Judicial Tyranny: The Umpirical Evidence, or Lack Thereof

Come December, there's going to be a sit-down between baseball players and all three branches of baseball government---including its judiciary, which is as much under fire of late as the Supreme Court finds itself over actual or alleged hot-button rulings.

This extraordinary meeting was prodded by the Major League Baseball Players' Association, enough of whose rank and rile think that, much the way those in the ideological wars see the Supreme Court, baseball's judiciary, the umpires, are a little too inclined to judicial tyranny and a little too disinclined to full disclosure.

No, this is not what we're supposed to be talking about in the thick of baseball's postseason. We should still be talking about Roy Halladay joining Don Larsen as the only men to pitch no-hitters or better in the postseason.

We should still be talking about Tim Lincecum's absolute mastery of the Atlanta Braves in Game One of their division series, and we should plain be talking about Rick Ankiel's eleventh-inning, game-winning splash at the expense of the San Francisco Giants's bid to take a 2-0 series lead. Not to mention that the game was won, in the end, by the two men---Ankiel and reliever Kyle Farnsworth---the Braves picked up from the Kansas City Royals at the non- waiver trade deadline.

We should be talking about the passionate, bright, young Cincinnati Reds on the threshold of extermination, after a second game in which they booted four, hit three (batters, that is), and gifted the Philadelphia Phillies five unearned runs. We should still be talking about the passionate, bright, young Tampa Bay Rays likewise on that threshold, thanks to their pitching inconsistency and their anemic offence.

Dare to dream. Because if it isn't judicial tyranny provoking the whisperings, it's judicial malfeasance.

The Reds didn't exactly help themselves in their Game Two, but they shouldn't exactly have been in that position in the first place. It only began when Chase Utley revealed he had been taking lessons at the Derek Jeter School of Method Acting.

By his own admission, Philadelphia's grittily talented second baseman merely thought a 101 mph Game Two fastball from Arnoldis Chapman got him. He put his head down and ran up to first base post haste. Home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman (try to resist temptation, Reds fans, justified though you may be) bought the act hook, line, and stinker. As Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips discovered, when Utley reached second, and he asked courteously enough if Utley was OK after taking the hit from that bullet, Utley's look said it all.

Then, after Ryan Howard struck out, Jimmy Rollins lofted one to right that Jay Bruce---the same Jay Bruce whose walkoff bomb got the Reds here in the first place---lost in the Citizen's Bank Park lights, the first of two errors that gifted the Phillies a 5-4 lead from the National League's stingiest defence on the regular season.

Nobody told Bruce, Phillips, and Rolen, three Gold Glovers, to miscue as they did. Rolen would have had an easier play at first, but you can't blame him for wanting to get the lead runner. Bruce should have found a way to track that loft through the lights. Phillips shouldn't have dropped the relay throw from Drew Stubbs, who ran down the Rollins loft and threw in.

But Utley didn't even belong in scoring position in the first place. Come to think of it, he didn't belong on base, either. Just like the Supreme Court, the umpires seem indifferent if not oblivious to the laws of unintended consequences.

There were a few whisperings of judicial tyranny, at least, during the second Tampa Bay-Texas division series contest, too. They were prompted when first base umpire Jerry Mears, acting on an appeal for help from home plate umpire Jim Wolf (the brother, as it happens, of major league pitcher Randy Wolf), ruled that Michael Young had checked his swing with two on, one out, and the Rangers up 2- 0, on a full count service from Chad Qualls.

The only problem with that was the television replays showing Young's bat had crossed the front of the plate clearly if not widely enough, after Mears signaled check swing and, thus, ball three. Young hit the next pitch straight over the center field fence, and Rays manager Joe Maddon hit the ceiling straight, no chaser, after he came out to talk to Qualls and, while he was at it, bark a few objections to Mears and a few more to Wolf, when Wolf came to the mound to check on time and ended up sending Maddon to hit the showers.

The Rays, who went on to lose the game 6-0 and earn a trip to Texas one game short of winter vacation, are not the only American League postseason combatants questioning baseball's judiciary lately. A New York Yankee outfielder, Greg Golson, made a stunning enough Game One-ending catch in the ninth against the Minnesota Twins. Oops. The umps ruled trap. The only problem with that was the television replays showing Golson did make the catch, clearly enough.

The good news is that the play lured another into the camp of the affirmative for officially-sanctioned instant replay. "The thing about expanded replay for me is, could they have reviewed that play as quick as they talked about it? Probably," says Yankee manager Joe Girardi. "It's the same amount of time---it may even be less. Once a play is reviewed, you're not really allowed to argue it. There's times when the umpires talk, they convene, then they come back with a decision that the manager doesn't necessarily think is correct, then they might argue for awhile. [Instant replay] could actually speed up the game."

Well, now. One of the arguments against replay has been that the games are going on long enough, thank you, without protracting them over close plays the net result of which, well, you're just going to have to live with. That's practically the stance of Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, perhaps understandably, given that his team benefitted for the moment from the Golson ruling.

Gardenhire, you see, prefers baseball "as it is . . . You just have to live with it."

Oh? Let's see if Gardenhire can live with what looked like strike three to Lance Berkman, the Yankees' designated hitter. (How strange does that trip off the tongue now, Houston Astro fans?) Because it was called ball two. Berkman only drove in what proved to be the Game Two-winning run on the very next pitch, a double to the back of the yard that sent Jorge Posada home and enabled Andy Pettitte and company to finish what they started, earning the Twins a trip to Yankee Stadium two games in the hole.

