Retro Rhubarbs

[Edgy MD]

Rick Sutcliffe, Harry Carey, Don Zimmer, Jerry Crawford, and Joe West.



Zimmer looks like he's just going to explode into smithereens once or twice. There's a few problems in that even though Riverfront is packed, it's still Riverfront, so you can't pick up crowd noise, and you're not picking up pieces of the fight either. Zimmer's a pro, and he seems to have a sense of where the hot camera is, so he positions himself to mostly be screened from Crawford, and therefore keep the league's office from reading his lips. Nonetheless, there's clearly a whole bunch of bullshits and not a few **********s.



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The world is probably a better place now. At least the baseball world. But it's hard not to miss a world where (1) five teams thought it correct to put a madman like Zimmer in charge of their teams at one point or another, and in fact, there were half a dozen madmen managers cycling around the league at any one point, and folks thought things were just fine that way; and (2) part of their jobs was to absolutely lose their minds on the field a half a dozen times a year, and tear an umpire to bits. And it was almost invariably during day games, too. Like it was a special treat for the ladies.



Harry, for his part, just disappears during the most heated part of the argument. He's like "Let's all just pour ourselves a cold one and enjoy this shit."

[MFS62]

If every manager reacted like this to Angel Hernandez every time Hernandez tries to impose himself on a ballgame (as in every time he makes a call) maybe MLB would be forced to deal with him.

Later

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

No question a great performance by both guys. You can really tell with Crawford, who gets all chin-to-chin then calmly chews his gum until it's time for the encore and finds another gear.

[Edgy MD]

"DON'T YOU CALL ME A FUCKING **********!!"



You could call an ump anything in the book, but once you went there, all bets were off.

[dgwphotography]

Edgy MD wrote: "DON'T YOU CALL ME A FUCKING **********!!"

"I SAID IT WAS A COCKSUCKING CALL!!"

[Edgy MD]

"OH, I'M SORRY!! I THOUGHT YOU WERE SPEAKING THE NATURE OF MY CHARACTER AND BEHAVIOR, AND NOT THE QUALITY OF MY JUDGMENT IN THIS SINGLE FUCKING FLEETING INSTANCE!!! THAT'S FAR LESS FUCKING DEROGATORY!! MY BAD!!"

[Frayed Knot]

Couple of umpiring observations there:



On Jerry Crawford -- there's no way he could have missed any of the ball/strike calls on Sutcliffe because he swore, back when he was interviewed the HBO: REAL SPORTS story concerning Robo-ump a year or

two ago, that HE NEVER MISSED A SINGLE CALL! In fact, he went on to claim, none of the umpires he worked with ever missed one either so there's no way the electronic version could be an improvement.



Joe West -- my total non-baseball fan brother in law somehow found himself down a YouTube rabbit hole recently scanning baseball argument & blooper reel kind of stuff and made a few observations that

he stored away so as to ask me about next time we talked.

1) he found out, for the very first time I believe, that Joe West was an umpire which is only significant because he went to high school with Joe West. Didn't really know him as West is a couple years older but

knew of him as West was the upper-classman/star quarterback in town which tends to get you noticed & remembered, particularly so in the south (eastern NC)

2) he further hit upon some sites which informed him that the same Joe West is said to be the worst umpire in baseball so he wanted to know if that was true. "Apparently" he said, "the consensus seems to

be that it's either West or some guy named Angel something".



I got a kick out of a total non-fan, having probably never spent 30 seconds of his life thinking about MLB umpires, hitting upon those as his first facts just from a half-hour or so of mindless web surfing.

[Edgy MD]

I also like that Joe West is a human wall, but he took his sweet time interjecting himself between Crawford and Zim.



Carey doesn't say anything about it, but my guess is that Zim was steamed about that checked-swing strike three. Crawford also took his time making that call.

[Edgy MD]

Whatever you do, never point at Earl Weaver's Hall-of-Fame belly.



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[seawolf17]

Ron Luciano's trilogy of books are some of my favorite baseball books, because they're full of stories about crazy arguments.

[Edgy MD]

It's interesting how some of baseball's most notorious red-asses come from the Terry Collins mold: undersized guys who never made it out of the minors as players, or barely did.

[MFS62]

IIRC, Mets managers over they years had some doozies with Lee Weyer (my friend called him "the bully") but I can't think of any specific one.

Later

[Edgy MD]

Augie Donatelli mucks up the call and is immediately surrounded by half the Mets dugout, Baseball Hall-of-Famers and Mets Hall-of-Famers everywhere.



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Willie Mays had the better angle. When they tell you that Willie Mays did everything right on the baseball field, they weren't kidding.