Cooper, Nelson will be plate umpires in wild-card games

NEW YORK (AP) Eric Cooper will be the plate umpire for the AL wild-card game and Jeff Nelson will call balls and strikes at the NL game.

Major League Baseball announced the umpires Monday for the wild card and Division Series games.

Ted Barrett will be the crew chief Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium when Houston visits New York. Chris Conroy, Paul Emmel, Manny Gonzalez and Bill Miller also will work.

John Hirschbeck heads the crew Wednesday night when the Chicago Cubs play at Pittsburgh. Cory Blaser, Mike Estabrook, Jim Reynolds and Hunter Wendelstedt are on that crew.

Crew chiefs Gary Cederstrom, Gerry Davis, Dana DeMuth and Dale Scott handle the Division Series.

Davis, who has called a record 134 postseason games, will work the AL matchup between the wild-card winner and Kansas City. Lance Barksdale, Mike Everitt, Angel Hernandez, Ron Kulpa and Todd Tichenor are on that crew.

Scott will run the crew for the Texas-Toronto AL matchup with Dan Bellino, Vic Caparazza, James Hoye, Marvin Hudson and Alfonso Marquez.

Cederstrom will work the best-of-five NL series between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers with Chad Fairchild, Greg Gibson, Chris Guccione, Alan Porter and Jim Wolf.

DeMuth, who called his 4,000th big league game this year, will be joined by Mark Carlson, Phil Cuzzi, Brian Knight, Bill Welke and Mike Winters for the series between the NL wild-card winner and St. Louis.

Dan Iassogna and Mark Wegner will be the replay officials for the wild-card games. Tim Welke, Kerwin Danley, Paul Nauert and Brian O'Nora will work replay for the Division Series.