COMMENTARY : This Is Baseball’s Latest Pathetic Call

Replacement umpires! Don’t you love it? If baseball doesn’t fix its umpire-lockout impasse in the next few days, the game may finally achieve pure farce.

Okay, so it’s already gotten there. Farce squared, then.

The sport just went on strike from August to March, killed the World Series and alienated millions of fans. So, what’s its first act going to be upon its return? The guy who yells “Play ball!” Tuesday night in Miami may be a replacement.

True to form, debased-ball can’t resist another chance to lampoon itself.

The umps haven’t had a cost-of-living increase since 1991. Yet, until this week, owners hadn’t offered so much as a one-penny pay hike. All the bosses did was try to intimidate the umps with a lockout when their old deal ended.

Of course, that was back when tough guys within ownership still dreamed of weakening the players union by starting the season with replacement players. Why pay $100,000 umps to call balls and strikes on $10,000-a-year ballplayers?

Having taken their macho lockout stance, the owners are afraid that if they back down too quickly and make a fair offer to the umps before the 11th hour, they will look weak to the players with whom they still, of course, have no deal.

That’s how people act in baseball. Always posture. Never talk straight. Always distrust the other guy. Never put the integrity of the game first.

While the owners look Neanderthal for subjecting their product to further ridicule at such a tender time, the umpires look even denser. Aren’t arbiters supposed to be selected for their excellent “judgment”? So, what’s happened to these guys? Have they all misplaced their indicators?

Until this week, the umpires demanded a 52 percent pay increase.

For what, may we ask, was baseball being asked to bear such a tariff? For the scenic tummies of 328-pound John McSherry and 325-pound Eric Gregg? For Joe West’s colossal ego? For Ken Kaiser’s grudge calls? For Ed Brinkman’s slow-motion ball-strike calls? For Rich “Flip a Coin” Garcia behind the plate?

These days, the best-known umpires are the bad ones. Name one ump who’s famous because he’s good -- besides Steve Palermo, unfortunately.

What have our modern gang of umpires brought to the game except the gradual adoption of the Eddie Gaedel Strike Zone as the major-league norm? The above-the-belt strike and the inside corner are almost extinct. Whatever happened to: “Shut up and swing the bat.”

Umpires have also done their share to help create the era of the Three-Hour Game by being too timid to enforce fast-play rules. If you dawdled on Nestor Chylak, you were punished. Piddling pitchers got “balls,” fiddling hitters got “strikes” and fans got a quick, action-filled game.

The state of umpiring has gone down in the past 15 years. You can’t prove it. But you can be firmly convinced of it if you’ve spent a couple of thousand nights in ballparks. Ask a respected manager about the work behind home plate on many nights and he’ll say, “Good thing he only had two choices.”

Modern umpires are seldom held accountable -- either for overall accuracy or for basic objectivity. Earl Weaver always complained that only Supreme Court justices and major-league umpires held their jobs for life. Every season more teams suspect that umps have a score to settle or a chip on their shoulders. Once, umps felt that feuds -- with players or entire teams -- were beneath them. Now? It’s an open question.

At the moment, the umps still want a 40 percent pay increase, effective immediately. Who, pray tell, gets such a pay increase in an industry that has just suffered the worst financial blow in its history? Umpire salaries already range from $60,000 to $175,000. The president only makes $250,000. The new ump max would be $265,000. For rookies: $90,000. They don’t deserve it. Not because they’re umpires. But because, as a group, they’re not good enough umpires.

Just 15 years ago, big-league umps were still underpaid and overworked. They were worthy objects of sympathy and support as they unionized and fought for appropriate pay and perks. Now, they’re getting what they deserve. A small pay raise is plenty. A big one is ridiculous.

While it’s hard to sympathize with six-figure umps who get four months off, it’s also difficult to understand why the players union has remained mum. When they were on strike, they expected everybody from the soda vendors to the guys driving the trucks full of hot-dog buns to honor their picket line. Despite their millionaire salaries, they made their cause sound like something worthy of a Bob Dylan anthem. Union solidarity, forever. So far, only one player -- Jose Canseco -- has walked a picket line with an ump. Where are the rest of ‘em? Talk about your double-standard phonies.

The last thing baseball needs on Opening Day is another black eye. In a sport with no legitimate disinterested commissioner, the game’s umpires -- such as they are -- symbolize the “integrity of the game” -- such as it is.

Everybody in the game needs to understand that the sport is in danger of losing a significant chunk of its core constituency. This isn’t August 1981 anymore. Then, after a 60-day strike, the game’s popularity was still riding high. Now the game is in real trouble. The sport is widely perceived as being mismanaged at the top, greedy at its core and acrimonious throughout. No hip “Welcome to The Show” ad campaign is going to erase 20 years of bad behavior from the public mind.

Owners, players and, now, umpires, need to stop worrying about themselves. They’re all faring better than they deserve. Instead, everybody in baseball’s community better start worrying about the radically shrinking size of the game’s pie and less about fighting over the size of their own slice.