Judge: Baseball Must Rehire Umpires

LOL !!! Gotta make sure the roll of those bunts isn't effected by a tilt in the field, lol.

Here was the actual Boswell comment, from a Post column he wrote called "The 40 Fiats of Chairman Boz," a whimsical column in which he pondered what he'd do if he were named baseball's benevolent dictator. Some of his ideas were pure Cloud Cuckooland, but some were not. Here's the segment:

(N)o major league umpire shall be allowed to consist of more than 49 percent body fat. Under no conditions are John McSherry and Eric Gregg permitted to work on the same side of the infield. Hey, you in the blue muumuu, mix in a salad. Each year, the worst umpire in the majors, as determined by player ballot, shall be sent back to the minors. Each year, the best umpire in AAA, as determined by ballot, shall be sent up to the major leagues. Furthermore, postseason umpires shall be chosen on merit. Oh, you t hought they already were?

The tragedy: McSherry was a good umpire. I remember pitchers having a lot of respect for him because he kept the strike zone consistent and didn't just run you if you questioned (as opposed to arguing) a call.

Thank you for your great posts.
Life is the time I spend waiting between baseball games.

While reading your posts a couple of things occurred to me.
1. My grandfather told me (oh, thirty years ago, at least,) about attending the game in which pitcher Rube Waddell set the major league strikeout record at 17. He grew up in New York city (Irish immigrant parents) during the 1910s and '20s and saw a whole lot of Yankee games. Whew!
2. Speaking of cheating, did you ever see anything so funny or embarrassing as when Kevin Gross flipped his sand board onto the field thinking nobody would notice, when the umpires came over to check him out?
3. One of my favorite quotes was from Yogi (90% sure) about the wild and very myopic fastballer Ryne Duran: "When Ryne Duran starts warming up, the people stop eating their popcorn."

When I think about umpires bad calls, I wonder what would get you thrown out of a game -- bringing a white cane and sunglasses out to the umpire, for example. I do love the business cards.

Years ago, there was a group of five fanatical Brooklyn Dodger fans who made up a musical (and that is putting it politely, though the Ebbets Field faithful loved them) group known as the Dodgers Sym-phony Band. Among their regular repertoire was hectoring umps who called close ones against the Dodgers by playing "Three Blind Mice" (in their years, there were only three umps on the field). This was a habit picked up by Gladys Gooding, the Ebbets Field organist. I'm told there was one game where an ump threatened a forfeit unless the Dodgers instructed both Gooding and the Dodgers Sym-phony Band to knock it off with the "Three Blind Mice". Never at a loss, the Sym-phony Bandsmen, I'm told, immediately hit the arbiters with a round of "The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out." (Another favourite Sym-phony Band routine: whenever the Dodgers knocked an enemy pitcher out of the box, their bass drummer would beat out each footstep the pitcher took to the dugout until, finally, at the split second he sat down on the bench, bass drum and cymbal would strike a thundering crash.)

But, getting thrown out of the game requires a certain amount of civility. What happens if a player or manager simply refuses to leave? Sits on the mound. Doesn't move. Do they get security? Does the game end in a forfeit?

You would think it requires a certain civility, but unfortunately it isn't exactly the case. Think above to the Andujar and Clemens incidents, especially the Clemens incident with Terry Cooney. The umps can be and often are instigators more often than not. Just like the courts, what protection do players, coaches, or managers have against martinet umpires who abuse their powers? (Usually, though, if a player or manager just refuses to leave, he could end up being hit with a heavy fine from the league office. Or, a suspension. In fact, this happened to Bobby Valentine, the irrepressible manager of the New York Mets, a couple of seasons ago: Valentine got run from a game and decided to sneak back to the steps from the dugout to the clubhouse in a Groucho Marx eyeglass-and-mustache set, thinking no one would recognise him, especially wearing a team jacket over his uniform. It almost worked - but it also got Valentine a three-game suspension.)

