the Damon play at first with Lackey covering was perhaps another missed call (I knew it was really close since the toss seemed to take forever, but not that close). The Yankees sure didn’t seem to protest much unless I missed it. but it probably was easy to miss if it ended the inning.

appears to be C.B. Bucknor, of all people (though this might be a good thing). He has never worked a World Series before.

You’d think someone like McClelland would be the one blacklisted, and therefore odd man out but I guess he wasn’t slated to work the WS anyway.

in strategy, is that instead of actually analyzing who made the most bad calls and keeping those guys off a list, and promoting the ones who were the most consistently right, they just assign the guys with the most seniority and say “no new umps in the WS this year”, thinking that will somehow solve the problem as a Band-Aid.

in other words, typical MLB move. let’s just hope it fixes something.