Baseball umps take their lumps over disputed calls in postseason

That didn’t take long.

A mere two games into the playoffs, umpires were under the heat lamp after a trio of game-altering missed calls last week led to the ejections of two managers, profanity-laced tirades and renewed calls for expanded use of instant replay.

“It’s unfortunate, because I still think like an official. I’m a part of that fraternity, and you hate to see guys make mistakes,” said Mike Pereira, a former football referee who recently retired as director of officiating for the NFL. “But mistakes have been made for decades. What’s changed is technology, which exposes mistakes more and more. That’s what drives the NFL to expand replay. Officials are under more scrutiny.

“You get a couple of bad calls,” he said of the baseball playoffs, “and that overwhelms any talk of the great calls they made.”

Baseball clings to its traditions and rituals, no matter how archaic, and many managers, coaches and players say they prefer the “human element” of umpires — blown calls and all.

As a result, the sport has been reluctant to embrace instant replay, adopting it in 2008, but only to resolve disputed home run calls — whether a ball was fair or foul, whether the ball left the field, or if there was fan interference.

Replay is not used for balls and strikes, plays at the bases, checked swings or to determine whether a ball is caught or trapped.

Thus, the Tampa Bay Rays had no recourse Oct. 7 in Game 2 of the American League division series when replays appeared to show that the Texas Rangers’ Michael Young did not check his swing on a two-strike pitch in the fifth inning.

Young crushed the next pitch for a three-run homer that keyed Texas’ 6-0 win. Rays Manager Joe Maddon was irate and argued the checked-swing call — and was ejected.

And the Minnesota Twins, in Game 2 against the New York Yankees, could do nothing about Carl Pavano’s seventh-inning, two-strike fastball to Lance Berkman that appeared to catch the inside corner but was called a ball by Hunter Wendelstedt.

Berkman smacked the next pitch for a run-scoring double that snapped a 2-2 tie and helped the Yankees to a 5-2 win. Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire was irate and argued the call on the previous pitch — and was ejected.

And the Atlanta Braves had to swallow an incorrect call by umpire Paul Emmel on San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey’s stolen base in the fourth inning of the National League division series opener.

Replays showed Posey was out, and after Posey went on to score the only run in the Giants’ 1-0 victory, he said, “I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have instant replay right now.”

These calls were reminiscent of those that marred the 2009 playoffs, and they set an ominous postseason tone in a season marked by one of the most controversial calls in recent history, one by umpire Jim Joyce that cost Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game in June.

These calls also raise questions: What makes baseball so difficult to officiate, and is baseball the toughest sport to call?

Kirk West has been officiating high school baseball and football in Southern California for 27 years and basketball for three years. He says his toughest sport is basketball, and not because it’s relatively new for him.

“Even before I started doing it, I thought basketball was the toughest,” West said. “It’s the quickest sport, and you have to make split-second decisions.

“We have more time in football to call a play, and nothing happens in baseball until you make a call. In basketball, the action is always moving so quickly. I think baseball is probably the easiest to do, calling balls and strikes, safe and out.”

Referee magazine, a trade publication for professional, college and high school officials, asked readers in 2007 to name the toughest sport to officiate. Basketball got 59% of the vote, followed by baseball (9%), hockey (9%), football (8%) and soccer (7%).

“The sheer athleticism you need in soccer, to cover that big of a field for that long, and ice hockey — you have to be so athletic, and there’s so much mayhem — make it tough,” said Barry Mano, editor of Referee and a college basketball official for 23 years.

“In basketball, everything’s very close, and angles are everything. You’re constantly moving to keep a perspective, and all those things really tax you. In baseball, there’s a fair amount of standing around. You get to look at the play. It’s certainly not easy at the major league level, but it’s not tougher than the other ones.”

All that standing around is what makes baseball difficult. Though it’s the only team sport that requires a call on every play, the down time between pitches and between plays can be challenging.

“A guy may see 300 pitches that day, and in the ninth inning, on that one pitch he’s thinking about going to dinner after the game, all of a sudden here’s this checked swing,” Angels bench coach Ron Roenicke said. “That’s difficult. The game is on the line, it’s the only big call you have that day, and your mind wanders a bit.”

There is a certain rhythm to baseball, and umpires, much like infielders and outfielders, develop routines to cope with the pace.

“If a guy throws a pitch, you concentrate while he’s in the windup, the pitch is released, and you call it,” West said. “Then it’s back to square one. You don’t need to watch him on the mound.”

Among the best tips West received was from former NFL referee Dale Williams, who worked three Super Bowls and was on West’s crew for a city championship game in Los Angeles.

“I asked him what it was like working the NFL, and he said you have to concentrate for seven seconds at a time,” West said. “You have to train yourself to do that.

“It’s like when you’re driving. If you hit the median, you have to slap yourself in the face and remind yourself to concentrate. Everyone does it differently.”

Football officiating often boils down to how referees interpret rules on judgment calls.

“With pass interference, contact is allowed but contact that significantly hinders an opponent isn’t — you get into a gray area,” Pereira said. “There’s holding, but you’re supposed to call ones that materially restrict an opponent. Verbiage like that makes it tough.”

The baseball equivalent — and a source of frustration for managers, coaches, players and fans — is an umpire’s interpretation of the strike zone.

“In our game, the strike zone is going to change, and we know whether certain umpires are going to have a liberal zone or be really tight,” Roenicke said. “And who’s pitching that day may not fit with that umpire.”

With computerized tracking of pitches and super-slow-motion replays, mistakes by umpires — especially in the playoffs, when more cameras are used — are exposed more now than they’ve ever been.

That puts umpires, who must make split-second decisions based on one view of a play, in a no-win situation.

“No one says an umpire made a great call because they’re expected to get it right,” Roenicke said. “But the bad ones ... say an umpire got it wrong, but I had to slow it down and look at the replay from three different angles to determine that.

“An umpire doesn’t have that luxury. If you can see it with a naked eye and the call is obvious, fine. But if I have to slow the thing down and see different angles, whether an umpire got it right or wrong, I say he got the call right.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com