On the other hand, just to be fair to the men in blue-black, they have run players for just cause. One notorious example: an incident in Yankee Stadium during the heat of the 1949 pennant race. A close call at the plate went against the Yankees; the Yankees exploded, then young outfielder Cliff Mapes (whom trivia records as having been the last man to wear number 7 before Mickey Mantle) - after cooler heads were beginning to prevail - wheeled around and barked at the plate ump, "How much do you have on the game?" Mapes got run and fined promptly and was forced to apologise, and there are those who think that incident cooked Mapes' Yankee career.

Then, there was the Roberto Alomar incident - which turns out, believe it or not, to have been umpire provoked: Anyone who knows anything about Latinos could tell you that calling one a mother-youknowwhatter is fightin' words, no questions asked. Alomar was questioning a pitch call when the word, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, came out of the ump's mouth, and Alomar lost it. I didn't know it at the time, and I blasted Alomar for it in a newspaper column (I was then writing occasional baseball pieces among my assignments) and blasted baseball for not suspending him immediately, for the rest of the postseason, rather than letting the suspension begin the following season, after the then-Oriole second baseman spit in the ump's eye (he wasn't going to be fool enough to deck the guy). But it transpired subsequently that not only did the ump apologise to Alomar, but Alomar did likewise - and they've since become friends. Go figure.

I don't know if you know this, but Roberto Alomar lifetime is one of the deadliest seventh-inning hitters of his time. He hits overall better in innings 1-6 than 7-9 (though his batting averages in those spans isn't separated by that much, and a guy who hits .293 from the seventh to the ninth is still a guy you want up there in those late innings), but in the seventh inning this guy should be classified as a lethal weapon. He has an onbase percentage over .600, a .909 slugging average, and a .545 batting average. He's also dangerous with men on base, and with the bases loaded he has a lifetime .387 on base percentage, .623 slugging percentage, and .384 batting average. Any way you look at it, these are the kind of late-inning pressure performances the Mets can use in abundance. For once, Steve Phillips pulled the trigger on a smart deal, and Alomar probably has about six good years left in him. Now, if only Phillips could give up this insane love affair with Armando Benitez...

Life is the time I spend waiting between baseball games.

I call it the winter of my malcontent, waiting between baseball seasons. *grin*

I remember the Gross incident. And I also have the text of the Bart Giamatti ruling upholding his suspension. You can get it in the charming little book, A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti. I may enjoy a good laugh over some of the real Houdinism of the game, but I also know in my gut Giamatti was dead right on about Gross and cheating. His death probably robbed baseball of its greatest commissioner and perhaps the only one who could have saved baseball a lot of 1990s grief. Look what we have now: an owner as commissioner, after he abetted the putsch of Giamatti's successor...

From the vaults of baseball's version of "Stupid Crook Tricks":

Tacky Dept: Rick Honeycutt, Seattle Mariners. Caught with a thumbtack taped to his glove hand with a flesh-coloured bandage. Tossed. Walks off the mound in disgust, mops sweaty brow with hand - with the thumbtack still attached! Cuts side-to-side gash across his forehead. A genuine scratch.

Manicure Overboard: Joe Niekro, Minnesota Twins. Caught red-pocketed with a fingernail file and emery board during a game. Pleads he might need to re-manicure his fingernails to keep throwing his knuckleball. Ever heard of a dugout manicure kit, Joe?

The Lord of the Ring: Whitey Ford, New York Yankees. Ford at one point discovered a rasp in his wedding ring which he could use to do a little surgery on the ball. ("It was," he once said, "like I had my own tool bench out there.") Umpire to Ford, after catching on: "Whitey, go to the clubhouse. Your jockstrap needs adjusting. And when you come back, it better be without that ring."

Cork You!: Howard Johnson, New York Mets, and Billy Hatcher, Houston Astros. Johnson broke out in 1987 as a suddenly-feared National League slugger. Though the St. Louis Cardinals made the most noise about it (Johnson and teammate Roger McDowell ran Cardinal temperatures up the scale by leaving one of Johnson's bats near the Redbirds' nest - with hundreds of bits of cork glued to the barrel), it was Hatcher who first made the accusation. Fast-forward: Following season, Hatcher ripped one over the fence. Noticing the bat was cracked after the homer, and remembering Hatcher's accusation of Johnson, someone pried the bat open and it was loaded with cork. Hit the road, Hatch...

