Only umpires are supposed to make calls during baseball games, but one Pittsburgh Pirates player got caught with his cellphone falling out of his pocket during a slide into third base.
Second baseman Rodolfo Castro, who had just been called back up to the big leagues, drew a walk in the fourth inning, and raced for third base on a single by shortstop Oneil Cruz. But as he slid headfirst safely into the bag, the phone popped out. In addition to just being weird, players are not supposed to have their phones with them during games.
“I don’t think there’s any professional ballplayer that would ever go out there with any intentions of taking a cellphone,” Castro told reporters through an interpreter after the game, a 6-4 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks. “It’s horrible it happened to me. Obviously, it was very unintentional.”
This is a first… Rodolfo Castro's phone fell out of his pocket in the middle of the game 😅 pic.twitter.com/qaPd34qroF
— Bally Sports Arizona (@BALLYSPORTSAZ) August 10, 2022
After the slide, third-base umpire Adam Hamari pointed at the phone. Castro picked it up and handed it to Pirates third-base coach Mike Rabelo, who did not look pleased.
“You stay around the game and you see things you haven’t seen before,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said after the game. “This was just a kid who made a mistake. It’s just one of those things we move forward from and tell him, ‘You can’t do that.”’
While no one is accusing Castro of using his phone to cheat, Major League Baseball is very strict about any use of technology in America’s pastime. The Houston Astros caused a major scandal when they were caught using live TV feeds to steal opposing teams’ signs during their 2017 World Series championship season.
Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images
Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were suspended for the 2020 season, the team was fined $5 million and had to forfeit its first- and second-round picks in 2020 and 2021.
The next call Castro gets could be from the league, which may impose a penalty on him. The infielder has endured a rough season, bouncing up and down between the Pirates’ Triple A affiliate Indianapolis and the big club, where he has compiled a .189 batting average,
“My first day back, if I was to be the center of attention, I would want it to be helping the team win, but never in this form,” Castro said. “This is definitely something that was an accident, a mistake, something I’m going to learn from. But definitely something I didn’t mean to happen.