You've got to love a guy who speaks his mind, even when he knows it might cost him in the long run. Yorvit Torrealba is such a man.
After the Padres catcher was suspended for three games for inadvertently making contact with plate umpire Larry Vanover with the bill of his cap on Monday, he went off on the terrible state of officiating at major league baseball games this season.
Torrealba said Vanover was unfair and inconsistent with his strike zone, that umpires are baiting players and that this year has been by far the worst.
"This is the worst umpiring I've ever seen."
"I've never seen the umpiring so inconsistent."
"There is no strike zone. They make us swing at everything. No one knows what the strike zone is anymore." He went on to say that's the reason why hitters are struggling so much this season.
"I know there are some good umpires, but there are a lot of really, really bad umpires."
Torrealba is appealing his penalty and is wise enough to note that his comments might get his suspension increased, not lessened.
The thing is, he's right. You know. I don't have to go into detail. The blown call at first base that cost Tigers P Andres Galarraga a perfect game was only the tip of the iceberg. I watched a game on TV in April which was the worst home plate umpiring I've ever seen -- aside from an NL playoff game years ago -- confirmed by the pitch tracker graphic on the screen. Things apparently haven't improved since then.
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That NL playoff game? A 1-0 shutout thrown by Cardinals P John Tudor against the Giants in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series. Tudor, a junk artist, consistently threw the ball six inches outside all game long, and plate ump Bob Engel kept calling them strikes. Engel three years later was caught shoplifting baseball cards from two stores in Bakersfield and retired after pleading guilty.
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Memo to Reds P Mike Leake, entitled: Get With the Program
Mike:
Congratulations on your fine start to your major league baseball career with the Cincinnati Reds. Like other San Diegans involved in America's pastime, we like to see the local kids do well. The Fallbrook HS community has a lot to be proud of.
However,
you don't go around beating everyone else and then losing to the Dodgers. Especially in a game in which LA might take over first place. Your job in such a situation is to beat them. Your six-inning, nine-hit, five-run performance came up rather short in that regard.
Let me make myself clear. You beat the Dodgers from now on. Understand?
Thank you and good luck the rest of the season.
Jim
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In my view, San Diego State's relative position in the spectrum of collegiate athletics has slightly improved in the past 10 days or so of conference reorganization in which the Mountain West gained Boise State but lost Utah. Until the Pacific-10 invited the Utes to become its 12th member, the Aztecs appeared well on their way to being part of a BCS conference with the Broncos becoming the 10th MWC member. Now they're almost back to where they started, with slight improvements.
1. Boise puts the MWC slightly closer to BCS AQ status than what Utah provided.
2. Boise was successful in overwhelming the WAC year-in and year-out. What happens when the Broncos join in 2011 and finish second? And then come in third in 2012? Does the bloom come off this year's possible Rose Bowl? Utah was in a pretty dominant position as one of the MWC's Big Three. Boise will start at such a level but whether coach Chris Peterson can sustain that success in new digs, like Utah would have, is questionable.
3. Utah is always a threat in mens and womens basketball, while Boise State is not. One easier game for Steve Fisher and Beth Burns. The Broncos men were 15-17 last season with a 5-11 WAC mark that placed them second-to-last. Records the preceding three seasons were 19-13 and 9-7, the high-water mark of 25-7 and 12-4, and 17-14 and 8-8. One good season in four years. The women were 19-12 and 8-8 last season but did have a pair of 20-win seasons recently. Still, they're no Utah.
The next two reasons are potentially huge.
4. I'm not sure the Big 12 can deliver on the TV contract promises that enticed Texas and its loyal followers to remain with the conference. Kansas, K-State and Missouri are possibly in play again a couple of years down the line and you only need three teams to hit the magic 12 mark for a conference championship game. Plus, the Pac-10's quick trigger finger on Utah means if the Big 12 does collapse, there's one more attractive school available for the MWC to snag. That means BCS.
5. Call me crazy on this one but hear (read) me out. The invitation to Utah puts San Diego State a step closer to the decades-long dream of Pac-8 -10 -11 -12 membership. The conference leadership now has no qualms of inviting Mountain West schools to join. A lot of conferences have been talking expansion in order to cash in on the Big Ten model of cable television channel ownership, so getting TV markets is critical. The Pac-10 will probably go down the same route. However, can they really do such a thing with two giant holes in their so-called conference footprint? San Diego and Las Vegas are two of the larger TV markets in the country. Sure, both markets do well in watching Pac-10 football, but they don't really own the market with the hometown schools in another league. Intriguing. Here's to hoping coach Brady Hoke can return the Aztecs to competitiveness quickly.
2 comments:
It's the easiest thing in the world to criticize the umpires for a lack of proficiency or accuracy rather than take a look inward and direct the same criticism towards oneself.
No matter how bad the umpiring is, when a ballplayer allows what an umpire does to adversely affect what he or she does, that's the ballplayer's responsibility, not the umpire's. Torrealba has a right to speak his mind, but he also knows the protocols that exist between catcher and umpire, and "billing" an umpire the way he did qualified him for instant ejection. His comments after the fact are the easy way out; instead of examining what actually happened, Torrealba takes the low road and smears plate umpire Larry Vanover, an unfortunately typical and dense response to the kind of confrontation they had. Vanover has been a professional umpire for about thirty years; he's taught thousands of umpire students, including me, at Harry Wendelstedt's Umpire School and been calling balls and strikes since Torrealba was in diapers, so for the catcher to cast aspersions on the umpire's proficiency (as well as that of other MLB umpires which he characterizes as so inconsistent) renders his complaints nothing more than an infantile whine. Torrealba, and ballplayers in general, would benefit far more from examining their own roles in whatever on-field failures they blame on the umpires; and bloggers analyzing and parsing what ballplayers do without ascribing some degree of responsibility to them for their own actions don't do their readers any favors, either, but perpetuate an inaccurate and untrue stereotype of umpires as "bad," "unfair," and "inconsistent."
It takes a certain degree of courage and fortitude to get out there day after day, wishing only to contribute to the safe and successful playing of a baseball game while simultaneously having to withstand the slings and arrows of fans who observe the action from afar and decide that it's always the umpires who are to blame for the players' deficiencies and mistakes. I say, let's appreciate the umpires a little more, and encourage a more mature and insightful response from the players and the bloggers who defend them when things don't go their way.
Good points, Perry. I don't know if he was arguing the ejection per se, since the rule is firm about touching them. I'll take you word for Vanover being a good umpire, but Joyce is considered one of the bet and look what happened to him. I think everyone appreciates what umpires do, at all levels of sport, but you also can't look at big league baseball this season and say something isn't wrong.
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