Umpires: Omnipotence & Imperfect Panoptic Vision

[GAME:  4/25/2007, Mariners @ A's]

Wretched umpires.  Inflated egos.  Heartless (as they should be).  But (at least immediately) unaccountable.  Unaccountable to fans.  Unaccountable to teams.  Unaccountable to facts.  Unaccountable to themselves.  A tyrannical secret-society, all-powerful, all-controlling, never-seeing.  Rare appeals, rare reconsiderations, no thought, knee-jerk reactions.  Usually right but habitually wrong.  A failed panoptical system.  Trust it no longer.

It is the bottom of the ninth.

[GAME:  4/25/2007, Mariners @ A's]

Wretched umpires.  Inflated egos.  Heartless (as they should be).  But (at least immediately) unaccountable.  Unaccountable to fans.  Unaccountable to teams.  Unaccountable to facts.  Unaccountable to themselves.  A tyrannical secret-society, all-powerful, all-controlling, never-seeing.  Rare appeals, rare reconsiderations, no thought, knee-jerk reactions.  Usually right but habitually wrong.  A failed panoptical system.  Trust it no longer.

It is the bottom of the ninth.  No outs.  0-1 and Stewart grounds past the 2nd baseman and into the outfield.  0-1 and Ellis smacks a deep fly to left field that’s snagged a few feet shy of the warning track.  1 out.   Jarrod Washburn is seconds away from shutting out the A’s at home.  Chavez is at the plate, Piazza is on deck.

Chavez swaggers into the batter’s box.  Piazza makes his way into the on-deck circle.  A breaking ball, no swing, strike one.  Chavez swings at misses at the second pitch, a ball up in the zone.  0-2.  The next pitch is outside, 1-2.  Washburn’s fourth pitch is popped high into the foul area off right-field.  An A might have had a better chance at making the play but the ball falls a few feet short of the Mariners’ 2nd baseman in the bullpen.  Out of play.  Outside, 2-2.  Fouled away, still 2-2.  Then another pitch spoiled, 2-2 again.  Yet another, then another.  A battle.  Still 2-2.  10th pitch of the at-bat:  a slow grounder to the second baseman.  He wheels and throws the ball to second hoping to turn a double play.  Stewart is forced out at second.  Seattle’s short stop hops to avoid Stewart’s slide and quickly relays the ball to first.  But too much time has passed.  Chavez is safe by a step or two.  The inning continues.

But not for first base umpire Jim Wolf.  Omnipotent and imperfect, Wolf ends the game.  In the end, his deficient opinion is the only one that matters.

The inning does not continue.  Voices and actions silenced by ignorant calls.

While you can fault the A’s offense for not hitting throughout the game, you cannot fault them here.  Doing so is simply being apologetic for the meager service of Wolf.

This is not an argument for instant replay.  And it is not only an argument against Wolf or against one call he made.  It is an argument for quality, and above all, honesty.  One may rattle on about how umpires "do the best they can" as long as they please.  Bad calls are bad calls.  And excuses for bad umpires and the bad calls that they make are just that.

Oakland fans moan, Seattle fans cheer.  But we should all be miserable.

The inning does not continue.

Seattle Mariners 2, Oakland Athletics 0.

AARON ANDERSON 4/26/2007