For two minutes and 35 seconds, the Pirates and Indians waited for the call that would decide the game. Carlos Santana had uncorked a 442-foot fly ball off Sam Howard that hit PNC Park's left field rotunda late Tuesday night.
The only question was did he sneak it inside the foul pole:
After those two minutes and 35 seconds had passed, crew chief Dan Iassogna emerged from the review signaling home run, giving the Indians the three runs they needed to beat the Pirates, 6-3, in 10 innings.
Derek Shelton, unsurprisingly, disagreed with the call.
"I thought it was foul," Shelton said. "They called it fair on the field. With the replay, they confirmed it or it stood. But from our angle, we thought it was a foul ball. [Catcher J.R.] Murphy thought it was foul. [Third baseman Erik] Gonzalez thought it was foul. They called it fair."
Shelton, Murphy and Gonzalez didn't get a say in the matter, though. Nor did shortstop Kevin Newman, who immediately went to Iassogna to dispute the call, even as Santana was still running the bases.
"I definitely don’t have as good of an angle – I’ll start with that – as the umpire did," Newman said. "But from my angle, it definitely looked foul.”
Santana himself was unsure, leaning back towards home plate for a moment, believing it might have been foul. But for most of the time, he was leaning towards first base, trying to will it to stay fair.
“I was waiting for the umpire to call it fair," Santana said. "I was very happy for that.”
That homer might have stung a little less had it not been for the fact that the Pirates were only in extra innings because another close call went the Indians' way in the bottom of the ninth, when the usually reliable runner Jarrod Dyson was picked off second on a bang-bang play.
Dyson appeared to have plenty of time to get back, but he did not touch the bag because his right hand ran into shortstop Francisco Lindor's foot. He made an effort to get his left hand in after, but was still called out:
Again, Shelton disagreed. In both cases, the call on the field was upheld.
"I know Lindor’s foot was in front of the bag for the first hand," Shelton said. "We thought on the back side that he got his hand on the bag."
Newman lined a single later in the inning, which would have very likely scored Dyson if he was still on base.
Newman didn't want to play the "what if" game with Dyson, but offered that between that and the Santana call, "That’s definitely a hard way to go down, no doubt about it."
Had either call gone the Pirates way, then they would have very likely earned a hard-fought win against a good club. After being sidelined most of last week because of positive tests in the Cardinals' and Reds' clubhouse, and starting the season now 4-15, such a win was sorely needed.
"It’s definitely frustrating. There's no doubt about that," Derek Holland said.
Instead, Tuesday was yet another installment in close losses. So far this season, they have dropped all four of their extra-innings contests and are 1-6 in one-run games.
Holland and Newman are trying to focus on the positives, including that they continued to fight. That includes erasing a 3-1 early deficit and the bullpen working to pick the team up after starter JT Brubaker was only able to go three innings.
"I guess getting to extra innings is a good sign, given where we’re at right now," Newman said. "Having a chance to win late, we’ll take the positive out of that.”
But just getting to extra-innings is not good enough overall.
"We have to figure ways to finish games out," Shelton said. "We got to figure out ways to execute. That’s something that we have to continue to get better at and continue to work on. We’re making games close and coming back, but we have to figure out a way to finish ‘em."
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