School fined in umpire beaning
June 21, 2008 @ 8:19 p.m. by Joannaby joanna
I was surfing the net — while I’m supposed to be editing copy tonight — and found this story and this column on the Georgia baseball players who allegedly conspired to have a pitch hit an umpire in the face.
I was blown away reading this story because it’s so unbelievable. I mean, is this really what this world is coming to? It’s bad enough that parents are attacking coaches and umps and referees — physically as well as verbally — but now the kids obviously think it’s OK to do this? I truly makes me sick to my stomach.
We all get angry. It’s a part of life. But when does the breakdown occur when you pass from — I’m pissed and I’m yelling, maybe even throwing something — to trying to hurt someone? It boggles my mind.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I saw this pitch, if It is the same one which I think it is, the catcher is sure a good actor. He said he thought a curve ball was comin and the pitch was fastball so it didnt break. Thats a pretty well put together story
June 21st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
That is unbelieveable — from the video it looks like there was no attempt at all to catch it. And it sounds like there had been lots of poor sportsmanship by the team preceding the pitch to the homeplate umpire’s head. I don’t know what this world is coming to when high school kids think this is the right way to respond if everything doesn’t go their way in a sporting event. They must have been raised by wolves.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm
There was an article in Sports Illustrated in the 80s that talked about this as a tactic some professional catchers had used to get an umpire’s attention (it even had a cartoonish drawing of a ball going over a ducking catcher’s mitt and hitting the umpire in the midsection). So the idea is not new. But the danger is not cartoonish. What if the ball had hit the umpire in the throat? Or right on the collarbone and splintered it. Or the umpire had reflexively turned his head and been hit under the ear? The cute little duck by the catcher would’ve looked monstrous rather than just stupid.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
This happens more often than you think. The fact that it was a fastball and that it hit him in the face is the disturbing part. This has been a part of the game for a long time. I’m not condoning it, but simply stating fact. The world hasn’t changed. It’s now just become a bigger deal……which I’m not sure why.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Come on is right. This does happen and more than you would think. Pitching for 19 years I can say that I was asked more than once to do it by both players and coaches at college and professional levels. The kids from Georgia did it poorly and that is what got them in trouble. If the catcher would not have blocked in the dirt but just wiffed with his glove noone would have ever noticed or cared. The practice is dangerous and really doesn’t do anything but anger an already biased umpire, but it has been probably around since the beginning of a masked umpire behind the plate. Remember they used to sit in chairs.