Big League Bullying: The Conspiracy To Humiliate MLB Umpire Steve Fields

Baseball consensus holds that umpires only get noticed when they make a bad call. Steve Fields’ career as a major league ump was bookended by two calls that put him in the spotlight. But he went to his grave insisting both were right.

His first momentous call came during the umpires strike of 1979. National League officials, Fields said, told him that crossing a picket line was the only way he’d ever achieve his boyhood dream of making it to the big leagues. He was the oldest minor-league ump in the land at the time, and he believed what he was told. So he crossed the line.

And after all those years in the bushes, Fields suddenly found himself at the highest level of his profession. But because he’d made what his new peers regarded as a deal with the devil to get there, Fields’ run in the major leagues was anything but dreamy. Instead, he encountered seasons of hate and hazing from the veteran members of the very fraternity he’d desperately wanted to join for so long.

“Since 1979, Fields has lived out one of the ugliest episodes in baseball history—the ostracism of the union umpires,” wrote Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post.

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Deadspin: What Do We Think Of This Old Video Of An Umpire Handling An Extremely Pissed Terry Collins?

We need more of these umpire sound clips and less of A-Rod repeatedly exclaiming, “The Toddfather.”

The context is important. Utley’s notorious takeout slide in Game 2 of the 2015 National League Division Series nuked the right fibula of Mets infielder Ruben Tejada. Utley was suspended for the next two games of the series, and ultimately MLB instituted what has come to be called the Chase Utley Rule, essentially banning (but not eliminating) takeout slides. Syndergaard’s pitch in 2016 was assumed to be an effort at retaliation, even all that time later. Possibly it was just a wild fastball? Either way, as you can imagine, Terry Collins was quite pissed.

Maybe you have seen this next video before. I have not, and I find it absolutely fascinating. It shows the same sequence, but this time with clear audio of crew chief Tom Hallion interacting first with Syndergaard, and then a fuming Terry Collins: ...

So what do we think, other than that this is a very cool look at what’s being said in those blustery manager-umpire showdowns? I’ll admit, I always imagined the umpires saying #### like DON’T YOU ###### RAISE YOUR ###### VOICE AT ME I’M ###### IN CHARGE HERE TERRY! This is very much not that. What say you?

It’s quittin time - the tale of an umpire

I have no idea the quality of the data but it’s interesting. I think it common knowledge that zones expand when the result of the game is no longer in question. This is deeper.