My favorite incident with the people overseeing a game is in the NHL when a bunch of fans dressed up like refs and cheered every time any of the refs or linesmen blew a whistle or made a call. Much more lighthearted.
This doesn't technically count but my favorite is when a group of people dress up as WWE referees and front row seats on the television side and when an obvious 2 count kick-out happens, they yell "TWOOOOOOO".
MLB had something like this too! A few years ago a couple of guys dressed up as Umpires and sat behind home plate calling all the same calls the real umps were.
I'll say this in defense of Joe West, I've seen him joke around with players on TV a couple times so at least he seen to have some self-awareness and a sense of humor about everything, while Angel Hernadez gets butt hurt at the slightest criticism.
I feel the same way. I actually like Joe because of his funny moments and on field shenanigans. Of course Joe has his really bad calls and what not but he's definitely better than Angle Hernandez.
turns out that when the most important feature of your game is an arbitrary, invisible and imaginary box that no one can even really properly define even after over 100 years things get difficult
Arbitrary? Do you even know what that word means? The *strike zone* is not “arbitrary”. It’s the plate (little white thing shaped like a house, colloquially known as “home plate”) horizontally and letters to knees vertically. There I just defined it for you… after “100 long years” 🤡🤡🤡
@@richardtherichard26 is it top of the letters, bottom of them or middle of them, what about if that player has a posture that ends up lowering the position of the letters? Does the strike box adjust to that position or is it kept as if his back were straight? What about the knees, does the strike box start at the top, bottom, or middle of the knees? Or the plate, does the outerbline of the strike box start at the edge of the plate or is the inner line of the strike box at the edge of the plate? The strike box might be defined, but that doesnt mean it accounts for every scenario that creates a grey area.
That first story about umpires and players getting shot is fucking insane. I’m not the biggest fan of umps but that’s just sad to shoot someone over a game
I saw Joe Mikulik once get ejected and then throw a toilet seat onto the field, and the stadium PA then played a flushing sound effect. I think most fans thought it wasn't real and just some promotional stunt.
The thing that bothers me is Joe West is still umping, and he was an ump when Hawk played. I would like to see "Term limits" on umps. As people age, reaction time and vision change. At 70 years old, it has to be damn hard to track a hard slider.
Man, as a Tigers fan I still feel pain when I see that Jim Joyce call. Worst part is, that pitcher had an otherwise undistinguished career. That perfect game would have been the highlight of his life.
Actually when you think about it, it's probably a more noteworthy game because of the blown call. How many other perfect games do you vividly remember details of?
05:35 OMG. I haven't finished the video yet, but that has to be the craziest story I've never heard. Pure chaos. The Cubs trying to crowd the box to avoid a strike and the other team (Cardinals?) trying to get those free strikes. Pure pandemonium. I'm so thankful there's actual video footage of it. 🙏
I love that arguing with officials is accepted and welcomed by the MLB. NBA refs will make call a tech and walk away like they think they're hot shit, it always bugged me.
Gotta give it to refs for sticking with the new rules in NBA this season, though. No more pump fake/lean in bullshit calls and it seems like they're sticking to it. I know most NBA "fans" haven't noticed by now, but they will come playoff season.
It's accepted in baseball because it's the only thing that keeps it entertaining. The flip side is, you have parents coaching LL that think they can do it at that level. Massachusetts has a youth hockey referee shortage because of a-hole parents and coaches.
@@saulgoodman8501 They can at least talk to umpires though, NBA refs hand out techs for players aggressively tossing them the ball and giving the stink eye, it's honestly embarrassing how thin skinned they are, and yet how they act like they're totally untouchable
Instant replay has mostly cured the league of calls like Jim Joyce’s almost perfect incident. MLB needs to institute pitch challenges. Not every one, like 2-3 at most and you can keep the challenge if you get it right, but you need to challenge within 15 seconds of the pitch being thrown. This will help with those terrible strike 3 calls that decide games.
