Quote:
Originally posted by Atl Blue
Let's try this one more time. Bruce Froemming and 55 other umpires submitted their letters of resignation (i.e, they RESIGNED). MLB said, OK, we are hiring 25 new umpires. The umpire's union, realizing they had made a MAJOR tactical error, then filed a suit in Federal Court to rescind their resignations. As part of the arbitration settlement, all but 22 of the umpires were allowed to return, in return for the union dropping it's suit against MLB. This was the effective end of the union, as the settlement allowed 34 umpires to return (which Froemming was among), and left 22 out of a job (which West was among).
The list you published are those umpires who were not allowed to come back. As you can see, many of them later regained their jobs as well through even more court action. See Joe West, Larry Poncino and others on the list.
But Froemming was a board member of the union. He was one of the first to sign the letter of resignation, and to convince others to do so as well.
Make no mistake. Froemming resigned, and then used the courts to win his job back after realizing the foolishness of his move.
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According to the reports by SI, CNN and the releases by MLB, Froemming was not among
reinstated umpires as he never left.
Only umpires among the "22" who actually left were considered reinstated. Some of which Froemming convinced to leave.
Semantics? Maybe, maybe not. Consider it similar to the wording of a FED test. "Bruce Froemming resigned and was among the reinstated umpires." False. The term "reinstated", for better or worse, has been reserved by MLB for use in referrence to members of the 22. After all, can one be "reinstated" to something he never left?
[Edited by GarthB on Aug 24th, 2004 at 03:04 PM]