Commentary : Giamatti Better Get Act Together

A. Bartlett Giamatti better get his act together or we’re going to have to change his grade to F. Bartlett Giamatti. This spring the vastly educated, but equally inexperienced National League president has already been a chief offender in messing up the balk rule beyond recognition. Now, he’s given Pete Rose a 30-day suspension for bumping an umpire, a raw deal that is at least three times, and perhaps 10 times, the punishment Rose deserves.

As president of Yale, Giamatti’s decisions were relatively harmless since they could only damage one educational institution. Now, however, he’s messing with something really important.

When Earl Weaver slapped umpire Terry Cooney in the face in the center of the Memorial Stadium diamond in 1982, he was suspended for three days. Sanguine AL President Lee McPhail reasoned that Weaver had been provoked by a Cooney finger that poked at, and may have hit, Weaver’s face. Weaver was ashamed. He told friends he was glad he was retiring because the game must be getting to you when you hit an ump.

Rose must be ashamed, too. In 26 seasons in the game, he has never done anything so far beneath his normal standard of conduct on the field. He doesn’t like his new nickname: Charlie Muscle. Neither could Rose condone fans who throw golf balls and portable radios at an umpire. Not even at Dave Pallone.

Usually, when a former Ivy League president and a guy who needed an extra year to graduate from Southern Hills High in Cincinnati cross sentences in combat, the bigger forehead wins. Not this time. Rose wins the head-to-head debate on all points.

“No player or manager has greater respect for the umpires than I do and I have demonstrated that over the years,” Rose said in a statement Monday. “While I expected to be suspended, I feel that this unprecedented 30 days is excessive. I also feel that I should have been given the right to give my side of the matter to the league president. The umpire certainly presented his side. ... I have no choice but to appeal the decision.”

As Weaver loved to note, you appeal suspensions to the suspender -- the league prez. Nice checks and balances.

While Giamatti called the situation “extremely ugly” and “one of the worst in baseball’s recent memory,” his real quarrel was with those hellion fans in Cincinnati, a city heretofore known for its civility. “The National League will not tolerate the degeneration of baseball games into dangerous displays of public disorder, nor will it countanence any potentially injurious harassment ... of the umpires.”

Giamatti often mounts the soap-box about fan violence. It’s a pet subject. Very American Studies and Decline of The West. Baseball league presidents, like vice presidents of the United States, have too much idle time to fill. However, it’s not Giamatti’s duty to improve the public’s morals. He’s supposed to give Pete Rose a fair hearing and a fair punishment. That’s what he hasn’t done.

In 1980, Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock rubbed his glove into umpire Jerry Crawford’s face. That was a far “uglier” incident than Rose’s rather familiar-looking double shove of Pallone. Familiar, that is, if you’ve watched Billy Martin, Dick Williams, Frank Robinson, Weaver and countless others “accidentally” bump into umps or spike their toes or spatter them with saliva. Old hat, A. Bart.

In 120 years of baseball, Madlock’s suspension was the only one of longer than a week for making contact with an umpire. Then, many thought Madlock’s 15-day sentence was at the maximum end of the disciplinary spectrum. Hey, Juan Marichal only got nine days for taking a bat to John Roseboro at home plate. When manager Dick Williams ordered four knockdowns of Pascual Perez in 1984, igniting 13 ejections worth of brawls and nine arrested fans, Capt. Surly only got a 10-day heave-ho.

Rose did Pallone no physical harm; you get hit harder in a grocery-store line. Photos seem to indicate that Pallone may have touched Rose’s face with a jabbing finger near the eye, much as Cooney did with Weaver in 1982. That is a genuine extenuating circumstance.

No umpire should ever raise his hands to a player or manager; the athletes are in the heat of battle, while the umpires supposedly are above it. The players emotions are, of necessity, on the surface; umps should respect that and never incite with angry gestures.

Giamatti’s problem may be that he is simply not saturated deeply enough in basball precedent to know how extreme and unnecessary his 30-day banishment really is. Three days might have been too little, but a week or 10 days would do just fine. And send a sober message.

For Giamatti, the Rose decision comes at a particualrly bad time. He and American League President Bobby Brown were already under righteous fire, and justly so, for the sport’s current balk disaster. Any person who cannot grasp that enforcement of the balk rule should return immediately to where it was in 1987 -- and for many years before that -- isn’t qualified to run a league. It’s that simple. And that important.

Watching a half-dozen invisible balks in a game makes a travesty of our most beautifully formed sport. Giamatti and Brown made a major, though well-intentioned, mistake. They should know it by now. If they don’t reverse themselves, and fairly quickly, it will be an example of the kind of arrogance of power among presidents that any Yale history prof could explain. While balk mania in April may already be abating, it should be stamped out completely.

Some in baseball feel that, in the ‘80’s, umpires have gone from a position of too little power to one of near belligerence, thanks largely to their union’s success in salary bargaining. That is not the fear here. The minority of umpires who use their power with too much enthusiasm and too little judgment is the least of baseball’s worries.

A league president with the same problem, however, is not. Giamatti, who came into his job with enormous respect, can do himself a world of good by hearing Rose’s appeal with an open mind. Then, if he decides that Pallone contributed to the problem, he should reduce Rose’s suspension to a week.