Wow, what an awful, awful way to lose a game.

For those of you who missed it, there was a controversial play in the bottom of the 9th inning of tonight's Angels-White Sox game. With two outs and bases clear in a 1-1 game, White Sox batter A.J. Pierzynski struck out swinging on a low fastball. The Angels catcher, Josh Paul, thinking the inning was over, flipped the ball to the mound as the rest of the Angels headed for the dugout to get ready for the top of the 10th inning. Meanwhile, Pierzynski ran toward first base and was ruled safe at first, at which point the confusion ensued.

The umpires ruled that Paul didn't catch the third strike cleanly -- that the ball had hit the dirt first -- so Pierzynski could be awarded first base if he reached safely, which he did.

FOX did a good job of showing replays of the third strike and magnifying the point at which the ball reached Paul's glove. It looked to me that Paul caught the ball without it hitting the dirt. Actually pretty clearly. The more I look at the replay, the more convinced I am that Paul caught the ball cleanly.

More problematic than whether Paul caught the ball or not, though, is that the home plate umpire made what appeared to be an out signal after Pierzynski swung at strike 3 -- a pump of the fist, similar to the out signal the first-base umpire makes on a groundout. During the post-game press conference, the umpire said that the signal is actually his mechanism for calling a strike. I did a rewind on my Tivo, and it turns out that the fist-pump actually is the umpire's signal for calling a strike.

This doesn't get him off the hook, though. For a few reasons that I hope will be obvious to everyone by tomorrow:

After Pierzynski swung at strike 3, the umpire first extended his right arm out before pumping his fist, a motion he had made several times throughout the game to signal an out. I know what the umpire said at the press conference, but he's lying through his teeth. There's a clear difference in the umpire's strike signal and out signal. To signal a strike, he makes the fist-pump motion. To signal an out, he first extends his right arm out and then makes the fist-pump motion -- just as he did after Pierzynski swung at strike 3.

An example of this difference in signals came in the at-bat immediately before A.J. Pierzynski's. During Aaron Rowand's at-bat in the bottom of the 9th, Rowand swung at strike 3, and the pitch fell out of Paul's glove. Here's what then happened, in the order they occurred: The umpire points to the ball, Paul tags Rowand, the umpire extends his right arm out and makes the out signal by pumping his fist. Only AFTER Paul tagged Rowand did the umpire extend his right arm out and pump his fist.

Another example came with two outs in the 5th inning, when Angels reliever Brendan Donnelly got Jermaine Dye to strike out swinging. The umpire makes the exact same motion -- extending the right arm out before pumping his fist. It's a different call. It's a different call.

And let's be very clear about this -- A.J. Pierzynski was ruled out.

The umpire said at the post-game press conference that during the play, he didn't yell out that there was no catch made, and that he merely was looking at Josh Paul. At the very least, the umpire didn't do a good job of communicating to the players what was going on during the play. He hesitated and didn't make a clear call. It appeared that the umpire only realized what was going on when he saw that Pierzynski was running to first base, which essentially means he made his ruling on the basis of what happened after the play, and not on the play itself.

Terrible.

It's a bad moment for baseball, and it's a bad moment for the city of Los Angeles of Anaheim.