Let Umpires Go Ahead and Quit

Sometimes bad news can be a blessing in disguise. This week’s boast by major league umpires, that they will all resign on Sept. 2, almost falls into this category. It misses in only one respect: Where’s the disguise?

The umpires’ delusional threat is simply an unmitigated blessing for everybody in baseball--except the umpires themselves.

Go on, make our day. Please, quit. All of you. Then we can start off baseball’s new century clean as a new penny. The only thing better than every umpire resigning Sept. 2 would be their resigning tomorrow.

On Wednesday in Philadelphia, 57 of the 68 umps met with their spiritual guru, union boss Richie Phillips, for what was described as a raucous meeting. Did they spit on pictures of Robby Alomar? Burn Bud Selig in effigy? Stick pins in a Sandy Alderson doll?

The Flat Earth Society and the loonies who think the moon landing was a fake are in touch with reality compared with the umpire’s union. Somebody wipe the tears of joy off the commissioner’s face. Who needs to take the bad PR position of “kill the umps” if they volunteer to commit suicide?

“This is either a threat to be ignored, or an offer to be accepted,” said Alderson, the executive vice president of baseball operations whose job basically has been to goad the emotional, confrontational Phillips into an act of professional lunacy. He seems to have succeeded.

According to Phillips, the umpires’ current contract, which expires after this season, calls for resigning umps to collect a total of $15 million in severance pay. (Most senior arbiters would get $400,000.) Umps already make $75,000 to $225,000 annually--the same ballpark as a Supreme Court justice and the president of the United States.

“It might be our cheapest solution,” Alderson said of the severance pay offer. Just a week ago at Camden Yards, Alderson talked at length about the umpire situation and never imagined such an option was possible.

“Unless I am mistaken, I don’t think these tactics have convinced a single person to be supportive,” Alderson said. “That would include the fans, the media and baseball itself.”

“If that’s what they think of the game and of the enormous contributions of the umpires,” retorted Phillips, “then the umpires would be better off to take their $15 1/2 million and sit back and watch the game dissolve.”

Dissolve in laughter would be more like it.

Current umpires, as a group, are far too arrogant, confrontational and thin-skinned. They also call far too tight a strike zone, especially at a time when the game needs to give some relief to its mediocre pitchers. Some umps are so inconsistent behind the plate that it’s become a regular part of the sport to ridicule them. After Larry Barnett missed a pitch by a foot recently, Orioles announcer Jim Palmer said, “I retired 16 years ago, and Barnett wasn’t a very good umpire back then.”

The umpires are too fat, too arrogant, too old, too incompetent, too ready to strike and too beholden to Phillips, whose leadership style--right out of “On the Waterfront”--brought them such long-needed gains in the 1980s.

During the 1970s, many of us covering baseball called attention to the umpires’ low pay, long hours and high risk of divorce and alcoholism. Why were there no in-season vacations to keep some sanity in the lives of these men who never had a home game? Why were benefits so paltry? Was the game looking for a fixing scandal? For years, Richie Phillips made sense.

How can these people, good people, have changed so much?

Because they hobnob with famous athletes and get lawyer-like salaries, because they are sometimes recognized and occasionally praised, and, perhaps most intoxicating, because friends and strangers alike listen to their war stories and insider opinions with rapt attention. They begin to think they’re important and indispensable.

Just four years ago, the umpires were locked out and missed the first 86 games of the regular season. The game didn’t miss them much, did it? No umpires cursing players or instigating arguments or calling pitches with a chip on their shoulders. The replacements, from college and even high school leagues, did a fine job.

Umpires have talent and deserve some respect. But if they get too full of themselves, they can be replaced more easily than they think. And, if this week’s silly ultimatum is any measure, they should be, too.