Good week for bad calls

It was a bad week to be an umpire -- like any day is a good one for the men and women in blue.

Major League ump Jerry Meals called a little over 600 balls and strikes behind home plate in Atlanta, but it was the call that ended the game in the wee hours of Wednesday morning that caused a stir.

In the bottom of the 19th inning, Meals called Atlanta's Julio Lugo safe as the winning run. Problem was Pittsburgh catcher Mike McKenry had plenty of time to apply the tag on the fielder's choice and relays showed his sweep tag "ever-so-slightly" caught Lugo's leg.

The Pirates, who are in the thick of a pennant race, filed a formal complaint with MLB.

"Most in the game recognize that the human element always will be part of baseball and instant replay can never replace all judgement calls by umpires," said Joe Torre, MLB executive vice president for baseball operations, to the Associated Press.

Meals, to his credit, later admitted he got the call wrong.

"It's baseball," Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez told the AP. "It's almost 2 o'clock in the morning. The man had the plate for six, almost seven hours.

"It's a shame because Jerry Meals is a hell of an umpire."

Gonzalez, by the way, was ejected by Meals earlier in the game for arguing balls and strikes.

At least no punches were thrown, like at a 10-and-under softball game in Connecticut.

The coach and his wife were charge with breach of peace, says an AP story, after the coach was ejected from a game and then hit an umpire supervisor trying to diffuse things.

Maybe it would have been better had the coach just spit on the ump in the first place, like say Roberto Alomar did in 1996.

Fifteen years later, Alomar invited the umpire, John Hirschbeck, to his induction to the baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. Hirschbeck, however, had to work the Cardinals-Pirates game.

There are only nine umpires in the Hall of Fame and Doug Harvey was the first in 11 years to go in last summer.

Can you name one other? Probably not. They're the nameless, faceless people that go about their jobs until they make a mistake -- Jim Joyce, Don Denkinger and now Jerry Meals.

The NCAA wants to do away with those mistakes and plans on starting instant replay on an

experimental basis for certain calls during the College World Series, much like MLB umps can already review home run calls.

It took about four minutes Tuesday night to determine that Albert Pujols hit a home run in the Cardinals-Astros game after the ball landed behind the wall.

And those umps do it for a living. The youth and high school officials do it for the love of the game and some extra gas money.

In Tuesday's edition, a letter to the editor was published asking for good umpires for the Poplar Bluff Park Department games.

"This summer (the players) were taught that the umpires are the reason you win or lose," the letter said.

The umps don't determine the outcome of games or teach lessons, they just call what they see. The teaching part is up to coaches and parents.

So here's the lesson of a bad call: Life can be unfair.

As a parent of a Little Leaguer myself, I saw calls both good and bad this summer but many came from coaches or the crowd. Sitting in the stands does not offer the same view as the umpire and second-guessing a call is bad sportsmanship.

Is there room for improvement? Sure, on both sides of the fence.

Forget the fact that the league is free, finding good umpires is tough enough at any level.

There are 84 pages in the 2011 Official Baseball Rules book from MLB, not to mention the rules specific to the league itself. And unlike the major leagues, which has four umps working a game, there are only two Park Dept. umps.

This town has a history of producing good, passionate umpires and officials and many of them started working Park Dept. games learning the craft.

Hopefully, that won't change because there would be no games to play.