Major League Baseball: Some Things Have Changed and Some Haven’t in the Umpire Business

In an era of empowerment for women, why are the umps all men?

Technology has changed the world of baseball in both fundamental and incidental ways. Watching the Cubs-Indians World Series it became apparent that one of the side effects of technology is the shift in power that was in the hands of the umpires. That is, until cameras could capture every single angle and transmit all these perspectives to a single location for instant review, the umpire’s authority was unchallenged. It could be disputed but in the context of the game itself the ump made the final call.

In today’s world, the power has shifted away from the umpire to some extent. If he makes a bad call, the manager of the team that took it on the chin could challenge the call. The verdict was determined elsewhere, and the ump’s role marginally reduced to being a mouthpiece for the verdict. Sure, the umps still make all the call, but they’ve got their butts covered.

This undoubtedly proves to be a liberating change for umpires. I know from first-hand experience how brutal it can be to make a bad call. Somehow the umpire’s word had such total authority it was as if it had been etched on two tablets by the finger of God.

When I was seventeen I was asked to be a Little League umpire, no doubt because I played on the high school team and knew the rules of the game. I was fair, earnest and it also paid a few greenbacks to boot.

Two of my most memorable experiences as an ump, though, were the bad calls I made. I wrote about this here in 2009, but the pertinent material here in this excerpt:

My worst call came on a windy day at Hamilton Field. The infield was dusty and the count two balls and a strike. Just as the pitch was released, the wind threw grains of dirt into my eyes so that I was temporarily blinded. I could see that the ball, when I got my vision back, had gone over the backstop, so naturally I assumed (don’t EVER assume when you are an umpire) that the kid fouled it off. I shouted, with confidence, “Strike two.”

The reality is, the ball had hit the plate and gone over the backstop. And everyone saw it as plain as day, except the ump. The parents went berserk. Naturally, when I…