A QUICK NOTE: As we near the end of the baseball season, I’m taking the opportunity to repost an article I wrote several years ago for my old, long-lost Medium account about the strange traditions that surround being ejected from a ballgame. This was the premiere season for the MLB’s Automated Balls and Strikes System, so this subject has been on my mind a lot recently. I have several thoughts on ABS but I’m not going to leave them here. I’d rather let you read about how I foolishly thought the umpire ejection could become a thing of the past (as though Aaron Boone would ever allow that). I just wanted to acknowledge at the outset that, yes, several things in this article are dated. Please enjoy.
My obsession with umpire ejections began with a YouTube video: MLB Ejections Compilation.
If you watch sports online, the algorithms put these videos in your queue. Most have click-bait titles like “BEST TRIPLE PLAYS IN MLB HISTORY!!!” or “ULTIMATE GAME-SAVING PLAYS COMPILATION!!!” But it wasn’t the title of this one that stuck out to me. It was the run time.
1:33:25.
It took me a moment to realize that meant 93 minutes - the length of a feature film. “The Land Before Time” has a run time of 69 minutes. That film, which earned a theatrical release, is 24 minutes shorter than this video of baseball people fighting.
Who the hell has that kind of time?
Me. So I watched it.
The drama is apparent from the moment the video starts. Screaming, finger-pointing, men holding other men back... It’s professional wrestling without the ring. Spit and sweat flying off their wet sausage faces — hands and arms gesturing like silent movie actors - lines drawn in the dirt, plays reenacted, equipment thrown from the dugouts, boos booed and benches cleared.
It was 93 of the most engaging minutes of my life.
Baseball ejections are bite-sized, sanitized and sanctioned conflicts that are both real and unreal, big and small, funny and sad.
I love them.
BUT WHY?
Playing 162 games a year most likely comes with a steady stream of “HORSESHIT!” but it should also be noted that the game is purpose-built to enrage. Every sport has short tempers, some of the most magnificent tantrums happened away from the diamond, but in no other sport do you have so much to disagree about.
The problem is baked in. Some of baseball’s rules are more traditional than literal. The strike zone is both defined in the rule book yet also understood to change considerably between games and yet also understood to never change between innings (except for when it does). EDITOR’S NOTE: not anymore!
The game has a lot of grey area to complain about. Specific rules are somewhat fungible at the umpire’s discretion, but the umpires are unimpeachable and answer to no one, and if you don’t like that, “YOU’RE OUTTA HEEEEEEEERE!”
BALLS AND STRIKES
Most ejections are for arguing balls and strikes and, as is said a minimum of 3 times every game, “You cannot argue balls and strikes.” Only a quarter of the crowd could tell you who’s at the plate, but everyone knows about arguing balls and strikes - you simply can’t. End of discussion. And yet it happens constantly.
Baseball’s glorious imperfection is the strike zone, an invisible rectangle held in the mind. We might draw some approximation of it on TV, but the graphic is meaningless, the veneer of objectivity. EDITOR’S NOTE: not anymore!
By baseball’s logic, why does Wimbledon bother painting lines on their tennis courts? They have line judges who could just imagine a line and adjudicate every point based on where they feel it is in their hearts.
Or would that maybe lead to an argument?
A PLAY WITHIN A PLAY
A baseball ejection is a well-known form that the performers improvise around like commedia dell’arte than jazz. Because no microphones are broadcasting to the audience, the drama unfolds in exaggerated mime as the actors choose roles and the announcers become the Greek chorus for a play in up to six acts.
Act 1 - The Disagreement.
The “inciting incident” can be subtle enough to miss. Maybe it’s just a high strike call to begin an at-bat or a strike called with a slight delay. This may be met with a player’s disappointed head-shaking as though to say, “You got that wrong, _and it breaks my heart._“ However, they might also shout, “COME ON!” while looking anywhere but at the home plate umpire.
Once a player is upset, there’s no such thing as too much context. The announcers will quickly launch an investigation, scouring the replays for motive. Their job is to narrate the story as it is improvised - so even in a nine-run game, suddenly everything matters. What’s the current weather report on the strike zone? Was there anything dubious in their last at-bat? What was that pitch sequence again? Mundane details become evidence.
Meanwhile, someone in the dugout starts “chirping” - a sanitized term for screaming at the umpire. Bench players, hitting coaches and managers like to pile on, escalating the drama to the point that it can’t be ignored, something I call “The Display.”
Act 2 - The Display.
The Display is the thing that _everyone_ sees. The dropped bat. The chucked gloves. The veiny-necked shout of “BULLSHIT!” from a bench coach.
This is the antagonist’s opportunity to express themselves. The Display is immediately followed by an angry tirade that the umpire will tolerate for a short time - mostly so that later they can claim they “gave him warnings.”
This is where you take the measure of each man. The character of the belligerent is measured by the length of time between The Disagreement and The Display. The measure of an umpire’s character is the length of time between The Display and The Toss, with a direct correlation between the quickness of a hook and the thickness of the umpire’s skin.