Super Balls: Graig Nettles, New York Yankees. Not that he really needed it - he was one of the more respected big boppers of his time, in his prime - but Nettles had a nasty habit of looking for a little extra oomph in his bats. One time, he used those little Super Balls down the barrel - at least, until he forgot they were in there, broke his bat on a foul, and watched with his jaw dropped as those little Super Balls began bouncing out of the broken bat and all around the plate. Even the ump had to laugh. (Nettles also tried a tube of liquid mercury three-quarters full down the barrel, the idea that the heavy liquid would shoot to the far end on a swing and put a little extra fuel into the bomb. He broke that bat, too, and the tube, and the grounds crew had a hell of a time cleaning up the tiny balls of spattered mercury.)

Cash on the Barrel: Norm Cash, Detroit Tigers. Stormin' Norman won the 1961 American League batting title with a loaded bat. He also wrote an article for a magazine demonstrating how to load the bat. Then, he used the same bat the following season. Justice delayed is sometimes justice profound: Cash's batting average dropped almost a hundred points!

Commenting on the Cheaters: Anonymous baseball coach, on Don Sutton: He's set such a defiant stance that one of these days, I expect him to throw a ball up to the plate with bolts attached to it.

He Did, He Did: George Steinbrenner, harassing manager Lou Piniella during the aforesaid Tommy John-Don Sutton game: Don't you see what Sutton's doing out there? And you're not protesting?? Piniella's reply: Come on, George. Everything Sutton's doing TJ is doing, too. Only TJ is doing it better!

Yogi didn't say it. Nobody did. Casey Stengel did say of Duren, though, the following: He's the most exciting thing in baseball. If the people won't come out to see him, they won't come out to see anybody. When he hops over that bullpen gate, the folks stop eating their peanuts.

Stengel also said of Duren, I would not admire hitting against Duren because if he ever hit you in the head you might be in the past tense.

I didn't know about the Alomar stuff. I know it was surprising because he was always a model citizen before that.

Personally, that Mets trade is one of the "what's wrong with baseball" trades that have been happening recently.

Personally, that Mets trade is one of the "what's wrong with baseball" trades that have been happening recently.

Not necessarily. It made sense if you consider the Indians are leaning more toward younger players in a reconstruction effort, and Alomar was their best trade offering. The Indians won't be out of the pennant picture for very long and if their smarts return to the front office, look for them to do it the way they got there in the 1990s.

The Mets needed infield help if they were looking to unload Robin Ventura, who may not have as much real quality time left as Alomar does, and having Edgardo Alfonzo to play third base (which he can do, as I noted above) with Alomar at second and Rey Ordonez at short is a sensible move for them. Plus, a healthy Alfonzo and Alomar in prime form give them some offencive pop. These two will hit for average and power, no matter the park.

There is some talk that Shea Stadium may chip away a bit at Alomar's hitting, but Camden Yards isn't the hitter's haven it's cracked up to be and Alomar performed very well hitting in that park as an Oriole. Back in 1983, they thought Keith Hernandez would be hurt by Shea and he ended up shining there. (Come to think of it, the one season Dave Magadan was allowed to play regularly for the Mets, he damn near won the National League batting title and was also almost the deadliest hitter in the league in late-inning pressure. Magadan is one player who deserved way better than he got for his career, turn him loose and the guy in his prime years maybe wouldn't drive in a lot of runs but he rarely made bad outs in the late innings and he almost always put final touches on runs with his hits. One season, I think it was 1990, Magadan's late-inning hitting was responsible for creating as many runs as a lot of guys were putting on the plate. And his home park was Shea.)

