Also, since it hasn't been mentioned here yet: The Slide.
Dirty or not, I'm confused about how in the world he could be ruled safe (I'm not really, and he wasn't).
Given neither player, offense or defense touched the bag:
A) Neighborhood Rule
B) Reasonable path to the bag
- If it is ruled that a defensive player was carried away from the bag by the momentum of the play (thus (A) is not in effect), how can (B) still be true given the slide?
That is, if a player is close enough to the bag for a take out slide to be deemed legal, then by default he should be close enough for the Neighborhood Rule to apply.
You can't have both "Too far away for the Neighborhood Rule" & "Close enough to be considers going for the bag".
Utley was out - the only determination that should've been made is whether or not the batter-runner should've been ruled out as well over Utley interfering. If Tejada was too far away for the Neighborhood Rule to be in effect, then both Utley and the batter should've been ruled out. If Tejada was in fact close enough to the bag for the Neighborhood Rule, then Utley's slide, while high, hard and late, is just baseball.
Personally I feel that only Utley should've been ruled out. I didn't like the slide, and it's unfortunate that Tejada broke his leg, but both players were undoubtedly within the vicinity of the bag. Despite neither actually touching it, both could have with adjustments of inches. Tejada should've been awarded the out.