Umpires Are in Need of Some Accountability

Baseball tends to be depicted as a metaphor for life when often it isn’t even a metaphor for baseball. Yet occasionally baseball strikes a cultural nerve. The Roberto Alomar-John Hirschbeck spitting incident transcends baseball in reflecting an angry schism in America.

Umpires are the police of baseball. They don’t discourage the analogy; indeed, they proudly proclaim the same conservative, authoritarian values. Before a National League Division Series game, I listened to three umpires -- Bruce Froemming, Terry Tata and Steve Rippley -- sounding like three Rush Limbaughs in blue, characterizing umpires as defenders of a vanishing 1950s America.

It was fitting that their impromptu news conference was held at Dodger Stadium. A black man, Rodney King, had been bludgeoned by white cops in Los Angeles only five years earlier. Minority America cheered O.J. Simpson’s acquittal in a Los Angeles courtroom mainly because it did not trust Mark Fuhrman, a white detective.

Mistrust of law-enforcement officials is not confined to people of color. Another America of white militia and religious fundamentalists remains alienated by Waco and Ruby Ridge.

The broad colorblind issue is the policing of police. In baseball, it’s holding umpires accountable for incompetence and the misuse of power.

Seven weeks have passed since Alomar, the player, spit in the face of Hirschbeck, the umpire -- time enough for tempers to cool and reason to prevail. Alomar has acquiesced to a five-game suspension at the start of next season, and he has apologized to Hirschbeck, who accepted it.

Umpires got a nice bump out of the incident, receiving applause as heroes. Maybe this was Nature’s perverse way of evening up for all the unfair taunts and jeers. Regrettably, they didn’t deserve it. Hirschbeck’s behavior was no better than Alomar’s, and you could argue it was worse. The argument is that umpires, wielding power in positions of authority, must be held to a higher standard of behavior.

TV accounts showed Alomar spitting, but they didn’t show Hirschbeck shouting at the Orioles’ second baseman moments before. There are conflicting accounts of Hirschbeck’s pejorative -- one of which would have been deeply humiliating to Alomar, the other merely infuriating. The sequence began with Alomar being called out on a pitch that Hirschbeck missed, walking to the dugout and then shouting a mild complaint. Hirschbeck’s reaction was to eject Alomar. Alomar charged from the dugout, Hirschbeck made an inflammatory remark and Alomar spit.

Umpires are supposed to stay under control. Hall of Fame umpire

Bill Klem drew a line in the dirt with his shoe and dared managers and players to cross it. If they did, they were ejected. But more often, they got the message. Klem didn’t have to curse, call them names or lose his temper.

Sadly, umpires increasingly are out of control, in obvious and subtle ways. Confrontational behavior such as Hirschbeck’s can be documented anecdotally -- managers and players assert that the number of umpires’ oral assaults have reached a high. They eject impulsively -- as Tim Welke did with Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox in Game 6 of the World Series.

That’s the least of it. Last winter, ownership agreed on an enlarged strike zone, dropping the lower boundary from above the kneecap to the “hollow” below. It was a small but critical adjustment to help pitchers. As the Year of the Home Run demonstrated, things didn’t improve for pitchers. Why? One reason is that umpires ignored the new strike zone.

On opening day 1996, umpire John McSherry dropped dead at Riverfront Stadium. The grossly overweight McSherry was a tragedy waiting to happen. McSherry’s death should have compelled umpires to agree to conditioning standards, since one in three is vastly overweight. League presidents asked for standards but were rebuffed by the umpires’ union. Umpires want to have their cake (and french fries and double cheeseburgers) and eat it, too.

Anarchy and confrontation are catalyzed by a strong union. Thanks to the union’s success in collective bargaining, 64 umpires are highly paid for eight months of work, starting at $75,000 and moving up to $225,000 with first-class airline travel and $225 a day for expenses. They also enjoy virtual tenure, with job security as impregnable as that of civil servants and college professors. Firings or forced resignations are rare.

Talented minor league umpires can not win a veteran’s job in the spring. They have to wait for retirements or deaths. On the average, they spend 10 years in the minor leagues building up a simmering resentment toward highly paid and coddled big-league players.

A militant umpires union bears the personality imprint of its general counsel, Richie Phillips, a strident Philadelphia lawyer. Phillips, you may recall, threatened to strike during the playoffs despite a non-strike covenant in the labor deal he negotiated.

Thanks to Phillips, the umpires have a cushy deal. Besides being highly paid and virtually tenured, they are buffered from criticism. Complaints vanish into a black hole. If an internal system of discipline exists, it is invisible. Unaccountability is a primary source of frustration to players.

The next time they bargain, an internal review of umpires needs to be opened to players, clubs and fans. Players need a complaint mechanism just as civilians need an Internal Affairs unit to keep the police honest. Public review of performance -- open hearings -- would increase confidence in good umpires and weed out the bad.

Phillips will oppose public review. He recently told Referee magazine, “It is not infrequent that they charge me with creating this monster. That’s fine. I’ve helped the umpires feel secure in that they can go out and they can make the calls honestly, objectively and dispassionately without fear of retribution by the people whose teams they make the calls against. I consider it a compliment that people accuse me of creating too much power in the umpires.”

Some people take compliments where they can get them. Phillips has a dim view of players and clubs and an exalted view of himself. “Fear of retribution” is a paranoid phrase for accountability. A simple equation is in play: The less umpires are accountable, the less they are respected. Some players might even say they aren’t worth spit.