An Epidemic? "I Saw Him Safe"
Friday, October 8, 2010
Steroids are no longer baseball's biggest enemy. It's umpires.
When a referee or umpire is being questioned by reporters about a call they made on the playing field, they should never answer a question with the phrase "I saw...".
Following a blown call in the opening game of the San Francisco/Atlanta Braves series where second base umpire Paul Emmel incorrectly called Busty Posey safe on a steal attempt. Posey went on to score the only run of the game for a Giants victory and a 1-0 series lead.
Following the game, Emmel told reporters "I saw him safe, that's what I called."
This isn't a direct call for expanded instant replay in baseball (although I personally full support that notion). Rather, I'm just trying to understand Emmel's comments and how it effects the game in a larger way.
Emmel told the baseball world that he saw the play unfold incorrectly. Worse yet, he didn't even try to admit that he could have been word let alone admitting he was in error (hello, paging Mr. Jim Joyce).
Is this arrogance with Emmel defiantly saying that he wasn't wrong? Or is this a form of peer pressure from the umpire fraternity of not admitting mistakes because its a sign of weakness?
If Emmel would have continued his statement by saying he was wrong, not all would have been forgiven, but it would have made it easier to move on. We could have even done without an apology for getting it wrong. Admitting one was wrong is an apologetic gesture.
Instead, two days into the post-season and several wrong or missed calls by umpires later, baseball's officiating epidemic continues to get worse. Bad calls are effecting the results of our (supposed) nation's past time.
Like performing enhancing drugs, maybe we should start putting asterisk's next to results with blown calls.
Of course, so much of this could be fixed with expanded instant replay*.
