Eli5 Why do baseball players & coaches always argue with the referee?

Question

I always see clips of baseball players arguing with a referee and then getting ejected, but I’ve never once seen a coach or player convince a referee they’re wrong.

Why bother? Surely you know that you’re not gonna change their mind and that you can get ejected pretty easily and that gotta be worse than stifling your ego for a moment just copping the decision.

I’m Australian and don’t really watch baseball so I apologise if any nomenclature is incorrect.

In: 23

Answer 1

In the refereed sports I’ve played (none of which were team sports), some people would argue/dispute/debate with the ref/judge after a call, even at the risk of being penalized, and even knowing there was zero chance of reversal. As others note, yes, there’s a charged atmosphere at a tournament, and some athletes are in perpetual aggression mode once they’re in the court, so it makes the confrontation worse.

However, there’s a practical purpose: you would want to know *why* the ref/judge made a call against you that you disagree with, so that you can figure out what movement you made that was either insufficient or invisible to them, and then you can make a slight correction when action resumes. At lower levels of sport this can be quite educational, while at upper levels you’d almost certainly blame the ref/judge’s poor observation for having to make an adjustment on your refined technique, and you’d revert back to your original motions in front of the next ref/judge.

In fencing where there is a very low threshold for when rudeness and angry outbursts get severely penalized, I saw a guy in a major finals match who, after two or three calls against him, started making body language like he was going to whack the judge. So he stomps toward the judge with a pumped chest and mask off, but then just asks in a clear calm voice what happened, says calmly what he thought he was actually doing, thanks the judge, and then storms with arched shoulders back to the start. It was an interesting combo of aggressive catharsis — yet always under just enough moderation to not be penalized — with a tactical use of confronting the judge.