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.
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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.
Because the referees are full of shit especially in American tackleball 🏈. Countless times I have seen refs completely undermined the flow of the game and take away plays that were essential.
Because the referees are full of shit especially in American tackleball 🏈. Countless times I have seen refs completely undermined the flow of the game and take away plays that were essential.
Because the referees are full of shit especially in American tackleball 🏈. Countless times I have seen refs completely undermined the flow of the game and take away plays that were essential.
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.
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.
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.
In baseball it’s done for entertainment to prevent the people in the stands from offing themselves or each other from freakin’ fatal boredom.
In baseball it’s done for entertainment to prevent the people in the stands from offing themselves or each other from freakin’ fatal boredom.
In baseball it’s done for entertainment to prevent the people in the stands from offing themselves or each other from freakin’ fatal boredom.
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