If Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. ends up leading Major League Baseball in doubles this season, he may have a Rangers fan to thank for it.
Witt entered Thursday’s game against the Rangers with an MLB-best 39 doubles, and he got No. 40 in a strange fashion.
With one out in the third inning, Witt hit a towering fly to left-center field at Kauffman Stadium that Texas’ Wyatt Langford lost in the sun. The ball hit the warning track and bounced up toward the stands.
A fan in a Rangers shirt tried grabbing the ball but whiffed on it, although it apparently hit the spectator’s glove. Texas center fielder Evan Carter had jumped to grab the ball but missed it, possibly because of the deflection off the fan’s glove.
Meanwhile, Witt sped around the bases in a blazing 15.07 seconds for an inside-the-park homer. The umpires then huddled and ruled it a ground-rule double, and Witt went back to second.
Royals manager Matt Quatraro popped out of the dugout for an explanation that he deemed unsatisfactory. The Royals challenged, claiming fan interference, but lost and Witt ended up with a double.
Fortunately for the Royals, Salvador Perez hit a two-out single that scored Witt, so they got the run in the end.
This was a weird play.
Following the Royals’ 6-4 win, Quatraro explained what the umpiring crew told him.
“Let’s see if I can do it without messing it up. So essentially, initially, when you see the umpire go like this,” Quatraro said grabbing his forearm, “that’s fan interference.
“When they got back together, they then just ruled it a ground-rule double because they said the ball would have gone into the stands. So when we challenged it, we were looking for the replay officials to say, no, it was not going to go in the stands, in which case it’s a judgment call on runner replacement. So the best-case scenario that we were hoping for was they put Bobby at third rather than at second for a ground-rule double.”
This was the official description from MLB: “Royals challenge call of ground-rule double; call stands, could not definitively determine that the ball would have remained in play had the spectator not made contact with the ball, it is a ground-rule double.”