"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Monday, June 3, 2013

Ejections and "Showing Up" Umpires

Yadi Molina was ejected from the Cardinals game yesterday in the third inning when he slammed his helmet to the turft after getting thrown out at first on a ball I'm sure he thought was going through for an RBI single in a close game.   Here's the video.    





You can see Yadi turning away from the ump after he slams his helmet and heading back to the dugout, a sure sign that he wasn't protesting the call, but was just mad at himself and/or frustrated at getting thrown out.   Under those circumstances, the umpire could have and should have looked the other way.   More than 40,000 Cardinals fans had paid probably on average $50 each to come to see the Cards, and Molina is one of the key draws.   He obviously thought (erroneously) that Molina was showing him up, but, even so, who cares?   What does the ego of an umpire matter?   No one comes to see the umpires play and, of course, without the players and the game, the umpires would all be selling insurance or managing a fast-food restaurant or doing something like that, rather than making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to umpire games.  

No comments:

Post a Comment