Mookie Betts on the fan interference call: ‘I’m 100 percent positive I was going to be able to catch that one’
"I've never seen or been part of a play like that."
Mookie Betts believes the play was going to end in an out regardless. The center fielder was the beneficiary of a fan interference call in the first inning of Game 4 when umpire Joe West ruled an Astros fan prevented him from catching a Jose Altuve fly ball.
Betts was flying through the air, inches from snagging the baseball, when the fan appeared to close his glove. The Red Sox star told reporters after the game that the ball would have finished its descent in his leather had the spectators not turned into active participants.
“That was a ball I could catch,” Betts said. “I’m 100 percent positive I was going to be able to catch that one.”
Betts added he was “kind of surprised” West made the out call, but upon watching the replay, he felt the umpire got it right because the ball was going in his glove “for sure.”
“I’ve never seen or been part of a play like that,” he said.
#Postseason craziness in Houston … pic.twitter.com/ldNRUR22XN
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The 26-year-old noted he heard fans talking after the incident, but he simply turned around and smiled at them. Asked if he thinks there should be separation between fans and the wall in the future, Betts voted in favor of keeping the status quo.
“No, I think it’s just part of the game,” he said. “Just one of those things where it doesn’t happen often. So it’s just a great fan experience. And we can interact with the fans with them being close, too, good and bad ways. It’s just one of those things where it was just a freak accident.”
The accident occurred while Betts’s eyes were locked on the ball, so he didn’t see what was happening in the seats above his head.
“But I definitely felt like somebody pushed my glove out of the way,” Betts said. “It may not have been on purpose, but definitely happened. And I was pretty positive that ball was going in my glove.”
Betts and the Red Sox can clinch a World Series berth with a win over the Astros Thursday at Minute Maid Park.
