Baseball is simply the best.
I love that grown men managers who are wearing a team uniform but aren’t actually playing in the game sometimes get really angry and storm out towards the umpire.
First, imagine other sports following along with baseball and having head coaches wear the same jersey as the team. Imagine Andy Reid wearing the tight jersey of the Kansas City Chiefs, or Greg Popovich wearing a sleeveless San Antonio Spurs uniform.
In every other sport, it would make no sense and look hilarious, but in baseball, it is just tradition. And speaking of tradition…
Nothing beats a manager who feels as though the home plate umpire is out to get them. The situation usually worsens throughout the game (especially if you are losing), and emotions finally erupt to the surface and give us viral moments like this one.
Washington Nationals manager Davey Martinez absolutely lost it on the home plate umpire for some botched ball and strike calls. This video below is one of the calls that Martinez particularly did not appreciate at the bottom of the fourth inning:
This was one of the calls he was actually upset about. pic.twitter.com/qdXW0FApnI
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 22, 2023
Bring out the robot umps already…
Nationals pitcher Jake Irvin was on the mound in the next inning of the game and threw a pitch in a similar position of that missed call from the video above, but it was called a ball, and that was the last straw for the Nationals manager.
In classic “if you are going to call it on that end, you have to call it on this end” fashion, Martinez first started jawing at the umpire from the dugout before escalating the situation and storming out onto the field.
After the pair yelled at each other for just a bit, the home plate umpire decided to emphatically eject Martinez from the game, which just made the manager that much more irate.
And that is usually expected at that point. Once you get ejected, you can’t get “even more ejected,” so managers tend to get their money’s worth when they are thrown out.
The volcanic level of the outburst combined with the low attendance of the game (therefore, not as much crowd noise) made for quite the entertaining “manager gets ejected” video.
Check it out:
I absolutely love both the “home plate dirt brush” and the “lay down behind home plate” moves from Martinez.
All in all, it was an absolute masterclass in getting thrown out of a game.
Hang it up in the Louvre, as they say.
