Ejections, and Other Umpiring Musings

I haven't "mused" in a while, so here we go.

My perfect record is broken. In eight years of baseball, I've ejected a few people. Players, coaches, fans...but never anyone in school ball. There are numerous reasons for this. You have to write up a report and turn it in for any ejection, and that takes time (we umpires generally hate writing up stuff like that). Also, the coaches in school ball are paid and are thus usually a bit more professional than the dads we get in the youth leagues, so they know when to argue and when to shut up. And if you do a halfway-decent job, they won't give you much trouble. So I had a perfect record in sanctioned ball ("sanctioned" meaning any junior high, high school, or college games I had worked...not youth league). Well, that is, until Thursday night. I had a play at the plate where the runner was coming in, made no attempt to slide, and in fact came running in leading with his forearms (as one might in football), and ran over the catcher. The rulebook calls this "malicious contact" and when an umpire sees it, it is grounds for automatic ejection. So I ejected him. I knew it would happen one day, I guess, but I'm still not happy that it did.

Contrary to what you might think, most umpires don't like ejections. Sure, ejections are almost always interesting, as I said, and those lead to the main kind of "war stories" we officials talk to each other about. (The other kind is odd or unusual plays that involve obscure rulings.) The ejection is like firing a gun; it's the ultimate weapon in our arsenal, but as such, it's also a last-resort action to demonstrate when the final line has been crossed. Good umpires don't like ejections because it's usually a sign that things have gone really wrong in some way. (Bad umpires don't care, and actually enjoy ejections, as a kind of power trip. These guys don't last very long as umpires, or at least, don't advance very far in this line of work.) Another thing to consider here: too many ejections usually indicates that you aren't very good at handling people and managing games, and those are critical skills to develop in officiating.

I have witnessed three ejections this year, two by my partners, and then my own Thursday night, of course. Ejections are always interesting, because there are always interesting circumstances that lead to them. The first one I saw this year was down at Tuttle during a varsity game, very early in the season. (This story has had a fair amount of notoriety this season. There are people who have searched for more about this story, because I've seen their searches bringing them to my blog, even though I haven't explicitly discussed the incident yet.) Here's a little bit of how it went down, with names and numbers withheld to protect those involved. I was in the field, and my partner was apparently not telling the catcher what he wanted to know on where pitches were missing. So the catcher went out and had a brief chat with the pitcher. On the very next pitch, the catcher set up on the outside corner...and a perfect fastball came whizzing right in at my partner and hit him dead-square in the chest. He has a protector on, of course, but imagine getting hit by any rock-hard object that is traveling at high speed; it's still going to hurt a little bit. Well, that probably could have just been the catcher getting crossed up...it happens all the time. But then the catcher gave a stern look back at my partner, kind of a "get the message?" look, so my partner tossed the catcher. The catcher protested to us that it was an accident, but later admitted to others that it wasn't...and that got back to me through some parents who were not happy that the whole thing had happened at all. I do games regularly for both schools and many of the folks know me by sight, so they knew I was calling in that game and apologized to me later. Proud programs we have down here, and they don't like that sort of thing making them look bad.

The other ejection was a basic arguing-balls-and-strikes deal during a freshmen game. The crux of this situation, however, was that my partner let it go on far too long. (In his defense, my partner that night was a rookie and hadn't had much experience in handling coaches. We've all been there, and it's unfortunately just something you learn by doing.) The coach started arguing in about the 2nd inning, and he argued in about every inning after that. By the third inning, my partner should have nipped it in the bud and said something to the effect of, "Coach, we're done discussing the strike zone for the evening." That would let the coach know that he's on warning now, and he better shut up about it and just deal with it. This is something we call "preventative officiating." Instead, he let it go, and let it go, until it became unmanageable. The coach had at least one strike zone comment in every half inning from the 2nd inning on.

Finally, in the 6th inning, the coach actually walked out to his pitcher and started obviously eyeballing the strike zone and the plate, as though he couldn't figure out where the pitches were missing, and thus publicly showing his displeasure. My partner had finally had enough and tossed him. Then the fun began...the coach went BALLISTIC. He charged my partner and started yelling and screaming and saying all sorts of unhappy things. My job as the other umpire (i.e., the non-ejecting umpire) is to get my partner out of there and usher the ejected party off the field. Ejections are always final, so there's no point in letting things continue. If the ejecting umpire is left to deal with getting things moving again, that means he's dealing with someone who is already very unhappy with him, and that's never good. It wastes time and does nothing but open up more trouble if you let it continue. So I did my job and rushed in to try to get my partner separated from the coach, and to get the coach off the field so we could get back to playing baseball. (This was actually a lot of work, because I'm not a big guy and this sort of thing can often be somewhat physical.) It took me several minutes of me dancing with the coach to get him out of there so we could get back to business. Ah, just part of the fun of officiating.

What leads to ejections? There are the obvious things in the rulebook, like the aforementioned malicious contact, or fighting, or things like that. Philosophically, though, there are "intangible" things, things that you NEVER, EVER do to me as an umpire. All of these lead to quick, summary discussions that end with you in the parking lot.

1. Never use any profanity with the word "you" (and in youth ball, never use loud profanity in any context or situation). So let's say I made a call on a bang-bang play at second base. You run out to argue with me about it. While "That was a horsesh** call" can be overlooked, "You're horsesh**" will not be and is grounds for immediate ejection. Why? Well, adding "you" makes it personal, not professional. You can argue about my calls, but if you insult me directly, that's out of line. You usually don't know me other than what you've seen on the field. So until you know for sure what you're saying is true, don't say it. Of course, as I said, just saying the word "horsesh**" loudly enough for anyone other than me to hear is also an ejectable offense in any games at high school and below; we have to be role models for the kids we're coaching/umpiring, and we need to show them what sports is all about. (Hint: it's not about dropping F-bombs.)

2. Never directly question an umpire's integrity. If you start saying things like "homer" or "we got some home cookin' going here," or if you imply in any way that I'm specifically calling against you for any reason, I will be addressing it quickly. This is the same thing as the profanity-and-"you" rule; don't impugn my character when you don't really know anything about me other than my umpiring.

3. Never argue balls and strikes directly. Don't draw lines in the dirt to show where you think a pitch is. Don't eyeball the plate or make a show of getting a look at where the pitches are. Don't repeatedly ask me where they're missing. Don't talk about me "squeezing" your pitcher. Just observe my strike zone and adjust. (I'm generally a pitcher's umpire in this way...I've previously discussed how I prefer calling strikes over balls.) Calling balls and strikes is one of the most difficult tasks in officiating, and there is a fair margin of error. I know I'm not perfect; I usually miss anywhere from 1-6 pitches a game, depending on how "on" I am that day. I'm also man enough to admit if I missed one, and I work hard to not miss it the next time. I also work very hard to give both teams as close to the same strike zone as I possibly can, because that's what I do. But there are usually 200-300 pitches in an average game, and those 1-6 pitches don't usually count for much in the grand scheme. Your players have about 100 times more opportunity to affect the game than my 1-6 missed pitches do. So whatever you think of my strike zone, live with it and play ball. Don't waste game time arguing.

The funny thing with that last one is, umpires are usually fairly lenient in discussing judgment calls on the bases, or with fair-foul calls. As long as you don't argue excessively, most guys (myself included) will talk with you about it. However, NO ONE tolerates strike zone arguments for very long.