From the NY times today......got some intersting thoughts...its bit condensed,(by me)....but its good thoughts...
Down in the Yankees’ locker room, Reggie Jackson pronounced: “Today was not a good day for the umpires. But the third-base umpire is a great umpire.”
Upstairs in a conference room, Tim McClelland was proving he is a stand-up umpire by appearing in front of reporters to give his version of two poor calls he had made.
“Obviously, or not obviously,” McClelland said, “but there were two missed calls. And I’m just out there trying to do my job and do it the best I can. And unfortunately there was, by instant replay, there were two missed calls.”
In a bad month for umpires, McClelland showed up in front of people he had every reason to expect would skewer him, satirize him and demonize him. He had the character to give his side, which was, basically, that he had messed up.
The replays showed he was obviously wrong in ruling that Nick Swisher had left the base too early after tagging up on a fly ball to center field. On television he did not appear to be in position to make the difficult call on the two actions, occurring simultaneously, nearly 200 feet apart. Later he showed up in public to say that “in my heart” he thought Swisher had left the base too soon.
On Tuesday evening McClelland was not right, when he missed Mike Napoli of the Angels tagging Robinson Cano and then Jorge Posada as they shuffled around third base.
Rather than gum over the question of whether instant replay should be expanded, I would like to talk about umpires themselves. They’ve got a tough job, and most of them do it well, most of the time. They are the third team on the field, and like the Yankees, and like the Angels, they have their pride.
I have been an admirer of umpires since 1981 when I came to know one team of umpires, after Martin had jumped all over one of them. The four of them spent some time with me in New York, opening up their hearts and their working lives.
Lou DiMuro. Nick Bremigan. Larry Barnett. Mike Reilly. DiMuro and Bremigan died way too young. Barnett is retired. Reilly is a crew chief.
They reminded me of other good people I had met, as a news reporter, out there in the real world: coal miners who are convinced that nobody understands their perilous work; teachers who have to hear how lucky they are to have summers off; and some police officers, at least in New York, who develop a gallows humor about their line of work.
The umps were like that. When your basic New York waiter, who seemed to be auditioning for a comedy club, goofed on them and called them farmers, Barnett said, “Are you sure the waiter doesn’t know who we are?”
After spending a couple of days around the umps, I wrote, “In many ways, the umpires are like police officers, who feel so cut off from other people because of the nature of their work that they spend much of their time in the company of other police officers.”
Reilly said: ”I think I am probably a little more suspicious of people. I think umpiring does change you a little.”
After that, I saw umpires through a different prism. A few years later, at the Stadium, Barnett’s new crew made a call on a drive near the right-field foul pole, as I recall.
Right after the game, I went down to the umpires’ room and Barnett’s guys asked what the television replay had shown. When I said the call was wrong, they shook their heads in disgust. They hated to be wrong. Hated it. But I also understood that they knew it was not the first time, or the last.
Nowadays, modern technology informs all of us. The fans in luxury suites have access to television replays from a dozen angles. Standing in their dark blue uniforms on the field, the umpires can tell by the rumble if they have messed up.
Baseball now uses instant replay for barrier calls on possible home runs: over the fence, fair or foul. I would not extend it to every bloop down the foul line, every bang-bang play at first, because then the umpires just become space holders. It’s their game, too.
Some umpires are better than others. There are a few authoritarians or hotheads, and more than a few incompetents. This is generally known in the dugout. Jackson, a senior adviser to the Yankees, hates the rotation system that gives every umpire a turn in the postseason. He says umpiring in the postseason should be based on merit. And, Jackson added, Tim McClelland deserves to be working in October. McClelland demonstrated that after Tuesday’s game. By showing up.
