{"id":2875,"date":"2009-05-19T22:24:44","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T21:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=2875"},"modified":"2010-04-02T15:34:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T14:34:04","slug":"helton-gets-stuck-on-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=2875","title":{"rendered":"Helton gets stuck on 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE (20\/05): Happily, the official scorer did not change the decision, meaning that Helton reached 2000 hits during a ballgame<\/a>, rather than at a pre-game meeting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

An oversight in computing that gave us two-digit years threatened to stop the world turning from the\u00c2\u00a01999 to 2000. The financial markets were going to be reset and planes would fall out of the sky. Scenes of looting would provide a backdrop to the much graver problem of killer robots turning on humans. In the end, 11.59 31\/12\/1999 smoothly transitioned to 00.00 01\/01\/2000. People sung Auld Lang Syne (or at least sung the words they knew before smoothly transitioning to drunken humming) without having to raise their voices above the sounds of exploding computers. The whole episode now just serves as another example of media-fuelled mass irrationality.<\/p>\n

Todd Helton was one of the several billion humans who survived the transition from 1999 to 2000, but\u00c2\u00a0on Monday\u00c2\u00a0his hit tally was not given such good treatment. With 1999 hits to his name, he hit a line drive that dipped in front of the shortstop and fizzed through to the outfield. Unfortunately for Helton, the official scorer charged the shortstop with an error<\/a>. Helton had “never seen that ball called an error before.” Baseball is full of surprises, even for players with 2000 (sorry, 1999) hits.<\/p>\n

In my view, it’s certainly a tough ball to field cleanly, but all Yunel Escobar needed to do was get his glove or any part of his body on the ball and he would have had a very easy throw to second to retire the runner forced from first. I can see how the Rockies might feel that a hit should have been awarded, but I do not see how asking the official scorer to overturn the decision, which they have done, is in keeping with spirit of milestones. Helton will become the first Rockies player to reach the 2000 mark, and surely an important milestone like this deserves spontaneous acknowledgement from a large crowd, something that will not be possible if the scorer decides to change the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE (20\/05): Happily, the official scorer did not change the decision, meaning that Helton reached 2000 hits during a ballgame, rather than at a pre-game meeting. An oversight in computing that gave us two-digit years threatened to stop the world turning from the\u00c2\u00a01999 to 2000. The financial markets were going to be reset and planes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-2875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2875"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7272,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions\/7272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}