The game of baseball will never be the same.
Today, we witnessed one of the most outrageous-yet-warranted crash outs that the MLB has ever seen. You’d think that baseball managers would learn to keep a level head considering they have 162 games across the entire season to worry about. However, sometimes knowing that you have so many games leads to a situations where managers don’t mind getting thrown out of one if the situation calls for it.
The Arizona Diamondbacks were facing off against the San Francisco Giants when a clear example of base-path-interference took place as Giants infielder Christian Koss rounded second base and ran right into the back of Diamondbacks infielder Jordan Lawlar. Only issue was… the umpires initially called Koss out at second base.
As you’ll hear the Giants broadcasters explain (guess they could be a little biased), the situation could not have been a more clear instance of interference:
After a period of review, the umpires decided that Lawlar did, in fact, interfere with Koss’ base running, and the ruling on the play was changed to safe rather than calling Koss out. Seems pretty clear and evident that was the right call… right?
Not if you ask Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo. After the play was overturned – in favor of the San Francisco Giants – the irate and steaming Lovullo showed no Love-ullo (thanks, I’ll be here all week) to the umps. Seconds after the out at second base was changed to a call of safe, the D-Backs manager stormed out to have a word with the umpires.
And frankly, I always love seeing a middle-aged MLB manager angrily walk up to an umpire to tear them a new one. In my humble opinion, it’s these type of outbursts that make it to where we can never, under any circumstance, replace umpires with robots. We must always give the baseball manager the ability to make their own human error after witnessing another human make an error, then have it all conclude in the manager being thrown out of the game.
It didn’t take long for this MLB umpire to say that he had heard enough. Lovullo was emphatically ejected from the ballgame… and that’s when things really got spicy. The Arizona Diamondbacks manager responded to being thrown out of the ballpark by pointing out every umpire that was out on the field and motioning for them to also be ejected from the game.
Take a look:
My first question is… can Lovullo do that?
Technically, the manager does have the ability to point at umpires and gesture that they should also be ejected. Does doing so actually mean anything? No, it does not. But it definitely gets the “I could not disagree with you all more about that call” point across. There’s no question about that.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ejected manager respond like Lovullo did. It’s customary for managers to “get their money’s worth” once they’ve already been thrown out, but turning it around on the umps and saying they are thrown out too? That’s cinematic. It’s glorious. It’s meaningless, but somehow simultaneously meaningful.
Once again, I ask… how can you not be romantic about baseball?