At this point, the crowd invariably bursts into applause - not because anyone is right or wrong, but because they’ve been drinking beer for an hour waiting for something to happen. Most of the crowd at the stadium has no idea why they’re mad. They invariably burst into applause for all game disruptions - animals running onto the field, beach balls drifting into the outfield, streakers, whatever.
Act 3 - The Manager’s Sacrifice.
Typically, managers would rather be thrown out themselves than lose a star player. If someone in the lineup performed the Display, and the manager is spry enough to sprint to the stage, then you’ll often be treated to Act 3, in which the manager assumes a Christ-like role, sacrificing himself for the good of his flock. It’s the manager’s job to distract the umpire with a newer, louder, more experienced belligerent to throw out of the game - himself.
Honestly, this whole article could be about the managers. If there is a star in this show show, it’s them. They’re the old guard - the writers of rules unwritten. They may be the ones run out on a rail, but they’re also the ones most responsible for keeping the tradition alive.
Certain managers deserve special recognition. Bobby Cox is the all-time ejections leader with 161 (158 in the regular season, 3 in October) which is one game short of a full season. But the real superstars aren’t about quantity but quality.
Earl Weaver, manager of the Orioles for 17 years, was arguably the greatest belligerent of all time - it’s almost like the man was born to be thrown out of ballgames. He was 5’7” and had a voice like a truckstop taco that he used to fire off some of the best one-liners since Yogi Berra. From an ESPN.com article:
“He once told an umpire that he could appear on ‘What’s My Line’ wearing his mask, chest protector and ball/strike indicator and still nobody would guess he was an umpire.”
Weaver also stars in the greatest ejection video of all time.
His dance partner, first base umpire Bill Haller, was the subject of a documentary and wired for sound so you can hear almost every word of it. And Haller was more than up to the task of trading insults with Weaver.
WEAVER: “About 5, ten years from now who’s in the Hall of Fame?”
HALLER: “You’re gonna be in the Hall of Fame, Earl? Why? For fucking up the World Series?”
It’s like Shakespeare.
Act 4 - The Toss.
Everything up to this point is optional. A questionable call could be ignored by the player, a display of disrespect could be ignored by the umpire and the manager could keep his seat - but The Toss makes the whole show official.
There’s a wide range of ejection moves. Some are just a perfunctory hand gesture, a two-fingered salute to the sky. Some are sloppy - like a dead fish flopping over their chest protector. But the best tosses are majestic, like throwing a ball to the moon. The umpire takes a step, pulling the ejection from waist-level in an arc to the heavens as though they expect their fingers to trail a rainbow and ejaculate starlight.
Bam! Justice.
Act 5 - The Tantrum.
Act 5 is the belligerent’s solo, their time to shine. The traditional Tantrum consists of shouting, pointing, swearing, dirt-kicking and insults. Eventually, the belligerent’s teammates walk out and drag the raving lunatic away.
Again, that’s the standard.
However, it’s the non-standard Tantrums that are the stuff of legend. The Pine Tar Incident. Milton Bradley tearing his ACL while being hauled off the field. So many managers have pulled first base out of the ground that I don’t have the patience to list them all. Lloyd McClendon threw first base into the dugout. “Sweet” Lou Piniella - the Miles Davis of kicking his hat - once threw first base across the field twice in the same ejection.
In a tour de force performance, Minor League manager Phil Wellman’s legendary Tantrum may have also been a total break with reality. After energetically screaming at the home plate umpire, Wellman (an ironic surname) got on hands and knees and completely covered home plate with dirt-then-pulled up third base and threw it in the outfield. Falling to the ground again, Wellman Marine-crawled to the mound, picked up the rosin bag, “bit the pin” off of it like a grenade and hurled it at the plate umpire before pulling second base out of the ground, picking up third base again and leaving the field.
Step aside, Mr. De Niro.
Act 6 - The End.
Naturally, the final act in our drama is played by the umpire - the ones who remain on stage at the end of this drama. This is the official’s final response, and it’s played with a generous oozing of self-satisfaction.
Each umpire has their signature. Some may stare through the belligerent as though they are listening with the shadow of a smile on their faces that says the only thing they’re doing is counting backward from 10. Some, instead of looking at their accuser, pull out their lineup card and write absolutely nothing on it. Some just stand with their hands on hips, secure in the knowledge that they’ve won - because, out of everyone on the field, the umpires are the only ones who’ve never lost.
Eventually, the belligerent leaves, the umpire dusts off the plate with a brush made for the purpose, pulls the mask over his face, and the ballgame resumes.
Epilogue
Whether the ball was inside or out, the slide was fair or not, whether the balk was balked, doesn’t matter. The fact that two grown men just had a shouting match in the most public venue you can is all most fans will remember. If there’s a life lesson in any of this it may be that an overreaction is more impactful than whatever prompts it.
It’s important to document this phenomenon while we can - the feared “robot umpires” have already arrived. A few years ago the TrackMan system debuted in the independent Atlantic League. It uses radar to determine balls and strikes before relaying the result to the umpire via an earpiece and, although there’s a slightly awkward delay before the call, the results have been promising.
Most importantly, umpires run the system, so our beloved heels aren’t going anywhere.