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
Honestly? Tradition.
Make a show of your distaste for the call and let the guy know he’s made a shit call, in your honest and totally unbiased opinion.
American Baseball strangely has a lot of indefinable little cultural quirks that you really never would understand unless you’ve spent some time in those circles.
Even if saying something doesn’t change the prior call, letting the ump know about dissatisfaction might keep them a hair more attentive for the rest of the game.
And a lot of the argumentation happens *after* a player has already been ejected. So they get ejected, and then start yelling and getting in their face. There is no consequence, you’re already out, so that’s when you say your piece.
I mean, this happens in basically any sport with subjective refereeing. Sports involve highly charged, competitive atmospheres, and refs have to make split-second judgment calls. Players and coaches get pissed if they think they’re getting the short end of the stick, and argue even if there’s no logical benefit.
One thing I can say about baseball is, aside from being ejected from the game, there’s not much in the way of a disincentive from arguing. Compare that to basketball (technical fouls=free throws), American football (unsportsmanlike conduct penalties), soccer (red card=playing with 10 men), in which excessive arguing has immediate detrimental effects on your team.
Most of it is just peacocking – it doesn’t strike me as being that different from the sorts of melodrama you see in WWE or similar entertainment.
I mean, this happens in basically any sport with subjective refereeing. Sports involve highly charged, competitive atmospheres, and refs have to make split-second judgment calls. Players and coaches get pissed if they think they’re getting the short end of the stick, and argue even if there’s no logical benefit.
One thing I can say about baseball is, aside from being ejected from the game, there’s not much in the way of a disincentive from arguing. Compare that to basketball (technical fouls=free throws), American football (unsportsmanlike conduct penalties), soccer (red card=playing with 10 men), in which excessive arguing has immediate detrimental effects on your team.
I mean, this happens in basically any sport with subjective refereeing. Sports involve highly charged, competitive atmospheres, and refs have to make split-second judgment calls. Players and coaches get pissed if they think they’re getting the short end of the stick, and argue even if there’s no logical benefit.
One thing I can say about baseball is, aside from being ejected from the game, there’s not much in the way of a disincentive from arguing. Compare that to basketball (technical fouls=free throws), American football (unsportsmanlike conduct penalties), soccer (red card=playing with 10 men), in which excessive arguing has immediate detrimental effects on your team.
Most of it is just peacocking – it doesn’t strike me as being that different from the sorts of melodrama you see in WWE or similar entertainment.
Most of it is just peacocking – it doesn’t strike me as being that different from the sorts of melodrama you see in WWE or similar entertainment.
There’s three reasons. The first is that you’re pissed off and you don’t really care.
The second is that it can help you later on in the game or series. If the umpire gets an earful because he called that pitch a strike when it should have been a ball there’s a chance that he’s going to be more attentive to that for the rest of the game. Umpires work in teams, and while each umpire does a different job each day, you may have the same team for an entire series, so the other umpires may be more attentive to that issue as well.
The third is that sometimes a well timed ejection can change the energy of a game. It can get the crowd going or fire up the team to see their manager out there fighting for them. There’s been plenty of times where a manager went out to argue with an umpire with the explicit goal of getting ejected to fire up the team. There’s even been a few instances where a manager explicitly told an umpire that they were trying to get ejected and the umpire doing so.
EDIT: There is a fourth reason as well, which is that some players and managers are crazy. For example Yankees manager Billy Martin, known for being ejected frequently, was a great manager who was also, for lack of a better word, a complete psycho. Martin was the Yankees manager *five different times*, all under the same owner, George Steinbrenner (who was also crazy). George Steinbrenner hired Billy Martin, fired him, re-hired him, fired him again, re-hired him again, fired him yet again, hired him for a fourth time, fired him a fourth time, hired him a *fifth* time, then fired him for a fifth (and final) time after Martin got blitzed at a hotel bar in Baltimore and fought one of his players, who broke Martin’s arm.
There’s three reasons. The first is that you’re pissed off and you don’t really care.
The second is that it can help you later on in the game or series. If the umpire gets an earful because he called that pitch a strike when it should have been a ball there’s a chance that he’s going to be more attentive to that for the rest of the game. Umpires work in teams, and while each umpire does a different job each day, you may have the same team for an entire series, so the other umpires may be more attentive to that issue as well.
The third is that sometimes a well timed ejection can change the energy of a game. It can get the crowd going or fire up the team to see their manager out there fighting for them. There’s been plenty of times where a manager went out to argue with an umpire with the explicit goal of getting ejected to fire up the team. There’s even been a few instances where a manager explicitly told an umpire that they were trying to get ejected and the umpire doing so.
EDIT: There is a fourth reason as well, which is that some players and managers are crazy. For example Yankees manager Billy Martin, known for being ejected frequently, was a great manager who was also, for lack of a better word, a complete psycho. Martin was the Yankees manager *five different times*, all under the same owner, George Steinbrenner (who was also crazy). George Steinbrenner hired Billy Martin, fired him, re-hired him, fired him again, re-hired him again, fired him yet again, hired him for a fourth time, fired him a fourth time, hired him a *fifth* time, then fired him for a fifth (and final) time after Martin got blitzed at a hotel bar in Baltimore and fought one of his players, who broke Martin’s arm.
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