Don't know why we would expect anything different, but the Braves commentators (i.e. Nick Green and Jeff Francoeur) circled the wagons around their former teammate, Davey Martinez, and instead put the criticism of the Culberson incident on Welke (deserved) and Timmons (who in no way deserves a word of criticism).
He did not call it a strike. Timmons was kneeling over Culberson, calling the trainer out and being human. Welke, who has a history of being an ass, botched the call and Martinez was absolutely being stone cold by appealing. Their fans can cut him slack, but Welke flat blew the call. But once the appeal was requested, Timmons could do two things:
1) Tell Martinez to go *** himself -- which would have been cool and appreciated but profoundly unprofessional
2) Direct the appeal to Welke, who was the last word.
But we were hearing "great guy" and "felt bad" bandied about by Green and Frenchy, and correctly pointed out that Martinez played for the Braves -- easy to forget. Did not matter. Culberson could have suffered a fatal injury, but Martinez was set on the appeal.
Instead, they put the two umpires under the same blame hat. And Caray of course has no balls to provide anything other than a move-it-along comment at the end.
Summary: cut Tim Timmons some slack. Read his comments post-game if you remain doubtful.
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