Yeah what you want is the elimination of what we call in Australian cricket "the howler"; a decision that is just wrong on replay. You give managers 3 unsuccessful calls per nine innings, and you'd probably greatly reduce "the howlers". What you don't want is managers arguing ticky tack calls with reviews every time there's a pitch they don't like because that'll slow the game to an absolute crawl.
Yeah... no... You either have robots calling the game or you have humans. Whatever this bullshit is with umpires making calls, then some can be changed and others not is just plain stupid. Either we have humans make the calls and screw some up, or we have robots that do the same but with better accuracy. I haven't watched more than 10 games in a whole season since before MLB implemented the replay system. It's just so boring and not fun to watch with the system they have right now...
What really upsets players, and rightfully so, is an umpire calling a pitch a ball in the early innings, then, in the 9th. inning, with the game on the line, they call the same pitch a strike.
Exactly, if someone's strike zone is consistent, even if it's not quite perfect, you can live with that, you just adjust. But when it's all over the place, that's frustrating.
@@rick_fortune while doing high school games I've noticed the strike zone is especially hard to be consistent with if the catcher is changing his framing technique every pitch. If they have a natural frame job as an umpire it's easy to figure out where the ball actually came in, but if the frame job is random, then it becomes a lot harder to get calls right because 80+ mph pitches are almost impossible to see the ball at the exact point it crosses the plate, so umpires rely on the glove, and if they can't rely on the glove, then that becomes a problem
Really strange seeing this tbh. I always felt MLB umps were far better than in other sports and many, many people agreed. I think TV broadcasts showing pitch tracking with the box in recent years has completely reversed that view. Imagine if NFL broadcasts started highlighting every single missed holding call in real time on the screen. People would lose their minds
That'd be a hell of a thing. To be honest, I'm still hazy on when blocking turns to holding. (I used to be a referee, but for flag football, so it's easier to say when it's out of line ... )
As a kid, I thought the melt downs were totally cool. Today, I find them completely inappropriate and embarrassing. It's true that the system promotes umpire for not doing a good job. But that shouldn't be an excuse for umpires to be treated poorly and not protected by MLB either.
True but I can understand the anger when everyone know how obvious a call is. Doesn’t get called. Or should have. Especially now when you can reply it. That both Refs and umps.
Theoretically, yes. However, any catcher or ump will tell you they have a feel for the strike zone. You can almost tell out of the pitcher's hand where it will end up. That is also part of the problem. As these younger pitchers use analytics to increase spin rates, pitched balls are breaking sharper, later. The ump is a good 5-6 feet back from the plate. If a curveball starts at a players head, and is caught 3-4 feet behind the plate low and outside, it almost certainly had to break over the plate. However, when that pitch is called a strike, everyone flips out.
@@MichaelMiller-tm2os I agree completely, I think it also has to do with pitcher consistency in hitting the same spot. If a pitcher establishes the inner half of the plate early. He's gonna get some benefit of the doubt from the ump. It's not like 30-40 years ago. When balls a foot out if the zone were called strikes. It's gotten alot tighter
Yeah. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for bad calls for strikes & ball. They are human. Like us. Not when it’s clearly Safe or out. Or whatever else. Especially when you can now look back at the play.
Great piece as always. This channel has become one of my favorites because if it’s approach on talking about hot-bed issues, or even ones we haven’t heard of. Awesome job BBDE
They need to team up with the tennis hawk eye team who have had excellent tech for many years now capable of accurately calling balls hit much faster than a mlb pitcher throws.
@@CrescentRollCarl on a linear line thats half the width of a hand. The auto strike zone needs to change for every single batter and deal with different flight paths
@@adamwilliams2253 it's true that it's a harder problem to solve. The strike zone is 3d. But we're more than a decade, maybe two decades, into this tech. It won't be long until these issues are solved and we have something decent in place.
@@CrescentRollCarl THe problem isn't with the 3D portion. They put 10 sensors in the ground around the plate, and there is basically a matrix of lasers that can tell if any portion of the ball went over the plate. The problem is, stupidly, with high and low. They base it on the player's height, not his stance. So, a 6'4" who crouches a bit gets strikes called at his nose and balls at his thighs. It seems to me that a combo of robo and and ump watching on TV would solve this. Robo tells you over the plate, and the little box on TV tells you high and low. Then the ump in the booth hits a red or green button that tells the field up what to call.
