Brandon Crawford is usually an understated player that simply just goes about his business on the field and lets his play do the talking. However, Thursday night’s game against the Colorado Rockies was an exception.
Crawford was ejected after apparently contesting a questionable strike three call by home plate umpire Chris Segal. But according to Crawford, he didn’t even know he was ejected from the game until he reached the Giants’ dugout.
During a conversation with Tolbert & Lund Friday afternoon, Tom mentioned that he didn’t even realize right away that Crawford had been ejected. Crawford had this to say:
“Neither did I. I had to ask Kelby on deck.”
Tom then likened the ejection, which according to Crawford was the result of him refusing to pick up his bat, to him telling his kids to clean up their room and them refusing. Crawford agreed.
“That’s a little bit what it seemed like to me also, which is why I didn’t love that he said that,” Crawford said. “So I’m like, ‘No, I’m walking back to the dugout already. We have batboys that pick up bats. They can come get it.’ I dropped it because it was ball four, not because I threw it or anything like that. So that’s kind of the issue I had with getting tossed for something small like that.”
Tom then asked if Crawford got any explanation from Segal as to why he was thrown out.
“Well, like I said, I didn’t know I got thrown out,” Crawford said. “So I asked Kelby, cause I heard the crowd react, and I didn’t know if it was for Bochy running out there, maybe he got tossed right away, which I guess he did also. But Kelby’s like, ‘No, he threw you out.’ So I went back and asked him, I was like, ‘Did you really just throw me out because I left my bat there, because I didn’t pick up my bat?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ And I had some words with him.”
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Lastly, Crawford expanded on his frustration with Segal, and why he went back to the plate to have words with him.
“I mean, as Giants fans, you guys watching the game, you know I don’t argue with too many called thirds,” Crawford said. “But the issue that I had last night was that he established the ball down on the first ball. And now this ball, on a 3-2 count, is obviously lower than the first one, and he calls a strike on that one. So the inconsistency is really what bothered me, and that’s why I had to let him know that that ball was down, it’s lower than the pitch that you already called a ball, and look at it after the game. That’s basically what I said to him. I didn’t say–I didn’t call him names, I didn’t do anything like that. And then his response to all that was, ‘Pick up your bat.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘Man, no. Somebody will get my bat. Like, that shouldn’t be what you’re worried about right now.’”
“And so that’s kind of what my problem was. Just the inconsistency, and that there’s no repercussions for making mistakes like that. We make a mistake on the field, and there’s a repercussion for it. You know, you make enough mistakes, we get benched, we have to answer to media. You know, that doesn’t really happen for them. So I think that’s kind of the bigger underlying issue that both I and Belt have with them. So, and like he said, most of them do a great job. I had a guy earlier this year who told me, like, hey–I had a called third, I told him I didn’t think it was a strike, he took it fine. The next day, he came over, he was like, ‘You know what, you were right. I’m sorry about that.’ So there are some guys that will do that, and there are some guys that will never admit that, and act like they’re always right.”
Listen to the interview below to hear Crawford on his ejection and the umpires.