An Honest
Day’s Word
THIS and that to chew on over lunch: Some umps finally
come to their sensesThat sure didn't take long. Five days after big-league baseball umpires tendered their resignations, five in the American League have come to their senses and asked that their resignations be rescinded.
I guess Dave Phillips, Rocky Roe, Dale Scott, Larry Barnett and Jim Joyce decided that watching the game while standing on the field -- and getting paid six figures for it -- isn't such a bad gig after all.
Major League Baseball should be applauded for basically yawning when the umps threatened to walk.
As Sandy Alderson, baseball's executive vice president for baseball operations put it the other day, the resignation offer was either a threat to be ignored or an offer to be accepted.
It's hard to believe, but Major League Baseball has actually done the right thing, for once.
Umpires argue that fans won't put up with poor calls for long after they walk. I say fans have been putting up with it for a long time.
There isn't an umpire in either league who seems to know the strike zone. Every one of them has his own. None of them is what the rule book states.
There are about 1,000 umpires calling Division I college games around the country, according to Dave Yeast, the NCAA's coordinator of umpiring.
Baseball should easily be able to find 68 guys -- maybe some women, too, huh? -- from that pool and others.
IF baseball really had its act ready, it would be making plans to do away with the duty most umps can't get right consistently in the first place -- calling a strike a strike and a ball a ball.
With computer imaging readily available, I can't understand why baseball needs some knucklehead calling balls and strikes.
It should be easy enough to place a computerized, three-dimensional strike zone on every batter who comes to the plate. Pitches could be tracked by computer and if the ball passes through the strike zone it's a strike. If not, it's a ball.
Simple. Quick, too.
Today's major league umps can't seem to do that. Why not?
Patrolling the base paths, keeping track of illegal pick-off moves, deciding if balls were caught or trapped and other such pursuits present a different set of circumstances, so I'm not suggesting we do away with umps all together.
But maybe major league umps will finally get the message. When the owners give orders to call the games the way they say, do so.
Their threat to quit is a joke.
I've never spent money to watch an umpire. No one does. Umpires should remember that when they're looking for work in a few weeks.
You're outta there.
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