Umpire Should Get the Thumb

Bruce Froemming shouldn’t umpire another Major League Baseball game this season.

He has some convincing to do. A senior umpire crew chief, a 33-year veteran of officiating baseball games, he was caught referring to Cathy Davis, an umpiring administrator who had told him he had to make his travel plans through proper channels, with an anti-Semitic, sexist slur.

With a single phrase, he showed an inability to handle anger and a clear prejudice, and those are two qualities antithetical to a man charged with being a fair and impartial arbiter of balls and strikes, out or safe, on a baseball field.

How can a man unable to control his anger over being told to follow company rules and make his travel arrangements through his company’s travel department be trusted to control his temper and his biases on a baseball field?

He has been handed a 10-game suspension for his words.

It is not enough.

Perhaps he should spend time volunteering at a Jewish community center. He might find himself entering through guarded gates and needing photo identification because at a center where children, toddlers even, come to play, special security is mandatory in the face of credible fear over terrorist attack.

Maybe he could take an anger management course and learn a better way to handle the disappointment of not getting his own way.

He might visit a battered women’s shelter or two and see the effects of male aggression against females.

The Dodgers did the first right thing anybody has done in the case of Froemming and his angry, hate-filled words. They’ve told him to stay away from their Fantasy Camp games in Vero Beach. If only they could tell him to stay away from the National League games this summer.

Shawn Green, one of the most prominent Jewish athletes in the country, plays for the Dodgers. How is it possible for Green to trust any call that Froemming might make during a Dodger game?

Through Derrick Hall, Dodger senior vice president of communications, Green declined to comment about Froemming and whether Green would be comfortable having Froemming umpire a Dodger game.

While one might hope Green would take a stand and speak up about the inappropriateness of hate-filled speech from a man who can determine the outcome of a game, it is also understandable that Green be discreet.

Froemming seems quick to anger. He seems quick to put people in ethnic categories. He seems quick to attribute his anger to the ethnicity and sex of a person rather than to her responsibility to her job.

So it’s probably the wise thing for Green to do, to stay quiet.

When former Dodger general manager Al Campanis said on national television in 1987 that blacks lacked “the necessities” to be baseball managers and executives, he almost immediately lost his job even though he had been responsible for finding and signing minority players such as Roberto Clemente and Tommy Davis and had, by all accounts, treated men and women of all races fairly.

Dr. Joel Fish, director of The Center for Sports Psychology in Philadelphia, said the key thing for an umpire or any sports official or referee is to be seen as “fair, honest and credible and to have the impression that you are a fair, honest and credible person. That impression has clearly been damaged,” Fish said.

On the other hand, Fish said, “do you take a one-shot, off-the-cuff remark and make a decision on a career or do you look at a man’s history to see if there’s a pattern?”

Fish says that he believes “in every moment of every day we all harbor different degrees of prejudice -- ethnic, sexist, homophobic -- but it doesn’t mean we all go around all day treating people unfairly. To say that Bruce Froemming has some issues related to women and Jewish people and with how to deal with anger is obvious. But having those issues doesn’t necessarily express itself in treating people during the course of his job unfairly.”

But how does the Jewish baseball player or the fan of a team with a Jewish baseball player trust that Froemming is treating every player fairly now?

Marge Schott, when she was owner of the Cincinnati Reds, was suspended for two years for making racially and ethnically insensitive remarks. John Rocker probably cost himself a lucrative baseball career for making racially and sexually insensitive comments.

Yet Schott and Rocker were much less likely to impugn the integrity of the game with their biases as Froemming is with his.

An owner or a player can and will suffer severe consequences, even beyond official punishments or suspensions. An owner who is perceived as intolerant or insensitive may lose the chance to sign key free agents or re-sign important players on the team. An owner may see a drop in attendance if fans are appalled at the intolerant owner.

A player will be ostracized from teammates, taunted by fans, find himself less likely to be signed or given a big raise by wary ownership.

But an umpire or referee or official?

Owners and players must think twice about what they say or do.

Criticize an umpire and you must wonder about how big the strike zone will be, not only from the umpire you criticize but all umpires, who have shown a tendency to stick together.

Fish says that those who officiate games, who have it in their power to affect the integrity of a sport, should have a higher standard of conduct to live up to. “When the integrity of the game is involved, I do think you need to be held to a higher standard. The behavior of umpires needs to be held up to that lens. Can this umpire be perceived as someone fair, credible and honest?”

Right now, no, he can’t. It’s up to Froemming to earn back that trust.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.