Yeah, I know people don't like him on DR1, but....
ARod won the game for team USA, singling up the middle, in the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded. USA wins over Japan 4-3.
Re: the flyout controversy. The umpires got it right. The runner left before the ball was caught. As with the Miguel Cabrera double in the VZ/DR game, they huddled up and made the right call. Replays confirm this.
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/...t_id=1346635&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
A-Rod lifts USA past Japan
Clutch hit in bottom of ninth delivers dramatic victory
By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com
ANAHEIM -- It was a game in March that had it all. Big leads. Blown leads. A disputed call. And an Alex Rodriguez base hit up the middle with the bases loaded in the bottom of ninth that saved Team USA from panic in the second round of the World Baseball Classic.
The net result was a 4-3 victory over the Japanese that left them shaking their collective heads as they walked off the field late Sunday afternoon at Angel Stadium.
Chipper Jones and Derrek Lee hit the homers that erased an early 3-0 deficit. Home plate umpire Bob Davidson reversed the second base umpire's call on an eighth-inning fly ball tag-up play from third base that would've again given Japan the lead. And after Ken Griffey Jr. whiffed on a full-count pitch, Rodriguez hit one of those twisters off the end of his bat that bounced off the glove of the second baseman, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, the guy who was called out on the tag-up.
"It was a big win for us," Rodriguez said. "We learned in the first round losing to Canada that every game is extremely important. You have to take it like an NCAA bracket where every game is a must-win or go home."
The U.S. has little time to relax. The Americans continue the second round with a 10 p.m. ET start against Korea on Monday night. They then take two days off before playing Mexico at 7:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.
The prize is a trip to the semifinals along with another team in the pool at San Diego's PETCO Park next Saturday.
And just think, some of these players could've been riding the bus on Sunday from Jupiter to Kissimmee or Peoria to Tucson.
"That was a great, great ballgame," said Team USA manager Buck Martinez, who came out of the dugout immediately after left fielder Randy Winn's throw was too late to nab Nishioka at the plate and was able to get Davidson to review the call. "It was such a close game you have to check everything out."
The game turned on that contested call in the Japanese half of the eighth inning.
With the bases loaded, two out and Joe Nathan pitching, Akinori Iwamura skied a fly to Winn in medium left. The throw was to the third-base side way off the plate as Nishioka scored. Catcher Brian Schneider tossed the ball down to Derek Jeter covering third, and second base umpire Brian Knight, who had rotated over on the play, pointed to his chest that it was his call and signaled safe.
Martinez immediately hopped out of the dugout to appeal the play.
"I asked Bob, 'Why did he make that call? You were going to call him out. Let's get this right,'" Martinez explained. "'He said, 'Well, just give us a chance.' It was obvious to me. And everybody on our dugout yelled, 'Hey, he left early.'"
Davidson, who was one of 14 umpires who resigned in a union dispute nearly five years ago and is back on a list to call Major League games again full-time, conferred with Knight and then reversed the call.
"It's a tag-up situation," Davidson said in statement. "In a bases-loaded situation our mechanics is that the plate man lines up the tag. Brian Knight hustled over to third where he's supposed to be, but he doesn't have the tag-up call. It's the plate umpire's call. I had it lined up. The wrong umpire made the initial call. It's the plate umpire, which is me, and I had him leaving early and called him out."
It wasn't all the impetus the U.S. needed, but it was enough.
"Buck is the player of the game today," Rodriguez said. "I was very surprised the call got overruled because you don't see that often. So when Davidson called him out I said, 'OK, this is our game to win right here.'"
And that's just what happened.
Japan jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but Jones and Lee came to the rescue. Jones opened the second inning with his second homer of the tournament, a high drive into the right-field seats off Japanese starter Koji Uehara.
Lee hit his third homer of the tournament with one out in the sixth inning after a walk to Jones. It came off reliever Naoyuki Shimizu, who replaced Uehara at the top of the inning.
"The attitude on the bench was just to keep battling," Martinez said, after Ichiro Suzuki opened the game with a leadoff homer against Jake Peavy. "Then Chipper got it going and Derrek was up there swinging at a 3-and-0 pitch. He cut right through that one and then hit one at 3-and-1."
U.S. relievers held off the Japanese from there as the Americans survived that bases-loaded situation in the eighth and another in the ninth when Brad Lidge walked them loaded and then struck out Hitoshi Tamura for the final out.
With the bases again jammed in the bottom of the inning, reliever Kyuji Fujikawa whiffed Griffey to turn the pressure up another notch. And Rodriguez grounded the ball up the middle. Nishioka tried to knock it down, but the ball skidded away from him into short center field, allowing the winning run to score.
It was redemption for A-Rod, who has had his troubles contributing during the postseason in his first two years with the New York Yankees.
"Last time I was here, things went really badly, not only for me, but for my team," said Rodriguez, whose Yankees lost to the Angels in five games last October in an American League Division Series while he hit .133 with no homers and no runs batted in. "And I look at it as an opportunity to start a new year, a new chapter. Ironically enough, I come up with a game-winning hit in this situation. Last year, I was the biggest goat, and today I get to be a hero. There's also a lesson to be learned, I guess."