Gardenhire and the Twins have been there before. Last year, a blown call helped them lose a division series to the Yankees in a sweep. They're on the threshold of the same result in thanks enough to blown calls. Now, nobody says Carl Pavano is blameless for throwing Berkman a pitch he could hit after Berkman got his present from Hunter Wendelstedt behind the dish. And nobody says Qualls is blameless for throwing Young something with a big "hit me!" sign on it after Young got his gift from Mears.

But nobody with eyes should be saying the umpires aren't blowing it all over again, either. Just as nobody with eyes and ears should be saying a given ruling of the Supreme Court should be taken as the infallible word.

A published analysis shows Wendelstedt made an astonishing 31 wrong ball and strike calls against both the Twins and the Yankees---including a cutter to Derek Jeter that came in right down the pipe . . . and was called a ball. Wendelstedt called seventeen pitches strikes that weren't inside the zone, benefits to both sides, actually. Is it comforting to know that Wendelstedt is an equal opportunity malcompetent.

The only run in Game One of the division set between the San Francisco Giants and the Atlanta Braves was built in part on a blown call. Buster Posey, the Giants' remarkable rookie catcher, was thrown out stealing second after he led off the San Francisco fourth with a base hit. Not so fast: Posey was ruled safe. Several television replays to follow showed Braves shortstop Alex Gonzalez got the tag on Posey when Posey's lead sliding foot was still about four inches from touching second base.

After Atlanta starter Derek Lowe swished Pat Burrell (batting at the time of the Posey gift) and Juan Uribe and put Pablo Sandoval on intentionally to set up forceouts, Cody Ross drilled a single to left to send Posey home. Lowe and his bullpen were very much on their game for the most part, but Tim Lincecum was somewhere in the fifth dimension of his game, striking out fourteen along the way, making the 1-0 gift hold to give the Giants a 1-0 series lead.

If they are the young gentlemen they seem to be, the Giants will send second base umpire Paul Emmel dinner and vino. It's the least they could do for the gift.

Ankiel should have been another feelgood story. His arcing liner landing in McCovey Cove benefitted the team that had humiliated him, when he was a young, promising pitcher, in a postseason set a decade ago. It put the cap on the Braves' wreckage of Matt Cain's excellent starting performance for the Giants. And it helped make a winner out of Farnsworth, who pitched an inning and a third of shutout ball after Billy Wagner injured an oblique and had to leave, and who wiggled out of a loaded-pads jam by getting Posey to ground out to Troy Glaus, a former World Series MVP who had played exactly nine games at third base the past two regular seasons.

So should Bobby Cox, the venerable Braves manager who's come to a postseason in his intended final year on the job. Perhaps fittingly, considering the record he holds, he got ejected, arguing a close play at first base on which Alex Gonzalez---whose two-run double off Giants closer Brian Wilson would tie up the game at four in the first place---was called out.

Replays showed the call could have gone either way. All things considered, it's probably the only close call that couldn't be called blown. Probably. And baseball government, which seems to think the game's umpires ought to be privileged in ways alien even to Supreme Court justices, still won't pull the trigger on committing to championship season instant replay.

Baseball's gotta have some kind of replay rule.Not with an unlimited number of challenges or anything but they need *something*.Yah,it might slow the game down a bit but when was baseball ever a “speedy” game to begin with?

Baseball's gotta have some kind of replay rule.Not with an unlimited number of challenges or anything but they need *something*.

There have been several proposals made about postseason instant replay, at least, I think they tended to range between one and three replay challenges a side.

Yah,it might slow the game down a bit but when was baseball ever a “speedy” game to begin with?

It wasn't meant to be a speedy game. (Except maybe in the pitcher's arm or the runners on the bases eyeing grand theft second base.) It isn't played on the clock. That said, I don't think replay appeals would take even half the time that batters stepping out of the box or pitchers taking near forever between pitches tend to take. Even without replay, you saw that a few times in, for example, the 2004 American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and the Empire Emeritus---umpires conferred on several close plays to make sure they were getting it right. I didn't notice that those confabs padded the game times longer than the batter's box delays tended to do.

In comparison to what I watched of major league baseball in my youth, the real culprit here IMO is a marked deterioration in either the acumen or the impartiality of current umpires. The calling of balls and strikes alone over the past several years has been so egregiously BAD that I have largely stopped watching the game.

What I'd like to see, I think, would be for officials to be willing to use instant-replay equipment in cases where they may not have gotten a good view of what happened. The first- and third-base umpires are supposed to watch for check swings, and it is entirely proper when the plate umpire calls "ball" on a check swing for a manager to ask that the plate umpire consult the first- or third-base umpire; if for whatever reason one of those people couldn't see very well, they could ask for video.

Umpires don't want to slow down the game, but they also don't want to go into the record books as having made bad calls. In many cases, I think that umpires would probably have a pretty good sense of which calls were good and which might not have been.

In comparison to what I watched of major league baseball in my youth, the real culprit here IMO is a marked deterioration in either the acumen or the impartiality of current umpires. The calling of balls and strikes alone over the past several years has been so egregiously BAD that I have largely stopped watching the game.

Bad calls have always been with us, and for various reasons. But they have become epidemic. And I would like to see myself whether it comes forth that there are, indeed, umpires with certain personal agendae in play.

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