My week at umpire school, where everyone wants a thankless job

I’m blowing it.

I can sense Dana DeMuth’s disappointment, and there’s nothing worse than disappointing Dana DeMuth, whose 35-year tenure as a big-league umpire earned him the dubious privilege of helming this cage session. I can’t really see his disappointment, though, because my grossly oversized umpire’s mask keeps nudging my glasses further and further down the bridge of my nose.

Not being able to see also makes it difficult to determine whether a pitch is a ball or strike. And, as I’ve learned in the last few days, that’s already pretty damn hard.

Here’s what it’s like to umpire the longest postseason game in MLB history

LOS ANGELES – Moments after he’d put one last baseball into play, watched that fly, then stayed just long enough to ensure Max Muncy completed his journey, Ted Barrett, the plate umpire for Game 3 of the World Series, was offered for his first meal in many hours the choice of steak or fish.

“I had both,” he said.

Not 15 hours later, he was again in a room behind the Dodgers dugout with his five crewmates.

In case you’re curious to know what it feels like to umpire a seven-hour baseball game….

NFL reportedly fires down judge in middle of season

In an unprecedented move, the NFL has let one of its game officials go in the middle of the season.

First reported by FootballZebras.com, NFL down judge Hugo Cruz has been fired for performance reasons.

Cruz was responsible for a big mistake in Week 6 when he missed an obvious false start by Chargers left tackle Russell Okung on a scoring play against the Browns. He didn’t work in Week 7 and according to ESPN, there was no indication Cruz was involved in any off-field incidents or that his firing was in any way disciplinary.

Not baseball related precisely but interesting to see a sport terminating an official during the season for poor performance.

Umpires Ejections and Player Ethnicity: An Analysis

In looking at the data overall, the percentage of ejections of nonwhite players exceeds nonwhite players’ league representation — meaning there were more ejections of nonwhite players than league representation would predict occur if ejections were equally as likely to happen to nonwhite as white players. Similarly, ejections of white players fall short of what league representation would predict.

When looked at in totality, ejections of nonwhite players far exceed what league representation predicts (p<.01), with an effect size approaching medium (.277). So umpires disproportionately eject nonwhite players. Perhaps most tellingly, a narrow majority of player ejections in the past 10 years have been of nonwhite players (442) compared with ejections of white players (418).

An automated strike zone’s looming, and the Rockies — like all of baseball — are split on the prospect of a robot calling pitches

What comes first- us turning on the robot umpires, or vice versa?

There’s an evolving opinion in baseball that has come to the forefront once again this month, as it has so often in recent every-pitch-matters, Statcast-tracked Septembers.

The strike zone, many in the game and the Twittersphere say, is not safe in the hands of man.

Such was the uproar after the Rockies’ 4-2 loss to open the series against the Los Angeles Dodgers this past weekend, where Colorado fans ripped the lackluster performance of home-plate umpire Andy Fletcher. The ump ended up face to face with Charlie Blackmon in the ninth inning after ringing up the center fielder on three called strikes that, according to Statcast, were all out of the zone.