Unwelcome Dental Advice

I’ve had over 12 hours to stew on this and read through trolling comments about it on Reddit. While I’m not typically a conspiracy theorist, I’ll openly admit that I think officiating (read: umpiring) for certain sports with certain teams is absolutely rigged. Case in point: last night’s Brewers vs. Yankees game at American Family Field (which will be henceforth referred to as the AmFam Slam Clam).

Last night was an intense game going into the sixth inning. The Yankees started out strong against our rookie pitcher, Tobias Meyers, but Meyers leveled out and got some run support eventually, leaving the Yankees scoreless a few times when they could have overtaken us. And then Uribe takes the mound. He walks Aaron Judge, as any sane pitcher with high velocity that relies on fastballs in the strike zone would. Next up is Alex Verdugo, who has railed against our pitching a few times in the series already, but Uribe pitches a gem that results in a ground ball to second-basemen Brice Turang, who gives a quick toss to Willy Adames.

Adames, one of my favorite players on the Crew, tags the base to out Judge who then (after he’s been called out) proceeds to slide into the base. This is normal, considering the speed of the play. Where it gets fishy is how he slides. Judge throws his left hand up as far as it will go as he’s sliding feet first into second base. This creates an obstruction to Adames’s throw, resulting in a ball that falls dead to the ground before it can reach first base and create a double play. Apparently, none of the umpires actually see this happen and somehow believe the ball was just thrown poorly, because they allow Verdugo to remain on first.

Official Baseball Rule 6.01 (a)(5): Retired or Just Scored Runner’s Interference – It is interference if any batter or runner who has just been put out, or any runner who has just scored, hinders or impedes any following play made on [another] runner. Such runner shall be declared out for the interference of their teammate.

Here’s a video link to the play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9il3Q3ymUQ

The narrator judges the play correctly and even after the game, the umpires reviewed the play and claimed they “got it wrong” (https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40046486/crew-chief-admits-missed-interference-call-aaron-judge-slide-yankees-rally-vs-brewers for reference).

This brings me to the crux of my post: I’ve seen it too many times that high-paid/high-profile teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, or Astros are always going to have leverage in a game because officiating teams are too afraid to make calls against them. These teams have so many championships under their belts and so much money that umpiring is always going to be biased towards their calls. There’s a Twitter account (I refuse to call it “X” because Elon Musk is a 50-year-old edgelord with the body of Grimace and has never invented anything, he’s just a trust-fund nepo-baby with a bunch of money who buys ground-breaking tech companies and claims that he’s the one changing the world) called @UmpScorecards. I urge you to go through their Tweets, if you’re a sports fan, and see just how often the officials call in favor of high-profile teams. It’s truly astounding.

This account doesn’t give the full picture, mind you. This is just a report card for the home plate umpire and how poorly (or well, in some cases) they call balls and strikes. It gives an accounting of impactful calls and how many runs scored in favor of one team over the other the home plate umpire’s calls made the ending outcome. As a longtime baseball fan, it’s concerning to see just how often the smaller market teams are fucked over by a home plate umpire miscalling balls and strikes alone. Just think of how badly it goes on the rest of the field if the home plate umpire is in one team’s pocket. I think the most damning thing is that reviewable plays are sent to New York for playback. Do you think a reviewable call against the New York Yankees is going to be favorable at all for the Brewers being sent back to the home state of the team they’re reviewing against? The only time I’ve ever seen those calls go in favor of the Brewers is when they’re so obviously in the right that it can’t be declined/overturned.

Too long; didn’t read

Officiating in baseball (and other sports – anyone remember when the Vikings played the Saints years ago in the playoffs and the Saints lost due to an obviously bad call about pass interference? Pepperidge Farm remembers!) is fucking terrible and needs a serious review. Bad calls by umpires are ruining games for small market teams who thrive on playing by the rules versus cheating fuck-faces like Aaron Judge and the Yankees.

Last night’s game was an avoidable travesty and an embarrassment to umpiring across the league. People will argue that “one bad call doesn’t make or break the game – the Brewers could have come back from that.” But if you were watching the game, you’d have seen Abner Uribe’s face and the total loss of confidence that the officiating crew would ever do the right thing in the rest of the game. And he was right. He threw six strikes against batters that were called balls. The umpires failed Uribe and the rest of the Brewers team, causing them to spiral down and lose the game by a massive margin.

In a league that’s already struggling to maintain viewership, these kinds of things are exactly what the MLB doesn’t need to keep people watching. Figure it out, or face losing massive fanbases over cheating and poor judgment of the umpiring crews. Put umpires under massive review and fine them for doing poorly. Do this, and the fans will have reason to cheer for small market teams again.