The call has taken on a life of its own.
With the Cubs and Braves tied 5-5 in the bottom of the tenth inning Wednesday night, Ronald Acuña Jr. stole his 70th base to become the first player ever to hit 40 home runs with 70 steals in a single season, and the Braves stopped the game for a highlight montage.
Cubs broadcasters Jon “Boog” Sciambi and Jim Deshaies disagreed with the play stoppage, which came with the Cubs are fighting tooth and nail down the stretch to make the NL playoffs as a wild card.
In a phone interview with The Post on Thursday, Sciambi defended the call and fired back at the critics.
“I’ll speak for J.D. — we’ve both been doing this for 25 years. I’m sorry but if you’re pegging us as the ‘get off my lawn guys,’ smarten up. It’s just not who we are,” Sciambi said.
“It’s 5-5 in the 10th. I thought they shouldn’t have run a highlight montage in that spot.”
Sciambi’s thoughts echoed what he said on-air, when he asked, “We’re really stopping the game to do a highlight montage?”
To this, Deshaies chimed in, “Can we get the base after the game? This is pretty absurd. It’s a hell of an accomplishment …”
“Totally, but you can’t stop the game to run a highlight montage,” Sciambi responded.
While Sciambi was dismayed about the play stoppage in the moment, he emphasized that he’s not carrying an everlasting grudge.
“They open my mic so I say what I think. Ronald Acuña is amazing. He’s probably going to win the MVP. I don’t know what to tell you, but if you think J.D. and I care about the play stoppage today, then you shouldn’t be commenting on this because you don’t have any idea,” Sciambi, who called Braves games from 2007-09, said.
“It’s an unfortunate example of what social media does. It’s like a 25-second clip, and then everyone has a take on how much I care or J.D. cares. Or how salty we were. How much it bothers us. Nobody else gets to say how much I care other than me. You don’t get to tell me how much I care, and I’m telling you, I don’t really care.
“But the game was going on and that’s what I thought. That they shouldn’t have run the highlight montage. I just finished my salad from Sweetgreen. We’re fine. And I want the Cubs to win tonight.”
The stakes of the game at the time played into Sciambi’s perception of the play stoppage.
“If he had done it and it was 7-0 in the fifth, yeah, I’m OK. 5-5 in the 10th it just felt, like, ‘Can you give him the base and maybe do something pregame tomorrow?'” he said.
Sciambi is regarded as one of the best baseball play-by-play broadcasters in the country, and he will call the wild-card round on ESPN platforms next week alongside Doug Glanville.
Sciambi, who admitted he’s been off X (formerly Twitter) since his account was hacked earlier this year, believes there was another factor in the spread beyond the current social media climate.
He noted the fact that the Cubs and Braves have such large fan bases, which extend beyond their home markets, as they aired on national superstations WGN and TBS for many years.
“That plays into it,” he said.