Baseballhead:
Budig is Nuts

Michael Cox

I've surmised as much since the 1996 Roberto Alomar incident, but this week's events cinched it: AL president Gene Budig is incompetent and must go. Of course, that won't happen as long as there's an even bigger nincompoop running the whole show, but it doesn't hurt to ask, does it?

To take you back to the Alomar debacle, the phlegmatic (ahem) Budig decided that for the essentially unprecedented transgression of spitting in an umpire's face, the O's 2B should get an, oh, five-game suspension, pretty much the same as for hitting back when someone hits you in an on-field brawl. Of course, Alomar invoked the union-friendly appeal process so he could play until the end of the season and take the punishment early the next year. That punishment was five games (with pay).

Fast-forward to last week in Cleveland. Indians' left-handed hitting CF Kenny Lofton is standing in against left-handed Mariners P Randy Johnson. Johnson drops down to a 3/4 delivery and fires a slider that doesn't slide too much. Up and in. Lofton had two choices: 1) take the ball, dig in and make Johnson pay with a hit; 2) Get real mad, flail arms and start towards the mound. He chose 2), causing benches and bullpens to empty.

Order is restored, and since Lofton refused to understand how a slider is generally not thrown at a player, Johnson illustrates that a fastball is much more efficacious. Lofton, still completely unharmed, is fit to be tied, and with bat in hand, again starts towards the mound before M's catcher Dan Wilson restrains him, and benches empty again. This time, Lofton, Johnson and a wildly flailing Sandy Alomar are all ejected. That's the way things work in baseball, right?

Not so fast, boyo! Upon viewing the videotape (which I can guarantee I have viewed more than the league office) the esteemed AL prez decides that throwing inside is not only reprehensible, it is even worse than spitting at an umpire. Randy Johnson is suspended for one start (the equivalent to a position player's five-game penalty) and fined. Lofton isn't suspended, despite triggering both bouts of bench-clearing. He is fined, but Budig won't even own up to that - Tribe manager Mike Hargrove had to confirm it. And the reason? We still don't know. Budig's office won't say a single word.

Good thing Budig didn't run the NL back in the '60s, or Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson wouldn't have played much.

Whining about calls and pitches has definitely become a fine art (refined to its extreme by Paul O'Neill), and obviously Budig is so out of touch with the sport he runs that he doesn't realize that keeping the batter in the batter's box is going to prevent more future problems than will fining every pitcher who dares to go up 'n' in. It'll also have the added bonus of speeding up games, but MLB has pretty much given up on that (perhaps figuring that Davey Johnson's out of the picture and Tony LaRussa could possibly be induced to retire, which combined would likely shave a good 10 minutes off the average game).

The funny thing is that Budig seems to be the Bizarro World version of his NL counterpart, Len Coleman, who has made great strides with reasonable penalties when beanball wars actually erupt, and umpire promotions by merit instead of seniority. Budig, seeing people sing Coleman's praises, apparently said to himself, "Len make good suspensions. Me make better suspensions. Me no like inside pitches. Me smash inside pitches," at which point he got sorta confused about whether he was a Marvel or DC comic character, and from there it's perfectly understandable that he did what he did.

Of course, that would be the only plausible scenario...

Michael Cox regularly attends American League ball games, where he flirts with possible suspension by booing the guy who plays "The Addams Family Theme" seven times per game. Help him start a union so he can beat the rap at mc@strikethree.com.