Detroit Tigers' Miguel Cabrera Asks for Batter's Box to Be Redrawn

Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera is the defending American League batting champion. To bat .344 over a full season demonstrates a carefully trained eye, one attuned to notice most every detail while standing at the plate.

Evidently, that whole standing at the plate part is a detail Cabrera knows very well.

In the first inning of the Tigers' game with the Chicago White Sox on Friday, Cabrera thought something was amiss with the batter's box at U.S. Cellular Field. Cabrera assumed his stance and dug in, just as he's done more than 5,000 times in his major-league career. But to his eyes, his right foot was farther out of the batter's box than it should have been.

Perhaps home-plate umpire Adrian Johnson noticed how far Cabrera's right foot was out of the box and told him to move up. That's when Cabrera pointed out that the batter's box wasn't where it was supposed to be. 

The game was delayed as Johnson and first-base umpire Gary Cederstrom measured where the back of the box was in relation to home plate.

Using Cabrera's bat to measure the distance, the umpires agreed with Cabrera's assessment and called for the White Sox grounds crew to redraw the boxes.

You can watch the video here.

At the risk of channeling ESPN's Tim Kurkjian (something that was probably done too often during spring training), whenever you watch a baseball game, you may end up seeing something you've never seen before.

A player asking for the batter's box to be redrawn, and the umpires obliging that request, is something you certainly do not see very often. Have any of you ever seen that before? 

Once the game resumed, by the way, Cabrera hit a fly ball to right field. And the batter's box was no longer an issue, as the Tigers went on to lose to the White Sox in their home opener, 5-2.