C.B. Bucknor strikes again.
This time it happened after a three-hour, three-minute rain delay in St. Louis, and apparently not wanting to wait a minute longer, Bucknor rung up Ivan Herrera on a ball that was clearly outside to end Saturday’s Cardinals-White Sox game, giving Chicago a 6-5 win in 10 innings.
The Cardinals had the bases loaded in the 10th with no outs before a pair of strikeouts, and that’s when the rain delay began.
With the White Sox bringing in left-hander Tanner Banks to pitch, the right-handed Herrera pinch-hit for the lefty-hitting Nolan Gorman when play finally resumed, only for Herrera to be left stunned by Bucknor’s call, looking at the umpire and crouching in disbelief.
“You know they only have one guy left,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said after the game, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They’re going to go to the lefty. He’s punching out lefties 34 percent of the time. You have a right-handed bat that you feel really good with, Herrera.
“You wait three hours and you want it to be determined between the pitcher and the hitter. That wasn’t the case.”
Saturday marked the second time in five days Bucknor was in the spotlight for a controversial strike call.
Former Orioles star Jim Palmer fumed on Tuesday during the MASN broadcast when Bucknor called strike three on Gunnar Henderson on a pitch by the Yankees’ Nestor Cortes that was low.
The Cardinals TV announcers on Saturday were flabbergasted by Bucknor’s call.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. After all of that, he’s gonna call a pitch off the plate,” one of the broadcasters said right after the call.
After viewing a replay of the call, the same broadcaster said, “Not even close,” and the other replied, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Marmol and Bucknor have a history, as the two got into a heated, expletive-filled argument in August 2022 over a call, and the following spring training, Marmol accused Bucknor of refusing to shake his hand during a pregame meeting at home plate.
“I went to go shake C.B.’s hand,” Marmol told reporters in February 2023. “He didn’t extend his. I went into that game pretty certain about my thoughts on him as umpire. They weren’t very good. It just shows his lack of class as a man. That’s the bottom line.”