Umpire Is Guilty but Not Responsible

The Dodgers lost their second game in a row to Arizona on Friday night. Their lead in the National League West is down to a half-game. They had nobody to blame but themselves.

They couldn’t hurt Curt Schilling. Fair enough. Schilling is 15-3 this year. You beat the Diamondbacks by beating the others, after Randy Johnson and Schilling.

Which makes it worse, what happened Thursday night. An umpire’s mistake played a part in the Dodgers losing to the Diamondbacks and Johnson, 4-3.

Umpires can make as much as $285,000 a year. Plus $55,000 in expense money. Plus first-class air fare. That’s more than many doctors make. And major league umpires don’t have to buy malpractice insurance or attend medical school. Nobody sues the umpire.

Umpire Bill Hohn answered the door Friday evening. “Looking for Larry [Young]?” Hohn asked ... hopefully, sheepishly. Young is the umpiring crew chief for this crucial four-game Dodger-Diamondback series. Hohn could have let Young make Hohn’s excuses.

Umpires don’t have to answer the door or the questions. Hohn didn’t hide Friday, so give him credit. Hohn was not defensive (kind of like the Dodgers Thursday night) nor was he evasive. Hohn said he blew a call, a big call, a crucial call.

But the thing is, when an umpire makes a huge mistake, he suffers no consequences.

The Dodgers made three errors in Thursday’s loss. Those mistakes cost them runs and, as much as Hohn, the game. The Dodgers suffered for their bobbles and mishandled balls. They lost.

Hohn knew why reporters were knock-knock-knocking on Billy’s door. To ask the question. How in the world could such an obvious call have been missed so badly? Hohn said he was sorry, that he was stunned, shocked, surprised and frustrated by what he saw on television replays. “I was wrong,” Hohn said. “I was extremely shocked by what I saw on the replay. I have no alibi. But when you see the replay, it is a little too late.”

So Hohn was stand-up about his goof.

In the bottom of the eighth inning of a one-run game between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, with Hiram Bocachica on first and running on the pitch because there was a full count and two out, Mark Grudzielanek sent a high fly ball down the right-field line.

Diamondback right fielder Quinton McCracken made a clumsy, near-diving try at the ball, which nicked his glove and dropped to the field. In fair territory by nearly half a foot. And McCracken had been in fair territory by more than that when the ball touched his glove. Bocachica should have scored the tying run.

And yet Hohn, the first-base umpire, ran up the line and called the ball foul. Then Grudzielanek struck out. No run scored.

Strangely, no Dodgers argued the bad call. Not Grudzielanek, not first-base coach John Shelby. Manager Jim Tracy didn’t take a step toward the field, didn’t make a move toward Hohn to argue the call. Hohn wasn’t surprised. He was sure he was right.

Shelby said he didn’t protest because “I didn’t see it. There were too many people in my way.”

Arizona first baseman Mark Grace, who had started running to the ball, said, “I thought it was a fair ball all along. The next thing I hear said is that it’s a foul ball. So I thought it must be foul. I looked at the replay and it wasn’t. The funny thing about it was that no one argued.”

The Dodgers should have argued.

Tracy said he didn’t argue because he couldn’t see the play and no one indicated to him that the call was wrong. While saying that “it hurt” to watch the replay, Tracy also made it clear he was not going to hold Hohn responsible for anything.

He was going to hold his team responsible for everything. “It’s a character-maker,” Tracy said. “I’m not going to sit here and point fingers. You hate to see it happen in a game of that type of significance. But before that we had made some mistakes in the game. Now it’s over. There’s no need to belabor it.”

Hohn was booed Friday night when he took his spot behind home plate to call the balls and strikes. That was his punishment.

And Hohn’s missed call wasn’t the only one in Thursday’s game. A Steve Finley blast in the top of the eighth appeared from all replay angles to have hit a fan’s hands in the left-field corner. This should have been a home run for Finley, but third-base umpire Fieldin Culbreth ruled it a ground-rule double. Finley did score, which made Culbreth’s miscue palatable.

But it doesn’t make the mistakes more bearable.

This is pennant-race time. It’s been a long, depressing spell since a Dodger team needed to worry about a missed call maybe costing them something important. But if the Dodgers were to miss the playoffs by a game, the consequence of every mistake they made all season could be what kept them out of the postseason. Hohn’s mistake won’t keep him out of anything.

“I lost sleep over that call,” said Hohn, who is in his 14th year as a major league ump. “It’s been a long time since I missed a fair or foul call like that. I’m a pretty damn good umpire.”

Maybe so, and losing sleep wasn’t wrong. But the Dodgers lost much more.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com