Looking ahead to game 4 of the World Series, but I'm feeling a little grim. I've been rooting for the Phillies who lost the crucial Game 3, largely because of a bizarre decision by Phillies starter Cole Hamels. Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated explains:

When Pettitte stepped in, Hamels was working with a 3-2 lead, a runner at second base and — here's the key part — one out. Pettitte is a career .134 hitter who has come to bat a total of 12 times over the past three years. Hamels could dispose of him with fastballs, the way J.A. Happ would do the next inning, and he would be one out away from being out of the inning. Instead, Hamels threw a first-pitch curveball up, and Pettitte slapped a single to tie the game. Why in the world would he throw something slow — and up, no less — to an American League pitcher?

What a screwup. An obvious screwup. Anybody who knows anything about baseball knows that – and it cost the whole team. So what did Hamels have to say for himself?

“I made the right pitch to Pettitte,” Hamels explained. “A pitcher doesn't hit an oh-and-oh curve in a bunting situation.” I was incredulous. I had to follow up, and asked him, “Just to clarify, you thought Pettitte was bunting, so you threw a breaking ball up to try to get him to pop up a bunt?”

“Yes,” Hamels said. “That's what I get my fair share of the time when I'm bunting. He swung and got a hit.

Baseball is very, very difficult to understand sometimes.”

This had nothing to do with bunting. This was not a bunt situation. Sounds like a guy who screwed up and doesn't have an excuse for himself, so he's trying to recast the whole thing into something different to make himself look less bad. 

Hamels clearly did not regard the pitch to Pettitte as a mistake. I couldn't believe it. There is no way Pettitte is bunting there. There is virtually no advantage to be gained from moving a runner from second to third and be left with two outs… It's Baseball 101.

A terrible call. A costly call. A big mistake that could be the turning point for the whole Series. Here's a pitcher who's got too much pride to own up to his goof… so much that he can't even talk about his actual screwup without trying to change the subject to Burlington Telecom… er, I mean a bunt situation…

Wait – what were we talking about again?