It was the day after Christmas in 1965, a day that stands out in the minds of Baltimore Colts fans and a day I was reminded of when Pete Alonso’s seventh-inning blast over the left-field foul pole Wednesday night was ruled foul.
On both occasions, Baltimore’s top nemesis — the Green Bay Packers in ’65, and the New York Yankees on Wednesday — benefited from an official’s ruling. In 1965, the call led to change. Wednesday night’s ruling should do the same.
The ’65 game is memorable for another reason — the Colts had lost both of their quarterbacks, John Unitas and Gary Cuozzo, to injuries and coach Don Shula turned to halfback Tom Matte, who had only three days to practice and wore a wrist band with the plays he would call, including his 16 runs for 99 yards. In an inspired effort that was backed by his defense, Matte had the Colts in front, 10-7, with less than two minutes to go in the Western Division championship between two teams that finished the regular season 10-3-1.
The Packers needed a field goal to tie and called on Don Chandler for a 22-yard attempt. Chandler hit a drive that sailed above the upright as it was slicing toward the right. Chandler hung his head, as though he knew he had missed, but referee Jim Tunney raised his arms, signaling that it was good for a 10-10 tie. The Packers went on to win, 13-10, and defeated the Cleveland Browns for the NFL championship before there was a Super Bowl to determine a champion.
“I didn’t hit the ball real square on the field-goal kick, and I was surprised it was called good,” Chandler said later. “It was definitely outside the post when I picked up the flight. [Quarterback] Bart Starr, the holder, always said it was inside then curved away, but it was higher than the pipe.”
The NFL took immediate action, placing two officials under the goalpost and raising the upright by 10 feet on each side. The new uprights were called “Baltimore extensions.”
Sixty years later, one would think baseball would be using technology to determine whether a ball that has cleared a foul pole is fair on foul.
“I think a simple fix is like football, you have the pylon camera with the plane, where it shoots right across the goal line,” Alonso said. “And I feel like, for us, we could easily have a laser or a camera that shoots straight up.”
Manager Craig Albernaz spoke candidly about the ruling after a 5-3 loss that he didn’t pin on the call, even though Alonso’s blast would have given the Orioles a 4-3 lead going into the eighth.
“On the dugout iPads there’s ball-tracking data with the field that the players see, so it’s really tough to have that [call] come back as ‘stands’ and have that visual in the dugout as well. It’s 2026,” Albernaz said. “There are teams using AI on the iPads and other sports use ball-tracking data for challengeable calls. Don’t understand why we don’t do it.”
Starting pitcher Chris Bassitt had a thought about that.
“Obviously I think it was fair, but, yeah, after the call, it’s just crazy that we still have this issue. I think we might be the only major sport with an issue like this. It’s been years that we have technology that can easily use to say this is exactly the right thing or wrong thing, and the fact that we don’t have it in 2026 is crazy. It’s not so much that they got the right call or the wrong call or whatever … It’s just the fact that we don’t have the technology in play to actually say, ‘Hey, this was fair or foul,’ is literally crazy in 2026. It’s crazy.”
Lou Michaels, the Colts’ kicker in 1965 who was on the field-goal defending unit when Chandler made the controversial kick, said: “Until my dying day, I’ll insist that kick shouldn’t have counted.”
It cost the Colts a berth in the championship game, which the Packers won with help of three field goals by Chandler, none of which were debatable.
The outcome of Wednesday night’s game couldn’t be directly attributed to the Alonso call, but it certainly didn’t help.
“So I’m not saying that’s the reason why we lost at all, we still have a lot of game left,” Albernaz said. “But also, yeah, that was being up one going into later innings. I would take that.”
We’ll see if Major League Baseball reacts the way the NFL did after Chandler’s kick. If the technology is available, they should be using it, just as they’re using the Automated Ball-Strike system. Otherwise, they’ll continue to guess on whether it was wide right or wide left. And that’s not good enough.