I’ll always remember the first time I made fun of an umpire. The poor guy didn’t know what a ball or a strike was. So at the end of the game I showed him my sports glasses and said “Do you need these?” I was 11.
One time when I was playing in little league like 9 years ago a pitch was at my feet, literally 2 inches away. I had to dodge to avoid it on 3-2 and it was strike 3
At the risk of being "That Guy," the Don Denkinger call that starts at 12:28 actually needs a clarification. The player who benefitted from the call ended up being out on a force-play at third later that inning. Although the Royals won, he never actually scored.
@@NoName-fo7mz Cards fans sure do. They've been bitching about that my entire life. Did it impact the game, yes. Did it cause the Cardinals to lose that game (and the Series the next game), no. Watch the 9th inning of that game. The Cards collapse after that call (and to be fair to Denkinger, the way Todd Worrell tagged the bag was awkward as hell).
I swear at some point, Joe West just stopped trying to be good once he realized he will never get fired. Just look at his calls in 2021 NL Wild Card game. That was almost perfect.
I think everyone's eyes go bad at some point. They should have a special eye test that involves tracking high speed pitches, if they can't pass it they're done.
I wonder how many people have commented that on-field umps don’t make the decisions on instant replay challenges. That home run call in the playoffs was terrible but Angel didn’t come back from replay and still call it a home run. That was New York.
I'm an Australian MLB fan, I support the A's 😢, and I watch as much baseball as I can get my hands on. We have AFL (Aussie rules) over here and it's our national game. I see umpiring errors all the time in AFL. BUT, nothing infuriates me more in sport, than watching the blatant mistakes made by MLB umpires. How Hernandez and West still get games is beyond me, let alone Post Season games. In AFL, if an umpire has a bad game, he gets dropped to a lower league the next week. The sooner MLB introduce home plate technology the better.
I loved a cartoon about the late Billy Martin where he charged home plate, looked the ump in the face, and complimented the ump on his call. In the last panel the ump looked at Martin as he walked back to the dugout and commented that Billy had to be nuts
Every league’s fans think they got the worst officials. All umps/refs are now under a microscope with replay and pitch tracking. It’s such a different job now than it was back in the day, it’s crazy how many stories there were from the older eras of the game. Great video.
Ballsports are just sociopathic. Bunch of grown human males running back and forth across a field to kill wach other over a ball. It's like watching caged animals.
"Kill the Umpire" (1950) is a funny movie, with William Bendix as a loudmouth fan who's constantly baiting umps until they dare him to become one. Fred Flintstone also had his troubles when he tried umpiring a Little League game.
While I do agree on alot of pitchers and batters taking too much time, the issue comes from the umpire choosing to enforce a rule that other umpires are not, as well as you saying it needing to be enforced consistently, which I dont think can be done until an actual time limit is established for each position. Otherwise it is up to the umpires discretion, like was see here, and there is no way that can be consistent with each umpire having a different tolerance for that bull shit. I simply dont agree with an umpire taking the initiative to enforce a rule for a quicker pace for these positions in a manner that can drastically affect the at bat and game, when there is no such precedent for that type of punishment. If umpires gain the power to make up and enforce rules on the spot with their own punishments, the game will fall apart. Still vividly remember Ron Kulpa's famous "I can do whatever I want" shouting match.
@@RepressedMemories16 there already is a set time limit. It's 20 seconds, that's what the pitch clock is for. But no one is ever penalized for some reason
Not enough people have talked about this. I’m all for an automated strike zone if they can be better than humans. As a varsity player I always thought the umps were awful, think of how bad high school umps are if the best in the world get it wrong 12% of the time.
My favorite thing in baseball is when a manager or player gets ejected and then they do something insanely funny to "make it official" like throw equipment or pop the hat off an ump.
I was at the June 2006 game where Joe Mikulik went crazy. The baserunner in the call he argued was Koby Clemens, so of Roger Clemens, who had just pitched a rehab start in Lexington a few weeks earlier on June 6th.
