World Series 2011: Did Faulty Phones Cost Cardinals Game 5?

Major League Baseball is a game built on tradition and history. One of the most traditional parts of the sport is the bullpen phone. Managers have used it to communicate with bullpen coaches for decades, but following the St. Louis Cardinals' issues in Game 5 of the World Series it might be time to upgrade the phones. 

Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, who has used bullpen phones so much this postseason that he should have a plan named after him, could not get through to his coaches thanks to crowd noise and a bad signal. 

In the bottom of the eighth inning, LaRussa was trying to get closer Jason Motte up so he could come in. St. Louis bullpen coach Derek Lilliquist couldn't understand what was being said, so he had Lance Lynn warm up. 

Since the wrong pitcher was warming up, LaRussa let left-handed reliever Mark Rzepczynski in to face right-handed hitting Mike Napoli with the bases loaded in a 2-2 game. Napoli hit a two-run double and the Rangers won. 

The phone then became the hot topic of conversation on Twitter. 

In an ironic twist, the New York Times ran a story two days earlier about phones in the dugout being the last bastion of the landline. 

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Dugout phones have become key instruments during postseason games this October, which have featured managers making bullpen calls with the frequency of telemarketers...Thus far, all those calls to the bullpen have gone through without a hitch.

But every now and then, over the course of a long season, problems can arise.

Lance Lynn, a Cardinals relief pitcher, recalled a game earlier this season in Philadelphia, when a complex technical issue forced the Cardinals’ dugout to lose communication with the bullpen.

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While the phone problems likely did not help the Cardinals in this game, you can't say that it cost them the game. 

If LaRussa knew that something was not right with the phones, and by most accounts he knew because he could see the wrong guys warming up, he could have alerted the umpires. 

Instead, he left Rzepczynski in and did nothing to fix the problem. Napoli burned him with the game-winning double and the Rangers are now one game away from capturing their first World Series title.