I’m seriously sorry for not blogging today like I have in previous days–18-hour days can burn you out . . . fast.

So Puerto Rico lost the chance to win its first Caribbean Series title since 2000 after losing to Venezuela, 3-1.

Things might have been different if umpires actually made the right call on Cesar Crespo’s home run in the seventh. Crespo hit a long fly ball down the left field line that was hooking when it approached the foul pole, but coincidentally, I was actually sitting down in the left field corner–my brother-in-law was randomly in town and those were our seats–and the ball hooked at least five feet into fair territory.

The weird thing is, Puerto Rico manager Lino Rivera didn’t put up much of a fight with the umpire about it, just casually chatting about it for a minute before heading back to the dugout as Crespo re-entered the batter’s box.

Even Crespo showed little emotion.

But fans were upset–not surprising, but since I was sitting in that area and didn’t have to move much in all this humidity, I figured I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.

But, humidity factor aside, I saw a home run. My brother-in-law saw a home run. The eight policemen I talked to who were standing to the left of the foul pole told me it was a home run.

And so did the guy who’s son was kind of blocking my view from taking the picture. “Alex, quitase de aqui,” the man said, kind of feeling bad about ruining the kid’s 380-foot view from home plate for a second.

But these fans were Puerto Ricans. And they were ticked off, feeling they were robbed.

Even when I got back to the auxiliary press box and started showing Latino journalists the photo of the ball sitting at least eight feet inside the foul pole, word got out and media people from all over Latin America wanted to see.

As I was standing in the postgame press conference, a woman reporter approached me about seeing the photo. When I showed it to her, all she said was, “That’s some bad (expletive deleted).”

So Cesar Crespo was robbed, but really, in the end, Venezuela has already been the better team. It just took a while to show it in this tournament.

Even if Juan “Igor” Gonzalez went 4-for-5.