Robo umps scare me in a sense (I’m a catcher) because that takes away the framing part of catching. Literally half of catching is making balls into strikes, and yes I think umpires should be better but your taking away a key part of the game by doing this
"Army-Crawled to a rosin bag,as if it was a grenade,and threw it towards an umpire"-I couldn't stop laughing at such gesture,I had to re-watch that scene multiple times. No one would have believed unless it was filmed.
Classic moment by a Braves manager. We love Wallman in Atlanta. He has balls big enough to drag the ground. He may be a bit crazed but his blowups are iconic
Great piece of information and appreciate the historical value professional umpires have on the game. One input I would convey that was underplayed during the segment on minor leaguers plight to MLB is why it’s a coveted “dream job”. I think it would be incredible to make a healthy six figure salary working 9 months out of the year with vacation time eating sunflower seeds having the best seat in the house going to every MLB venue while traveling first class to all of them and of course, being on national TV. Not a bad occupation for working just 3 hours a night and only 150 days. It’s a tough job but they are well trained and are under more scrutiny than ever plus stats show impressive improvement in call accuracy the past decade. And let’s be honest, how many times do you see players or coaches “go off” on umps each night? Not as often as we think though no stats to prove my opinion.
I haven't even watched this vid yet but I gotta say as someone that really gives no fuck about baseball... These intros are ALWAYS top tier. So is the content after. I've actually paid attention to this year's playoffs because of this channel. I haven't gave a fuck since Pedro Martinez was a great pitcher (first name that came to mind, don't actually care about any team at all).
Baseball umpires are only regarded as the worst in sport due to the difficulty in making correct calls. They are actually trying to do the best they can, but the higher the level of play, the worst the calls will be due to the tiny margins which separate calls becoming smaller and smaller the better the players are.
Shooting a player trying to steal second sounds like ancient Egyptian baseball, where the players threw knives at opposing team players as part of the game.
Never really was into baseball. But I must say after randomly coming across your videos I’ve been liking learning about the history of the game!! Keep it up man
Should Boston university make a separate rank list for the empires with the most incorrect, but overall impactful umps? A few bad but impactful calls at the world series is probably far worse than a lot of bad calls in a reg season game?
Happy for the robot. I've never seen a ball at catcher's face mask called a strike more than this year. It's shoulders to knees - the strike zone. Where the hell did that come from?
Honestly my biggest complaint with umpiring in the MLB isn't their inconsistency, I'm not expecting perfection from them it's a tough gig. My problem is the refusal to ask for help on calls (like checked-swings) and how difficult it is to overturn or review the majority of calls. It's getting "easier" to challenge calls but it still really isn't. What is it, the teams get one challenge? In a game as long as baseball? If they just dropped the egos everyone would hopefully be more inclined to show patience with them. Yes experience is important I guess but I really think sports leagues should treat umpires/refs how teams treat players, their jobs are always on the line to someone performing better.
For me, inconsistency is the problem. As the umpire you set the tone. If you screw up by calling a really wide strike zone for the first three batters then guess what? The strike zone is now wide for the rest of the game, because you have to call it for the other team’s pitcher as well.
If the us open can replace lines people, MLB can use robot umps. Tech worked great at the open, and has worked well on the serve for over a decade. And the tennis serve is often much faster than the MLB pitch.
They need a league where that's allowed, and all the players are ex mlb players, and the umps are all ex pro umps. That would get way more views than the actual mlb
I really really think it is amazing for the game of baseball to have them, and yes they make the wrong calls, and as a player or fan or anything it's beyond frustrating. The calls should be right 100% of the time right? Or do they add experience to the game? If the pitcher throws a fire slider, or curve, and to any human eye appears to be a strike, does that add to the experience and give credit to the pitcher? Missed outs on plates is kinda iffy, but it give them an opportunity to throw games for betting as well, however, if they're not doing that, I think the umpire gives the game way more positive and I may stand with just how good pitches are at times.
Yeah I agree. YI’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for bad calls for strikes & ball. They are human. Like us. Not when it’s clearly Safe or out. Or whatever else. Especially when you can now look back at the play. This is for any sport.
