And the Atlanta fans turned Turner Field into a trash heap.

They said anything could happen in baseball's first wild-card playoff.

Boy, did it ever.

In a game protested by the Braves, Matt Holliday homered and the defending World Series champion Cardinals took advantage of three Atlanta throwing errors -- the most crucial of them by the retiring Jones -- to take the winner-take-all playoff 6-3 on Friday.

St. Louis advances to face Washington in the best-of-five division round, beginning Sunday at Busch Stadium.

The Braves are done for this season, recipients of another heartbreaking loss in the playoffs.

The 40-year-old Jones is all done, period. He managed an infield hit in his final at-bat but threw away a double-play ball in the fourth, which led to a three-run inning that wiped out Atlanta's early 2-0 lead behind Kris Medlen.

But this one-and-done game will be remembered for the eighth, when a disputed call on a fly ball that dropped in short left field cost the Braves a chance at extending Jones' career.

The Braves thought they had the bases loaded with one out after the ball dropped between two fielders, who appeared to get mixed up over who had called for it. But left-field umpire Sam Holbrook called Andrelton Simmons out under the infield fly rule -- even though the ball landed at least 50 feet beyond the dirt.

When the fans realized what had happened, they littered the field with beer cups, popcorn holders and other trash, leading to a 19-minute delay.
That only delayed the inevitable.

When play finally resumed, Brian McCann walked but Michael Bourn struck out to end the threat. Dan Uggla grounded out with two aboard in the ninth to end it, leading to one more wave of trash throwing as the umps scurried off the field -- probably feeling a lot like those replacement NFL refs who caught so much grief.

The Braves now will wait on MLB's ruling of their protest, which a source told ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney will come later Friday night.

[Kellie-Girl]

I am neither a Braves or Cardinals fan. That being said, this was one of the most egregious officiating calls I have ever witnessed. The fly ball was halfway into the outfield, the ball could not be caught with ordinary effort, and the umpire (one of six) invoked the infield fly rule too late, just before the shortstop almost ran into left fielder, Matt Holiday, and dropped the ball.

The ruling goes against everything the rule was trying to prevent, the intentional dropping of a popup to try to force a double play on an ordinary play. his was anything but ordinary! Fredi Gonzales had every right to protest this call because the rule was misinterpreted by the umpires. Major League Baseball will uphold the ruling on the field though because they do not have the conviction to overturn a wrong call and make it right.