{"id":7908,"date":"2010-07-24T11:51:02","date_gmt":"2010-07-24T18:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7908"},"modified":"2010-07-24T11:51:03","modified_gmt":"2010-07-24T18:51:03","slug":"luke-warm-july-24-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7908","title":{"rendered":"Luke Warm: July 24, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Landestoy Luke<\/p><\/div>\n

By Landestoy Luke<\/p>\n

The Luke Man is a little steamed these days. There\u2019s been a noticeable uptick in the volatility of\u00a0major league umpires. Back in the Luker\u2019s day, players said what they had to say and umpires knew the best way to defuse a situation was to say nothing at all. You can\u2019t have an argument when there\u2019s only one person talking, right? Unless magic words get thrown around, there\u2019s no good reason for a player to be ejected. On May 31st<\/sup>,\u00a0Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt\u00a0was ejected from a game in the 3rd<\/sup> inning for\u2026wait for it\u2026pointing his glove at umpire Bill Hohn. Really? Hohn went so far as to take his mask off and start walking toward Oswalt on the mound. Nice way to defuse a situation, eh? Oswalt told Hohn, \u201cI\u2019m not talking to you.\u201d Apparently, that\u2019s enough cause to run a guy and Oswalt was booted.<\/p>\n

Hohn stated that Oswalt \u201cshowed him up\u201d. Show me in a rule book where \u201cshowing an umpire up\u201d is grounds for ejection. Didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

MLB\u00a0actually sided with Oswalt in this situation. So what was the consequence for Hohn? He got a \u201cstern talking to\u201d. And you wonder why these umpires keep acting like this? Players get fined or even sometimes suspended for ejections. Teams are left scrambling to replace players and to deal with the repercussions that ejections have on a team\u2019s performace. Umpires? They get the occasional fine, but past that, they aren\u2019t held accountable.<\/p>\n

ESPN surveyed players for their opinion on umpire performance. Overall, they received a grade of B. It could be a case of a few bad apples, but what\u2019s the saying about those? Hohn ranked 3rd<\/sup> in the category of \u201cQuickest Hook\u201d, so his act shouldn\u2019t be too surprising. Joe West ranked first overall and his violations became so egregious earlier this year that he was *gasp* fined. Wow\u2026way to bring the hammer MLB.<\/p>\n

Who was ranked as the best umpire by a country mile? Jim Joyce. Remember the name? He\u2019s the umpire who made a bad call that cost Tigers pitcher\u00a0Armando Galarraga\u00a0a\u00a0perfect game\u00a0with 2 outs in the 9th<\/sup> inning. If you want to understand why Joyce is held in such high regard despite that controversial call, look at his actions after the game. He wasn\u2019t defiant and smug, as many umpires would be. He took responsibility and expressed extreme remorse that he had cost Galarraga an opportunity at history. Every\u00a0player\u00a0understands that umpires make mistakes. How they handle themselves, though, is what defines an umpire. As someone once said, the umpire\u2019s job is to be invisible.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great notion. Now, if only guys like Hohn and West would disappear\u2026<\/p>\n

Landestoy Luke is a former semi-pro baseball player in the California-Nevada Independent League. Luke is the only pitcher in CNIL history to be ejected twice in one day, having been tossed in both ends of a doubleheader. He was also ejected from a Chili\u2019s later that evening for using foul language after he complained that his Skillet Queso didn\u2019t have enough queso.\u00a0\u00a0After spending some time as an advance scout in the Mexicali League, Luke now spends his time as a freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Landestoy Luke The Luke Man is a little steamed these days. There\u2019s been a noticeable uptick in the volatility of\u00a0major league umpires. Back in the Luker\u2019s day, players said what they had to say and umpires knew the best way to defuse a situation was to say nothing at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7908"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7910,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions\/7910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}