MLB umpires definitely deserve some criticism, but people don’t realize how hard the job is, especially behind the plate. In the KBO umpires get sent down based on how they call games, MLB needs to implement a system similar to that.
It is a very difficult job but unfortunately they seem to be rewarded for being bat at their job. The umpire union is terrible. Check out Umpire Scorecards and you'll see how often the veterans miss 10% of the calls a game and then guys with a couple years or less of MLB experience miss 5-3%. And then some of them seem to think they are more important than players. While this video shows Angel Hernandez is not always the worst it's his attitude and demeanor that should get him fired. Laz Diaz, Joe West (thankfully retired) are other ones that should have been fired ages ago. Yet they get important games. It's absolutely ridiculous. Stop rewarding being bad at your job.
@@LudaChez agreed, use a resource like umpire scorecards, and the best umpires graded from the regular season should ump the postseason games, no matter the age or how long they’ve been in the league
having robo umps would be good for calls but it would make the art of framing pitches by catchers completely irrelevant, but it is the most important job for catchers right now. Watching a catcher catch a ball would start looking super sloppy because there is no reason to frame any more, ruining the skill set of a lot of catchers.
I always wanted to see umpire stats during every pregame. If their strike zone percentage and blown call tally is broadcasted every game they might make more of an effort to get better.
I love the arguments. I'm all for electronic support as far as for the strike zone but you can't get rid of umps completely, we wouldn't get great moments such as Lou Pinella throwing bases and kicking dirt like a pissed off toddler.. just give em a hand with the strike zone is all I'm asking for haha
In order for coaches to be mad the umpires have to screw it up... If there's robots helping the umpires you won't have a single coach mad at an umpire, and not a single incident that's fun to watch. That's just how it will be. I'm indifferent between having robots or humans as I personally umpire and I understand people wanting all the calls to be right, but it will in fact take part of the game away. It's like the intentional walk rule, now there's no fun moments with that anymore, but now the games are quicker
@@rileyesmay I'm talking about strike zone dude. Even with replay the umps or officials in football still miss calls. I never said to get rid of umps entirely right? I'm just asking for assistance in strike zone placement and verification on balls and strikes. I made it perfectly clear we shouldn't get rid of umps in my comment, which I assume you read in order to write your comment
Always a good day when I see a new Baseball Doesn't Exist. I'm a Giants fan, so you bet I'm pissed about how umpire crews were assigned this year. In the NLDS both my guys and the Dodgers suffered from bad calls and in the end, the story was about the umpire, not the players. Yeah, we probably still lose on the next pitch, but to lose on a bad call. . . Robot umpires are fine, once the technology shakes out, but for now, both the major and minor leagues need to be transparent about umpire ratings and make it easier to weed out the bad ones. The postseason should be reserved for the best-rated umps, not guys in their sixties. We also need to end the idea that it's OK to abuse the umpires. You want to make your argument, go ahead, but crap like kicking dirt or stealing bases needs to be slapped down hard.
God I love this channel. I used love baseball and played in high school but fell out with it because let’s say I “had better things to do”. I found this channel and Jomboy and I’m getting back into it. My white Sox I thought were going to do worse and better this past year at the same time lol. Thank you for brightening up my day just a little bit my friend. Idk what that says about me that brightening up my day consists of watching umpires get beaten. But I digress. You’re the man and keep doing your thing. This is also best English I’ve typed in 4 months at least lol and I’m an American.
Hey BDE, I think I speak for a lot of your audience when I say we’d love a video on just how the hell Dale Murphy has never made it into Cooperstown. Obviously there are hella political issues that’d be hard to quantify or defend but like damn this man was the face of baseball for a few years and his resume more that precedes him. I know I’m probably preaching to the choir but a deep dive would be so interesting as it even seems like 80s baseball as a whole gets discounted often and I don’t quite get why.
