Dropped Third Strike

As August wears on, it becomes increasingly difficult to write anything meaningful about baseball. With the trade deadline behind us and division races becoming 1 or 2 team affairs, there just isn’t that much to say anymore. The MainStream Media tend to use this time to talk about the MVP and Cy Young award races, and the more intellectually inclined blogs start running flashy statistical analyses, and doing things like predicting play off teams and so forth. Us? We like to use this dull time to run pictures of A-Rod looking incredibly awkward. Today we present Constipated A-Rod. Try some fiber, Tipsy. (Again, hair, not alcohol).

Aside from poking fun at the reigning MVP, we’ve been casting about trying to find the latest example of a baseball player/manager/executive/etc. acting like a spoiled 4 year old. Well we didn’t find one. We found an entire union’s worth. 

[The umpires' union] said their governing board voted Tuesday to boycott a conference call with management intended to discuss implementing replay, angry that their concerns aren’t being addressed.”

Now, even though the umpires finally relented, we can’t allow this sort of shenanigans to go uncommented upon. We should note that here at DTS we are baseball traditionalists. We generally like the human element involved in all aspects of the game, from stadium design and groundskeeping to umpiring, we like the fact that there is some leeway, some freedom, to implement your own standards. Of course when you leave these sorts of things in the hands of simple humans, you tend to get some remarkably horrendous results. (Blown calls on the base paths, missed balls and strikes, the Green Monster, and so on). Nevertheless, we consider these quirks an integral part of baseball. So we are naturally leery of the use of instant replay. (Besides, baseball games are long enough without the added time spent reviewing close plays). But we somehow find it a bit odd (and foolish, immature, ridiculous, idiotic, and typical of the men and women [yes, there are some] who inhabit the baseball universe) that the umpires would boycott a conference call discussing the use of instant replay because their concerns hadn’t been heard. Um, if you want your concerns heard, shouldn’t you join the conversation? What could possibly be gained from not taking part in the phone call? Why not simply say at the start of the call, “look we have some issues, we can either list them now and you can respond and we’ll move forward, or else we can pick another time to have this conversation. But until we have discussed our issues, we’re afraid we won’t be able to move on with the rest of the process.” Of course it’s absurd of us to expect that sort of maturity from a group of men who seem to think that people tune in to baseball games to watch umpires act like morons. It’s mind-blowing the the supposed arbiters of a game engage in such blatant acts of self-aggrandizement and attention-whoring. How is it in anyway appropriate for an umpire to get into a shouting match with a player or coach or manager? If the player/coach/manager is out of line, you should simply inform them that they have been ejected.  But no, instead we see umpires calling players out, baiting them, essentially, and then having invited the player into a confrontation, tossing them out of the game. And when an understandably peeved manager comes out to inquire why exactly this referee has taken it upon himself to pick a fight with his player, the ump runs right up to him, chest puffed out, obscenities at the ready, and starts screaming in the manager’s face. It’s outrageous. 

Look, we like a little theatricality from our umpires. The occasional big fist pump on a pivotal called third strike can be a fun moment in a game. But the big scenes the umpires kick up (both in games and out, as they did with this boycott) are frankly nothing short of pathetic displays of small men using the limited power they have to make themselves feel better. Of course, there are exceptions, mature umpires, cool-headed umpires who call a good game and act like adults. And to those umpires we say, bravo. 

Ugh, that got us so worked up that we’re going to go make a collage of A-Rod’s hairstyles through the ages to calm down.