With no baseball, it can be very difficult to find something positive to write about major league baseball, especially with both the players and ownership bickering over a deal to play a shortened season this year.
Well, now we have some good news!
MLB veteran umpire Angel Hernandez is in deep trouble. Once again it has to do with a bad call he was involved with.
I know what you are thinking – this is Angel Hernandez. There is about a 75% chance he will make a bad call in every game he umpires.
However, this has nothing to do with on the field calls. During a July 2019 game between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, there was a 14-minute delay regarding moving a pitcher to a fielding position. Hernandez was the crew chief. Chief Baseball Officer and Special Assistant to the Commissioner Joe Torre, called the umpires involved to discuss the incident. Apparently, after Hernandez was through with his call, he stayed on the line to eavesdrop on what Ed Hickox was saying.
Once it was discovered that Hernandez had eavesdropped, his story apparently went all over the place. First, he acknowledged that he was aware that each call was to be performed separately. Then he started making excuses. One excuse is that he stayed on to make sure no further questions needed his expertise to answer.
I assume there were no questions being asked about ointments for thin skin. Or, maybe Torre had a question of how to properly be inconsistent in the strike zone. I know, he must have wanted to know what it was like to have three calls overturned on replay in the same game. (Hickox wouldn’t have been able to answer that one).
Angel Hernandez may be on his way out of baseball. Torre demoted him from the crew chief. This is not something that a guy with thin skin will take lightly. He once sued the league for racial discrimination. He claimed he was not being promoted or getting World Series assignments because of his Cuban heritage.
Hey Angel, sometimes you don’t get promoted for job performance or lack thereof. After all, you have ejected players in spring training games. Let me repeat that – SPRING TRAINING GAMES!
Unions will protect employees in about 99% of all grievances or dismissals. But there are inner grumblings that leadership in the umpires circles are not particularly pleased with his performance. He may be on his own in this case. Rightly demoted, his arrogance may drive him to just retire. Although I am sure that another lawsuit is being drawn up as we speak.
For those of us who have long called for the league to rid itself of a bad umpire, the wait may be finally over.
All because of a bad call, yet not one on a field.
Featured Image: Brace Hemmelgarn/Getty Images