First of all, I agree. Dale Murphy was more than a great player, he was the face of those lousy 1980s Braves teams that, like the Cubs, all of us came home from school and watched because we loved baseball. I am a big proponent of more people in the Hall, because it is good for the game. Celebrate your best players! It doesn't diminish the Hall at all, it just eliminates controversy. I mean, the point of the sport is to hit the ball, and the all-time hits leader and all-time homeruns leader aren't in the Hall of Fame. You can really only make up for that by rewarding players who didn't cheat or gamble. That said, there are two big problems for Murph, and hopefully the Veterans committee sees these. First, you mentioned stars from the 80s tend to get overlooked. The reason for that is when baseball expanded in the 60s, adding the Expos, Angels, Padres, Brewers, Astros, Royals, and Rangers, as well as moving to new markets with the Twins, A's, and Braves, this also had the effect of expanding the BBWA, who elect Hall of Famers. Those new members of the BBWA were likely mostly in their 30s. They covered the sport through the 80s. Well, by the time guys like Murphy were eligible for the Hall in 98 or 99, those guys were retired. The new replacement writers may not have been from that area and perhaps were unaware of the players contributions. The second problem is that Murph had just over 2,000 hits and just under 400 homeruns. He doesn't have a standout stat. However, it can be argued that his seven all-star games, two MVPs, 5 straight Gold Gloves, Four straight silver sluggers, and his stellar defense make up for that, and would be reflected in advanced stats. However, oddly, they just aren't. His overall WAR is comparable to guys like Mark Grace, Miguel Tejada, Matt Williams, and Curtis Granderson. The Magic Number for WAR and the Hall seems to be 47. Players with a WAR under 47 only make up 10% of Hall of Fame players, and they are either Negro Leagues players like Josh Gibson or Buck Leonard, where the stats are incomplete; they are players from the pre-Ruth era, they were catchers, or hold some other record, like Lou Brock. Dale's BABIP, rOBA, BA vs lgBA, and OPS vs lgOPS were all average. Where he excelled was hitting for power. His homerun percentage was twice the league average for the years he played. But, he hit a homer once every 20 at-bats, comparable to guys like Kris Bryant, Ron Gant, and Jermaine Dye. Not exactly Hall of Fame company. If Murph played today, with the focus on HRs at all cost, he would be in the 500HR club and a no-brainer for the Hall. Instead, he played at a time where situational hitting and keeping the train moving were the focus. The league was smaller, with 12 NL teams as opposed to todays 15. That means he saw better pitching than today's players do, because instead of 160 pitchers in the National league (ten or eleven for all 15 teams,) there were maybe 110, nine or ten for each of the 12 teams. It is just a different time, and Murph is a victim of those circumstances when it comes to HOF voting. Hopefully, the Veterans Committee remembers the impact he had as a superstar on National TV who was hands down one of the best players of the 80s, a time when 25 HRs was a lot.
Worst umpire incident ever was Kent Hrbek picking Rob Gant up by the leg to lift him off the bag and apply a tag in the 1991 World Series,-literally right in front of the umpire-who then called Gant out. Im still mad about that, such utter incompetence.
This years officiating has been the worst I've ever seen in a World Series. Ball/Strike calls are wildly inconsistent and the replays are worthless. The calls have been so incredibly one sided against the Braves the entire post season that I cannot be convinced it isn't intentional.
The technology for how we watch games has improved over the years so we see when a call is wrong instantly. Since this happens a fair amount we think the umpires are getting worse every year. Compared to years ago when we only saw blatant calls that were wrong.
Devil's advocate, but, that little rectangle on the tv isn't always an accurate representation of the strike zone. I've seen sometimes where it looks like the strike zone is from a guys ankle to his waist.
I attended an Umpire School. Thanks for pointing out the difference between performance and appointments. Its one of the things that could honestly fix the robo-umpire issue if MLBUA would pull their fingers out and impose standards.
I want to go, but it seems like most of the people who go end up coming back pissed they didn't make it, and enforce every damn rule with 10 year olds. And yes you are very correct about the standards, I'm sure if they had 100% of umpires the MiLB in their 20's, and 100% of MLB umpires in their 30's and 40's with a mandatory say 50 year old retirement age the umpires could get a higher starting salary which would make more people interested and more people would get offered positions in the minors
