Schilling on umpires

[Frobby]

I heard some fascinating excerpts of an interview Curt Schilling gave about umpires yesterday. He said he had 5-6 notepads full of notes about the different umpires, both their strike zone tendencies and things about their personalities, reactions to certain kinds of things, etc. He really put a lot of time into understanding who was calling the balls and strikes and what he could do to adjust to their zones and get the umps to call things his way. He also didn't hesitate in the interview to say that everyone knows who the good and bad umpires are, and which ones will makes a bad ball/strike call out of spite if you question them, etc. He said even the crew members know, and the good ones will try to cover for the bad ones' mistakes. He singled out C.B. Bucknor and Greg Gibson as bad umpires (I was surprised he'd be that forthright even though he's out of the game now).

Here's a recording of the interview: http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=6739035

[SammyBirdland]

and which ones will makes a bad ball/strike call out of spite if you question them, etc.

We just had an instance of this on Sunday, July 3, game 3 against the Braves. Strike 2 came across the plate and Chipper assumed it was a ball, dropped the bat and started walking to 1B. The ump was visibly mad about being showed up like that and having to call him back. Some words were said. Needless to say, here was the next pitch for "strike 3" to end the game.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/55LPU.png" />

[Can_of_corn]

We just had an instance of this on Sunday, July 3, game 3 against the Braves. Strike 2 came across the plate and Chipper assumed it was a ball, dropped the bat and started walking to 1B. The ump was visibly mad about being showed up like that and having to call him back. Some words were said. Needless to say, here was the next pitch for "strike 3" to end the game.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/55LPU.png" />

After watching Maddox and Glavine pitch for all of those years Chipper should have known that pitch was a strike...

[O's are Legends]

Chipper after the O’s game – “MLB umpires are substandard in this league and have been for a while.”