SUSPENDED: For 10 days without pay at the start of the 1986 season and fined $ 500, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher JOAQUIN ANDUJAR, for an incident involving bumping and
arguing with umpire Don Denkinger in the seventh game of the World Series.
His coach, Terry Thompson, has had a running
argument with umpires over the number of warmup pitches Butz is allowed.
I just was going out there to talk about
something with the umpire and was referencing something and used a poor choice of words, and he took offense to it.
After A.J. Pollock struck out looking, Lovullo came out to confront Timmons, but his
discussion with the umpire was cut short by what may have been a few unwise comments directed toward Molina.
«After a year of just going out there and biding time and having friendly
conversations with an umpire... I think we got tired of going through that whole charade,» Sandberg said.
The strike zone also
changes with the umpire, and although I don't advocate cheating, a pitcher has to take everything he has coming to him.
Some have proposed an augmented reality system (think Google Glass
integrated with the umpire's mask so it overlays the ball location in the strike zone onto the umpire's vision).
Insulting or
fighting with umpires, in fact, has resulted in ejections, suspensions, and fines in the past for players and coaches throughout the league.
It's easy to go on to pick out parallels: the drinking sprees; the 6 a.m. returns to the hotel room; the precipitous slumps in between the glory days; the brawling; the
altercations with umpires; the ignored speed limits; the junked cars (Botham is maybe ahead here — he once wrecked two Saabs in one day on a racetrack).
But I do think Dr. Bobby Brown and Chub Feeney can
work with the umpires and the managers and players to make sure we do not start a new tradition in baseball in the area of bench clearing.
Some disputes can be resolved by an informal discussion between the umpire and the parties,
with the umpire acting as a facilitator or mediator.
Defending champion Roger Federer
argued with an umpire, but mostly let his racket do the talking, beating Tomas Berdych for the ninth time running to reach the Australian Open semi-finals on Wednesday.
In the early»70s I was assigned to capture him arguing
with umpires.