If Umpires Want Sympathy, This Isn’t the Place to Look

What the average fan now has learned: The umpires are more like the professional or college athlete than they are like the average fan. The umpires, like the athletes, think the rules don’t apply to them.

What the average fan already knew: The rule in the workplace is that when you submit your resignation trying to get your way, your boss can accept it and you’re out of a job.

What the umpires now know: See “What the average fan already knew” above.

DAVID A. JOHNSON

Simi Valley

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I think that Ross Newhan and Bill Plaschke have both forgotten what the real world is like. To be sympathetic to a group of people who signed a contract that forbade strikes and paid them five to six times the national average wage for working two to four hours a day for only six months of the year and pays them up to $400,000 severance pay is nuts. And to see in Ross Newhan’s Sept. 1 article that they also get vacations in an occupation where they only work half the year anyway boggles my mind.

Perhaps your sportswriters can get over the “horror” of losing these greedy individuals and get back to actually covering sports.

DAVID FORREST

Los Angeles

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Mr. Newhan’s Sept. 1 article was well written and did a good job of letting the reader know about the human side of what will happen to these umpires. I was disappointed that the article never addressed with any of his interview subjects the question that is crying out to be asked:

“If you spent so many years achieving your lifelong dream, and you had a family to support with young children and no backup skills or job prospects, why did you resign and put a higher value on what your fellow umpires would think of you instead of your family’s welfare?”

RICHARD BROOKS

Northridge

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The 22 major league umpires who lost their jobs may have lives and families like everyone else and now they can get regular jobs like everyone else! The rest of us wish we could get paid more than $100,000 per year to call balls and strikes.

Instead of being grateful for what they had, the umpires followed stupid advice and submitted their resignations. To those stupid idiots I say, “Yer out!”

J. SCOTT SCHEFFER

Adelanto

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I take exception to Ross Newhan’s comment that it takes a “cynic” to assume the position that the baseball umpires brought their fate upon themselves by “blind support” of their union head in the “questionable strategy of mass resignation.” Why is that a cynical view? That is exactly what happened.

I have no doubt that these individuals worked hard to join a profession that they obviously love. But it is that very dedication and desire, as well as self-interest, that made it even more critical that they carefully analyze and consider the course of action that had been charted for them. To simply call it tragic and then criticize the lords of baseball for accepting resignations that were offered voluntarily is a vain attempt to alleviate the affected umpires from the responsibility they must accept for their actions.

KEN MARCUS

Los Angeles

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Any agreement that rids major league baseball of Joe West and Eric Gregg is a blessing for the game.

I’m sure there are many others of similar ineptitude or arrogance (but whose names we’re not familiar with) who are among the chaff being blown away.

GENE MacTAVISH

West Stockbridge, Mass.