Calling the Umps Out

Michael Cox

Caution: During this article, you may see me get worked up into the kind of cranky ranting you'd expect from an old guy at a coffee shop complaining about taxes and "them commies."

I've had about enough, you see. Enough mile-wide strike zones. Enough guys diving into pitches and still being awarded first base. Enough sarcasm directed at players. And most of all, enough pouty posturing and outright lying about the fact that Major League Baseball's umpires do not live up to their collective bargaining agreement.

Blown calls aren't even the worst problem, although there is no way for a well-paid professional umpire to excuse calling a pitch six inches outside a strike, as Eric Gregg is wont to do. No excuse for calling a runner out for leaving the bag early on a fly ball, as Jim Joyce did Friday night, unless he's positive the runner left early (Toronto's Shawn Green clearly left after Seattle's Ken Griffey caught the ball).

Let's look at the excuses they do make:

- We're only human. Air-traffic controllers are only human too, and are paid less than Joyce or Harry Wendlestedt. Surgeons may be more similarly paid, but if they think that artery is just gristle, they're in trouble. The fact is that these men are paid handsomely to concentrate on one thing, be it the pitch or the runner reaching base before the first baseman gets the ball or whether a homer really cleared the fence, and if they can't perform their task with precision, they should be making way for someone who can.

- Bad camera angles make us look worse than we are. Some of the time, perhaps, but they're getting better all the time, which brings us to the next excuse:

- If the umps had all those great camera angles, they'd get the calls right too. I've watched clearly blown calls from my seat, which has no access to a TV screen.

Umpiring may in fact be very, very difficult, but it is severely impaired by job security which is unhampered by anything short of gross incompetence (apparently you have to steal baseball cards to get fired these days). Their collective bargaining agreement specifies that the evaluation crew must contain former umpires, which defeats the whole purpose of an impartial evaluation. Pay is based on tenure, and the only punishment the leagues have at their disposal is to hold back an ump from the crew chief slot -- which NL boss Len Coleman did this winter, but apparently hasn't made one bit of a difference in quality.

Then we have the arrogance which causes more problems than it solves. And how about this for a coincidence -- as I was typing the above paragraph, I looked up to see Ken Kaiser (voted the AL's worst by players) clearly and repeatedly cursing out Blue Jays reliever Robert Person for questioning a call. I'm not much of a lip reader, but it's pretty hard to mistake "F%$@ YOU! F%$@ YOU!" If I recall correctly, swearing at an ump used to get a player ejected, so when the umpire does it himself how can he expect the players to remain civil?

Umpires should be in charge of settling players down and deflecting their anger, not returning it and amplifying it. How can you take charge of the game when you can't control yourself?

But still, there's a bigger problem, and it clearly falls on the shoulders of the umpires themselves: willful disregard of the rules of baseball.

The strike zone is just the one in the news right now. I don't know who's been more stupid about MLB's attempt to standardize the zone -- Bud Selig and crew, for insisting on a contractually-unenforceable new zone, or the umps, for insisting that they're doing it by the rule book already.

More and more is being made of "beanballs" (more often "buttballs" or "backballs" or "armballs," but people seem to think there isn't a difference) these days, with players ready to charge the mound at the mere inference of a "message."

Interesting that this coincides with more players "digging in." Some plate-hoverers even wear armor on their forearms so they can lean into pitches without injury. So what are umps doing? Awarding first base in every single instance of a pitch hitting a batter, in defiance of Rule 6.08 (b) which states that the batter shall not be awarded first base if "he makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball."

Another frequent violation is of Rule 6.02 (b), which states, "The batter may not leave his position in the batter's box after the pitcher comes to Set Position, or starts his windup." In fact, the Playing Rules Committee has clarified this rule to mean that the batter cannot call "time' after this point "even though the batter claims 'dust in his eyes,' 'steamed glasses,' 'didn't get the sign' or for any other cause."

Sounds pretty clear, huh? No "time," no way, no how, unless perhaps a homicidal maniac has run onto the field during Hideo Nomo's two-minute windup.

This rule is violated at least once per game. Calling "time" at the last possible moment has become a psychological ploy by the hitter to try and throw the pitcher off his rhythm, and the umpires allow it almost without question. In fact, the one time in recent years I've seen an umpire did call the pitch rather than granting "time," it was replayed by the broadcast crew.

How did these consistently unpunished rule violations come to be? It's anyone's guess, but I'm sure that as umpires got older, they allowed more and more while not remembering calling it any other way.

So now that we've ascertained that these umpires have violated their collective bargaining agreement by not enforcing the rules, what should we do?

Fire 'em.

They should be terminated and replaced with umpires who will enforce the rules of baseball as written. Keep the best of the current umps and let them lead crews featuring the best of the minor leagues, and perhaps even import the best umpires from other countries (remember those stellar Cuban umps in the spring game vs. Baltimore? Encourage them to defect, not the players).

Establish a pay scale and ranking based on consistency, accuracy and ability to handle angry players. Every year, the worst four umpires in each league are sent to the minors and a new crew replaces them. And finally, give them conflict resolution and anger management training and carte blanche to eject at will when players (verbally) attack (the players will get used to it).

"But I remember the replacement umpires. They sucked," you say. Well, you didn't see 'em for long because the regular umps folded like a house of cards when faced with the potential for a long lockout. The new crop of umps will get experience quickly, and the worst will go away. Sure, there'll be a ramp-up period, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

If after a couple of seasons the quality is lower than the umps we have now, hire the old guys back. It's not like they'll have new careers in air traffic control.

about the author

Michael Cox looks forward to 30 years from now, when he'll hang out in coffee shops, grouse about taxes, and proclaim loudly that Edgar Martinez makes Tony Gwynn look like a minor-leaguer. Ask him for a list of coffee shops to avoid at mc@strikethree.com.