BigYaz:

I’m sorry you don’t like me and choose to insult me.  Now leave me alone.

Craig Calcaterra:

I don’t have the means to even research this, let alone to conduct any rigorous investigation.  I’m not a paid baseball reporter.  I’m not a paid analyst for ‘Prospectus’ or THT or Yahoo.  The extent of my research and analysis comes in the off-season (to fill the baseball vacuum) and, even then, it’s very crude compared to the works of the more reputable “alternative” baseball media.  And even they can only do so much.

What you need is, ya know, real reporters.  Not Buster Olney’s latest writing about steroids or how the Blue Jays wanted three prospects instead of two for Halladay.  Not Jeff Passan’s endless agonizing over 6-year-old confidential employee drug tests.  You need smart, tenacious investigators who will research the phenomenon and interview relevant subjects and provide historical context and all of the rest of that stuff.

But they’re not covering any of this.  ESPN censored Buck Showalter.  Announcers glibly joke about high-leverage bad calls, “His is the only opinion that counts, ha ha!”  They lie for the umpires in many instances (for example, in the infamous Twins @ A’s game where the baserunner was called out at home, watch the A’s broadcast.  They initially say that the runner was clearly safe.  Then, two seconds later, they say it was just a close play and “he was out!”

The NBA got away with this for years….including in the Western Conference Finals! (And let me say: game-fixing was obvious.  Shamefully obvious.  Media never raised an eyebrow.)  This demonstrates that major sports leagues both can pull this off, that the media won’t investigate, that fans won’t care, and that, if and when they get caught, the attention will be 1/10,000th the coverage of, say, the “Kobe-Shaq” feud or the “steroids” scandal.   

The bottom line is that there’s a good body of evidence that something is up with the umpiring.  You’ve heard me write about this for several months here at THT, and now we have Chipper Jones say that there was “no doubt” that an ump was rigging a game.  Could this phenomenon be mere coincidence (I’m watching bad games and umpires are having bad years)?  Yes, it certainly could.  But I think that that’s very unlikely. 

One way or another, the fact that MLB is clearly covering up for corrupt and incompetent umpires (the fist-pumping, the statement to Jeter, baiting players, and a whole army of horrible on-field calls) shows that MLB needs to, in a best case scenario, completely overhaul their policing of umpiring.  In a best case, corruption-free scenario, the head of the umpires should be fired (because of failure to penalize umpires) and the umpire auditing and accountability system must be re-built and made more effective.

But even that won’t happen.  With ESPN censoring the issue and fans ignoring it, nothing is gonna happen. 

And, again, I strongly suspect that there’s something far, far darker at work here.