He's No Angel

Clare was playing in a travel tournament the spring of eighth grade.  It was a full count, at least one runner on base, when she lined a ball just foul down the first base line.  “Well, that’s that,” I thought to myself.  “She’ll swing at the next pitch no matter what.”  Only my daughter took a pitch low and outside for what should’ve been ball four only to get rung up by an umpire with a bizarro strike zone.  I said something loud enough for Blue to hear and was threatened with an ejection.  “I’m just exercising my First Amendment right,” I responded.  Who says a Ph.D. doesn’t come in handy on the weekend?

I was reminded of that long-ago incident because of something similar that happened to the Tigers’ Ian Kinsler earlier this week.  He was tossed by home-plate umpire Angel Hernandez for uttering the inflammatory words “What about that one?” after one of two low and outside pitches was called a strike on him.

Kinsler went on to tell Hernandez, “You need to re-evaluate your life, man.  Just go home right now.  Get out of the game.  Just leave the game alone.  Please.”  Basically, the problem with Hernandez is that he comes from the Joe West school of umpiring, which is no school at all.  Just make a call and dare anyone to disagree.  With advances in pitch-tracking technology, that school is begging to be closed down sooner than later.

Travel, high school and college umpires are part of the landscape; you accept them, along with the weather.  But it’s different in MLB; it’s called “big league” for a reason.  Unfortunately, a lot of umpires out there didn’t get the memo, and haven’t since the days of Ron Luciano and Ken Kaiser (and I’ll bet Jocko Conlon, too, but, believe it or not, he was before my time).  West and his ilk are like former presidential candidate Gary Hart daring reporters to catch him in the act.  Hart got caught just once, but it was enough to end his career.  With Hernandez, West et al, they get caught missing calls game after game.

Something has to give.