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COPY AND PASTE. YOUR'E WELCOME
Oct. 24, 2005, 11:21PM
It's time for umps to step up to plate
By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
JUST past the dugouts down the foul lines. Not counting Hilton heiresses and maybe government officials of small Caribbean nations, no one has so much free rein and so little public accountability as big-league umpires.
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It's the ultimate dream job.
You make decisions bad ones, even that determine fates and etch baseball legacies. You're never wrong, even when you're wrong.
You rarely have to sit behind a bank of microphones and be responsible to the people who pay your salary.
My bad. Don't know what I was thinking.
Umpiring major-league baseball games is never having to say you're sorry.
And even when you do get dragged into the dreaded interview room, like Doug Eddings after he missed a fateful call in the American League Championship Series, you can say things like "in our opinion, the ball changed direction."
Yes, it did. It went from the webbing of Josh Paul's glove to the palm of it. But, hey, spare us the details.
If you are an MLB umpire, you eat well obviously and fly first-class. You get cool perks and vacation days during the season. Always, you are protected by the commissioner.
After your games even bad ones, like Sunday night's you retreat to the dressing room under the protection of the most powerful people in the stadium law-enforcement officers and dudes in yellow windbreakers.
And of course, the unspoken mantra of your profession is to protect your own like lionesses in an African drought.
Lots of calls went right on Sunday night in Game 2 of the World Series. But at a place called U.S. Cellular Field, the temptation to ask, "Hello? Anyone there?" never was more appropriate than in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Astros reliever Dan Wheeler threw a pitch high and tight on White Sox batter Jermaine Dye. The ball hit Dye's bat. Foul ball. Everyone saw it well, almost everyone.
In a series involving a franchise that brought baseball its darkest days in 1919, umpire "Clueless" Jeff Nelson awarded Dye first base on a hit-batsman call. From there, you know the story.
Paul Konerko: Bang.
Scott Podsednik: Zoom.
And off to the moon went the White Sox, taking a 7-6 victory, a commanding 2-0 World Series lead and control of a fate that should end happily for the South Siders within a matter of days.
Part of me feels sympathy for Nelson and crew chief Joe West, a budding country and western singer who probably shouldn't try to book a gig at the Cadillac Ranch just yet.
"Blue Cowboy," West calls himself. Catchy. His affection for the twang of a steel guitar probably is a nice story, too, if only we could tell it. But catching up with umpires is the toughest thing in baseball.
Their calls time and again have led to the most dramatic turns in these playoffs, but umpires always are the phantoms of the postseason opera.
After Sunday night's game, reporters wanted to interview Clueless Jeff and/or the Blue Cowboy. Major League Baseball did not make the umpires available, and the umpires, like the Astros' hopes, faded into the darkness.
This is one of baseball's biggest problems, and it is being compounded with every missed call. Instead of facing the paying customers, the umpires are in shrouds and cloaks.
Umpires are human. They make mistakes. They also likely feel worse than anyone about the third-strike debacle that happened in the White Sox-Angels series or Phil Cuzzi's blowing his strike zone and then his temper in the Astros-Cardinals series when he ejected St. Louis manager Tony La Russa and slugger Jim Edmonds.
They feel horrible about Sunday night, too. No doubt, once Nelson retired to the umpires' dressing room he saw what everyone else saw. He realized he blew it and, if told to address the media, might have offered a solid explanation or at least reasoning for making the call and not asking for help from the baseline umps.
But this barrier that baseball puts between its grandest stage and the game's arbiters hinders understanding and acceptance more than it protects umpires. It's time for baseball to Blue Cowboy up.
When players like Brad Lidge and Chad Qualls give up series-changing home runs, we expect them to stand in front of their lockers and at least mumble through some kind of explanation. Lidge and Qualls, of course, did more than that.
Videos of the homers that Lidge and Qualls gave up, as well as that of the professionalism and accountability the two Astros pitchers showed in the clubhouse afterward, should be sent to every player in baseball.
This is how you do it. This is integrity personified.
Do you think Lidge and Qualls wanted to be there in front of the bright lights? Do you think they wanted to stand there, taking question after question like punches to the stomach?
They were there, though, because that is how accountability works.
Yet Cuzzi curses at Edmonds, loses it with La Russa, and fades into the bowels of Minute Maid Park. Clueless Jeff blows it Sunday night and then blows off the media.
As an armada of the nation's media descended on Minute Maid Park on Monday afternoon, they could ask White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen about Bobby Jenks' blowing a save or Chicago's baserunning troubles. They could grill Phil Garner and interrogate Lidge again. They could question Craig Biggio and Chris Burke about their defense.
But want some explanations from the umps? Shut up and get behind the man in the yellow windbreaker.
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