An Official Disaster

could push a grown man to his wit’s end but I, like many of the sports fans in the blogosphere, am fed up with this one issue. 

I am sick and tired of officials taking control of the actual play of the game.

Look, I am all for an umpire speeding up the pace of a three and a half hour American League snoozer. I am right behind an official making sure that cooler heads prevail before Ron Artest takes a fight into the stands. I don’t even mind a head referee protecting an NFL quarterback with a flag on contact to the head.

But I can not stand when an umpire, official or referee decides that the fans paid 40 bucks to watch him lumber around a field and make a spectacle of himself.

Now before I get myself into too deep of a hole let me explain myself. I umpire baseball games for the OSSAA during the spring so I can respect the amount of pressure an official has to get it right every time and I can also empathize with an umpire when he gets the call wrong. But I am not talking about getting it right or wrong. I am talking about blowing it.

Case in point: Joe West. The “Singing Cowboy” hijacked a ball game between the White Sox and Indians Wednesday with not one but two controversial balk calls against Mark Buehrle. In two instances this week, Joe West believed that the Chicago ace crossed the 45-degree line when he attempted to pick off a runner at first. I’ll give Joe West this much, there is no such rule as a 45-degree rule. (If you don’t believe me, read MLB rule 8.05c) But we know how the rule has always been enforced and it’s not up to Joe West to buck the system.

West called a balk on Buehrle in the second inning and the short fuse of Ozzie Guillen was ignited. West, according to Guillen, then promptly told the White Sox skipper to “Get the ___ off the field.” Now, Major League Baseball is doing its own investigation into the matter but if Joe West did in fact say what Ozzie reports, maybe the Singing Cowboy just had his swan song.

West called another balk-that-wasn’t on Buehrle later in the game then tossed him when Buehrle flipped his glove in disgust.

Think this is some isolated incident in sports this week? How about Eddie Rush sending Kendrick Perkins to the showers early when he T’d him up for the second time for apparently showing up Rush? You’ve seen the tape: Perkins doesn’t like the call and instead of disputing it, he turns and walks away from the volatile situation only to be tossed anyway.

I realize that the NBA reversed the technical foul call so Perkins won’t need to miss a game in the Eastern Conference Finals but that isn’t the point now, is it? The point is that an official made a knee-jerk decision in a situation that didn’t warrant the action.

How about referee Joey Crawford tossing Tim Duncan for laughing on the bench? An official can’t speculate about what a player…on the bench…on the other end of the court…is laughing but that hasn’t stopped Crawford from marching to the beat of his own drum his entire career.

Whether it’s Joe West and Tim McClelland (remember the botched interpretation of the pine-tar rule with George Brett?) or Eddie Rush and Joey Crawford, no matter how well-known you are as an official, it isn’t about you. I am not a fan of his, but Ozzie Guillen put it best this week when he said “People pay to watch players play, not to see umpires and managers. I don’t see any people say, ‘I’m going to see Ozzie Guillen manage or Joe West umpire.’ Joe’s been that way for a lot of years … Sometimes he thinks people pay to watch him (bleeping) umpire.”

 

Justin Loomis manages production and imaging for the Sports Animal.