{"id":2370430,"date":"2026-04-13T02:50:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2370430"},"modified":"2026-04-13T02:50:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:50:38","slug":"royals-manager-furious-after-balk-wasnt-called-on-this-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-manager-furious-after-balk-wasnt-called-on-this-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals manager furious after balk wasn\u2019t called on this play"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s not quite up there with the \u201cWhat\u2019s a Catch\u201d debate among NFL fans, but identifying when a pitcher balks can be difficult to spot when watching a baseball game.<\/p>\n

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But that\u2019s what Major League Baseball umpires are paid to do, and Royals manager Matt Quatraro was certain they dropped the ball in Sunday\u2019s 6-5 loss to the White Sox<\/a> at Kauffman Stadium.<\/p>\n

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Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. was on first base in the fourth inning when he took off for second base. Seemingly, everyone in the Royals dugout began yelling \u201cbalk\u201d while Witt was running.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think the like definition of a balk, if you, whatever, hinder a base runner,\u201d Witt said. \u201cAnd I thought that he was going to the plate, and so I thought it was a balk.\u201d<\/p>\n

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White Sox pitcher Jordan Hicks seemed unfazed at the noise from the Royals dugout. He simply stepped off the rubber and threw to second, where Witt was tagged out. Quatraro immediately stepped out of the dugout seeking an explanation.<\/p>\n

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The umpires told Quatraro what they saw and that incensed the Royals manager. He let the umps have an earful but was not ejected from the game.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNobody saw it,\u201d Quatraro said. \u201cThey said they would have called it if they had.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Witt said: \u201cThey said they didn\u2019t see anything. They said they weren\u2019t kind of watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Were Witt and Quatraro right? Video of the play circulated on X\/Twitter postgame.<\/p>\n

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Ironically, a balk was called in the seventh inning when Witt was on first base. But the non-balk ended the fourth inning after the Royals had scored twice.<\/p>\n

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Related Stories from Kansas City Star<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pete Grathoff<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Kansas City Star<\/span><\/p>\n

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From covering the World Series to the World Cup, Pete Grathoff has done a little bit of everything since joining The Kansas City Star in 1997. <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kansascity.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not quite up there with the \u201cWhat\u2019s a Catch\u201d debate among NFL fans, but identifying when a pitcher balks can be difficult to spot when watching a baseball game. But that\u2019s what Major League Baseball umpires are paid to do, and Royals manager Matt Quatraro was certain they dropped the ball in Sunday\u2019s 6-5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2059080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2370430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Former-Royals-outfielder-announces-retirement-at-age-of-34.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370431,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370430\/revisions\/2370431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}