E.K. NATION

One minute we were watching the game at The Stockpot in relative peace, the next minute Alex Rodriguez knocked the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove and suddenly everyone was loudly voicing his opinion: "Hey, he can't do that!"..."Yes, he can! Can't he?"..."Hey, he's out! Once the fielder touches the runner with the ball, he's out, no matter whether he drops it or not!"

Well, that last one we knew was wrong.

Here is the rule that applied to the play:

Section 6.1 (Offensive Interference):

While contact may occur between a fielder and runner during a tag attempt, a runner is not allowed to use his hands or arms to commit an obviously malicious or unsportsmanlike act such as grabbing, tackling, intentionally slapping at the baseball, punching, kicking, flagrantly using his arms or forearms, etc. to commit an intentional act of interference unrelated to running the bases.

This rule is from the MLB Umpire Manual, and we at the bar lacked the secret decoder ring apparently necessary to have access to it. More than one of us figured, hey, you can knock the catcher over and dislodge the ball that way. But apparently you can't actually slap at the glove to knock the ball out. I had no idea. (We couldn't hear the announcing crew of Buck, McCarver and Leiter say almost immediately that a runner is not allowed to do that and the call was correct.)

Thankfully, the umpires got the call right in the end, letting the Sox keep their 4-2 lead while recording an out instead of having A-Rod stand on second as the potential tying run. That ruling, coupled with the near-blown home-run call in the fourth inning that also wound up--rightfully--going Boston's way, the Red Sox are now one win away from becoming the first team in Major League Baseball history to recover from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-7 series. They're already the first team to even force a Game 7 after a 3-0 deficit. And I really think they're going to win it tonight.

In the National League, the Astros are one win away from their first World Series ever. They travel to St. Louis today for Game 6, holding a 3-2 lead. They, like the Sox, have serious momentum, and if momentum means anything, and I'm not so sure it does, because you're only as good as today's starting pitcher, we could very well see a Houston-Boston World Series, after LCS's in which St. Louis had a 2-0 edge and New York had the until-now insurmountable 3-0 lead.

On a different note, we here at E.K. Nation are also excited that our pre-season World Series pick, Yankees vs. Astros, could come to fruition today. In any case, we're trying to imagine what sort of crazy stuff is going to happen in a Bronx Game 7 tonight. What sort of crazy comebacks or silly plays are going to unfold?

Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.