Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez has to be restrained after being ejected for arguing an interference call during the seventh inning of Game 6 of the baseball World Series against the Houston Astros Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019, in Houston.

Matt Slocum / AP Photo

The big news from Tuesday night’s Game 6 is that the Nationals will live to duke it out in Game 7, following a genuinely thrilling evening in Houston.

But the searing image of the game hasn’t been Washington’s players running onto the field in celebration of their renewed chance to win the World Series. Instead, it’s been team manager Dave Martinez, storming onto the field to fight with the umpires during the seventh inning stretch, before they ejected him from the game. It’s the first time since 1996 that a manager has been ejected from a World Series game (for all you trivia-heads out there, the last manager was the Atlanta Braves’ Bobby Cox).

The brouhaha stemmed from an incident at the top of the seventh inning, when the Nats were up 3-2. With Nats catcher Yan Gomes already at first base, speedster shortstop Trea Turner hit a slow roller fielded by Astros pitcher Brad Peacock, who sent the ball to first base on a wild throw. The ball, first baseman Yuli Gurriel’s glove, and Turner all arrived on the base at about the same time. When the ball didn’t meet Gurriel’s glove, which then went flying, Turner and Gomes continued on to second and third base, respectively.

But then, plate umpire Sam Holbrook called Turner out. The reason? A rarely used rule called “interference,” meaning that Turner supposedly ran outside of the so-called “runner’s lane” and got in the way of Gurriel. (It wasn’t the first time the series was bedeviled by questionable calls). See the shenanigans for yourself here:

The Nats were not pleased by the ruling. Turner started screaming at Joe Torre, Major League Baseball’s chief baseball officer, as the officials huddled for a rules clarification on the stunning call that lasted nearly five minutes. (Interference calls are among those that aren’t reviewable, according to MLB rules.) The call stood, meaning that rather than having runners at second and third with no outs, the Nats had one out and a runner at first. As The Ringer notes, this decreased the team’s probability of winning the game by a little more than 14 percent.

The ultimate answer to that came from third baseman Anthony Rendon, who shortly thereafter hit a home run that brought in runs from him and Gomes.

But even then, it wasn’t over. When the game cut to commercial, Martinez marched onto the field to give the umpires a piece of his mind. You can watch how that went down, hilariously enough, to the sweet sounds of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” Multiple other Nats coaches, most notably bench coach Chip Hale, tried to hold him back, but Martinez danced around their grips.

Is it unusual for managers to get booted from games?

During the regular season, no. It’s pretty common for managers to fight with umpires, resulting in their getting the boot from the game. (Though the New York Times bemoaned the “dying art of the manager meltdown” in September, arguing that the spats between managers and umps just don’t have the same je ne sais quoi these days, the actual number of ejections hasn’t changed.)

Sometimes, it’s performative, as Jason Turbow, author of They Bled Blue and The Baseball Codes, explains. “If the team is playing flat and needs some fire under their rear ends, I don’t think there’s a manager in baseball who is unwilling to absorb an ejection if he thinks that’ll fire the team up,” Turbow tells DCist. It’s a way for the manager to show that he has the team’s back and is willing to fight for them.

But in this case, he thinks there’s an even simpler explanation for the fight that led to Martinez’s on-field ejection. “He’s mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it anymore,” says Turbow. “I really think it’s just a manager who is madder than he’s ever been.”

For Turbow, who calls the interference call “terrible,” he’s not particularly surprised at Martinez’s reaction to the call. (For what it’s worth, the umpire’s association calls it “the correct call.”)

But what Turbow didn’t expect was for Martinez to get ejected during the World Series. “Umps are instructed more leeway because you don’t want to hamstring a team in the biggest game of the season,” he says. “That’s a directive from the league office.”

While he thinks that a similar outburst from Martinez would have resulted him getting booted in about 30 seconds during the regular season, “still, I’m surprised he got thrown out at all.”

Turbow compares Martinez’s rage in the moment to the infamous Pine Tar Game in 1983, when Yankees manager Billy Martin convinced umpires to overturn a home run from Kansas City Royals player George Brett because of the amount of pine tar on his bat. Brett ran onto the field in a fury, limbs flailing. Brett “tore out of the dugout like a man possessed,” says Turbow. “I haven’t really seen that since, until last night.”

In a post-game interview, Martinez tried to evade questions about the call. “I don’t want to sit here and talk about me or the umpires,” Martinez said. “This is not about me or the umpires. This is about the Washington Nationals and those guys in the clubhouse coming to Game 6 and playing lights out, knowing that this could be it. And I’m super proud of them.”

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