CWS - Indiana vs Louisville
 

Top of 4th. Home plate umpire (they said his name was Manders I think) suddenly develops a VERY large strike zone (IMO) ringing up a couple of players. Then in the middle of the inning , he removes himself due to apparent illness and is replaced. Kinda weird.

I did a little digging, and here's what I found -

"The last update is that he left the game with shortness of breath and dizziness. He was taken by Paramedics to the hospital and diagnosed with his heart in A-Fib. Doctors have his heart beat back down and he is resting well and will most likely be kept overnight and is in good spirits."

I hope he's able to get back in the game before the Series is done.

JJ

I sure hope he's OK too.
My son and I were watching the game together. As an umpire, I pay a lot of attention to the umpires, always trying to learn a little somthing. I thought he was doing a great job in the first 3 innings. Very consistant strike zone etc. Then came the 4th inning when he rang up a guy on a ball that was at least 10 inches off the plate and had 3 or 4 other generous calls that drew the attention of ESPN announcers (Orel Hersheiser and Mike Patrick). I didn't say a word but my son (a catcher) commented somthing like "hey, it seems like that guy's strike zone is getting a lot bigger".
In retrospect, him feeling ill may have contributed to him maybe wanting to move the game on a little quicker.

I really, really doubt that he was going to try and rush the remaining 5+ innings of a CWS game in order to get out of there...

I think it's more likely that whatever was wrong affected his judgement, than him making a conscious decision to widen the zone to speed the game.

I agree with this. I can say that I have been on the edge of heat exhaustion before and for the remaining innings, I saw three baseballs and I tried to call the middle one.

The last time I worked a game where I began to feel some effects from heat, I am convinced I squeezed the zone in late innings. It was a 95 degree daytime game and game lasted over 3 hours. I drank about a half gallon of water that game and never felt a need to piss.