Lastings Milledge said he was provoked. Marlon Anderson said the conversation wasn’t pleasant on the receiving end. Paul Lo Duca has been run twice this year and both times insists he didn’t curse the ump.
However, all pale in comparison to the Milton Bradley story. If half of what Bradley is saying is true, that’s disgraceful enough.
By many accounts, umpiring has gone down, and part of it is their provocative and aggressive nature. Couple that with rabbit ears and it isn’t a good mix.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Mike the umps and don’t let them have the controls. Things will be calmer with miked umps.
I want to know who is telling the truth, and from personal experience I believe the players. When I covered the Orioles, I went the umpire’s room at Yankee Stadium and was chased out by an umpire swearing up a blue streak. The letter of apology from what at the time was the American League office was satisfaction.
So is knowing this guy is no longer working.
21 Comments
Nice story JD lol. And I agree 100%, these days mikes would definitely help. You can’t change the rules on the players. If complaining without swearing while facing away (e.g. LoDuca) was always acceptable, you can’t start tossing someone for doing just that, unless you specifically state a new rule.
And baiting an already upset player is just absurd. Any umpire caught baiting a player should lose his job. Maybe some teams should employ people with those direction mikes to pickup exchanges between and ump and a player.
What I still don’t understand is whether and how these umpires are evaluated?
They miss so many calls and this is with the naked eye and without replays.
Don’t they get evaluated on their calls, balls/strikes, and knowledge of the rules?
If not, they need to and if they do, it needs to be a lot stronger.
There are some umpires who I wonder if they could really call a little league or pony league game. And my concern has nothing to do with calls against the Mets or anything like that..I’m concerned that they’re ruining the integrity of the game.
JD: Shouldn’t it be mic the umps? LOL I thought you were initially talking about “Mike the Ump.” :-)
Sometimes the mikes used by the TV networks picks up the arguments, especially those at home plate. I think MLB could listen to those for the Lo Duca and Marlon incidents, though I thought the umpires were justified in throwing those players out, even though the call on Marlon sucked. It would be nice if Marlon would not be suspended because the call was way wrong. And that was at Shea, right, which is a QuesTec park?
If I am not mistaken didn’t they do some baiting with LM?
The first ump I remember going after a fight was Kaiser (I think). He just hated Earl Weaver and did whatever he could to get Earl out of the game. Baseball took it and set the bar very low for the men in blue. What makes anyone think they care now. The NBA suspended a ref last year for the technical for laughing. Have we ever heard of an umpire suspended for a bad ejection? Not that I’m aware of. You are asking Bud Selig to take care of a problem without Congressional hearings! It just won’t happen.
TO JD: Ever have a coach go nuts on you or in a room you were in like that Oklahoma State Coach just did?
Does anyone know what exactly was said to MB?
I remember an NBA ref giving Anthony Mason a technical foul for glaring at him.
i believe he called bradley a piece of &%#&
With regard to Lasting’s outburst, the ump INITIALLY said to LM, “F*&& You” and then Lastings responded, no, F You..etc….
The Umpire has no right to say such things…not initially and to provoke…wish we ( I was in the stands at Dolphin Stadium) could throw them out sometimes!
The umps are evaluated by the league office (retired umps). It can be likened to the police thin blue line. Unless you do something grossly negligent the punishments are usually to keep them out of postseason games where they make bonus money.
Firings of umpires is a very rare occasion.
Sam G: Except when a bunch of veterans were fired about 5 or so years ago…and now we’re left with the garbage.
I don’t remember the reasons for the firings. I didn’t think they were performance related. I thought it was related to union activity. I could be wrong.
The umps weren’t fired. They had a total idiot for a union leader, and he convinced them to resign in a labor dispute. So MLB accepted the resignations. As part of an eventual settlement some of them were re-instated.
Thanks Sloppy… my old timer’s memory kicked in there :)
If Selig moves as quickly on this as he did on the steroids, we’ll being seeing umpires assaulted in parking lots before anything meaningful develops. (That’s my guess as to what it takes for Selig to wake up, btw.) The fact that a reporter at FoxSports (digression: I HATE Fox and it’s Saturday blackouts.) can write that the Padres might be victims of retaliation for umpires upset at their former boss should have Selig moving NOW. But “the game” is not his foremost interest; “the game” is not his secondary interest; I doubt that “the game” is even his tertiary interest.
Questec belongs in every ballpark or none.
As long as there is Questec, umpires with the poorest “scores” on Questec should be fired. Every year. No matter how good those low scores might be. (Okay, a couple of years “grace” for each new umpire.)
Umpires should be miked nad the tapes reviewed. All of them, every game. No, the audio feed should NOT go to the TV and radio broadcasters.
Won’t it be embarrassing when the media starts releasing audio clips from miked coaches and players proving that some umpires are bigger asses than the Milton Bradley’s? Not to Selig, of course, because it will be going on for 2 or 3 years before he even realizes it—then he’ll bar the practice in media contracts.
Umpires are also the reason that the stadium scoreboards cannot reply any close calls. When the relay scoreboards were installed 30 years ago umpires claimed that showing close calls could potentially cause a stadium riot and put the the umpires and everyone elses safety in jeopardy. Funny, NFL, NHL and NBA stadiums/arenas dont have this restriction and I have yet to see a reply provoked riot. I guess the NHL and NFL fans are a calmer and more even kealed bunch then baseball fans.
In reality, umpires did not want to be shown up when they blew the inevitable call, all ego driven. NFL and NHL officials have been assisted by video review, in the NHL’s case by Toronto review, too, but baseball’s umpires woudl be too vain for that idea.
“Umpires are also the reason that the stadium scoreboards cannot reply any close calls.”
Wrong. Umpires don’t have that authority; it takes someone with authority listening to their complaints and issuing a decree. Such a decree could only come from the Commissar’s (oops, meant “Commissioner’s”) office—although the owner’s could collectively agree without any decree coming from their lackey (oops, meant “Commissioner”).
And if there is one thing in which Selig has demonstrated excellence since he stopped selling used cars, it’s sweeping things under the rug. But, as anyone with rugs will attest, do that too much and the lumps become pretty obvious.
But I’m really not trying to bring the discussion around to steroids.
This, unlike your idea to bring back Tom Glavine, is a terrific idea.
I also advocate putting a questec system at second base, but have few followers.
you would think that that little scare a few years back when the league accepted their doofus resignations would have given these guys some religion. But they are more arrogant than they ever were.