On the other hand, I'm not so sure the Mets were quite as smart trading Tsuyoshi Shinjo and Desi Relaford for Shawn Estes. Estes can be a good pitcher but I think he could have been had for less than those two players. Shinjo especially is a sparkler in the outfield (hell, the guy's an acrobat) and I saw some improvement at the plate toward the end of the season. He hit, in fact, most lethally in the first, sixth and eighth innings, innings where the Mets sorely need hitting strength. OK, so he only got to hit in one eighth inning but here's the skinny: the Mets batted around and he hit twice including a double. Clearly enough, this guy isn't afraid to hit in the late innings. He could improve as a left fielder (as a center fielder, he was near impeccable) and would have been a good outfield mate if the Mets were bringing Roger Cedeno home. And if you're not going to be scoring many runs, the least you can do is keep the other guys from scoring. Desi Relaford is a fine hitter who could do well in PacBell,and he may well improve as a shortstop. He has the tools. And if the Mets were going to sour sooner or later on Ordonez, who has an excellent glove and an almost non-existent bat, Relaford would have been the ideal man to take the job.

Estes could be a good match in Shea Stadium, usually the hive where good arms thrive. He looks like a durable pitcher even with his ERA at four; he gets pretty good when his pitch count goes past 100 overall, and if you don't think a Met bullpen hobbled by an insane insistence on using Benitez as its closer despite his tendency to get careless when it's down the stretch or with a World Series game on the line can't be helped by a pitcher who can go the route and then some for you, think again. But I still think he could have been had for less. I'd have to call this deal about dead even.

Then, there was the Roberto Alomar incident - which turns out, believe it or not, to have been umpire provoked: Anyone who knows anything about Latinos could tell you that calling one a mother-youknowwhatter is fightin' words, no questions asked. Alomar was questioning a pitch call when the word, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, came out of the ump's mouth, and Alomar lost it. I didn't know it at the time, and I blasted Alomar for it in a newspaper column (I was then writing occasional baseball pieces among my assignments) and blasted baseball for not suspending him immediately, for the rest of the postseason, rather than letting the suspension begin the following season, after the then-Oriole second baseman spit in the ump's eye (he wasn't going to be fool enough to deck the guy). But it transpired subsequently that not only did the ump apologise to Alomar, but Alomar did likewise - and they've since become friends. Go figure.

I've heard personally, from two different sportswriters, another story about what Hirschbeck really said to Alomar. The story I heard is that the ump caled Alomar a "faggot," and Alomar, who has had gay rumors swirling around him for a while, went ballistic over it. Either way, it seems like Hirshbeck played his art in causing things to get out of control. I asked one of the sportswriters who told me this story why this exculpatory information was never printed, and he said it would open up too big of a can of worms.

The thing is with Alomar is that this was the one and only time in his career he has ever done anything controversial. The New York Daily News had an interview last week with John Hirshbeck, and he said that a few years after the incident, he sarcastically asked one of the Cleveland clubhouse attendants, who he was friends with, what he thought of Alomar. The guy replied that Alomar was the nicest player he knew! Since then, Hirshbeck decided to make amends with him, and the two have become friends.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure the Mets were quite as smart trading Tsuyoshi Shinjo and Desi Relaford for Shawn Estes. Estes can be a good pitcher but I think he could have been had for less than those two players. Shinjo especially is a sparkler in the outfield (hell, the guy's an acrobat) and I saw some improvement at the plate toward the end of the season.

Shinjo, after Piazza, was my second-favorite player to watch last season. He came up with some clutch hits over the course of the year. And I agree with you on Benitez -- he's like the Kenny Rogers of relief pitchers -- great for you in meaningless games, but manages to screw it up whenever it's a game that matters.

And I agree with you on Benitez -- he's like the Kenny Rogers of relief pitchers...

Couldn't agree more. I can no longer stomach Benitez at all. I don't care how good his stats may be during the regular season, the guy is an utter joke in an important situation.

Couldn't agree more. I can no longer stomach Benitez at all. I don't care how good his stats may be during the regular season, the guy is an utter joke in an important situation.

I've never forgiven him for hitting Tino Martinez!