Hour 2: Judge Effect

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**Michael Kay** (0:25)
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**Michael Kay** (0:28)
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**Michael Kay** (0:29)
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**Michael Kay** (0:37)
We're in the greatest city in the world tonight. Aaron Judge returns after a three month stint on the IL. Now the way you want to look at it, is this the 100th day? So if this is the 100th day, he's, I mean, you can't write this. You can't make it up. He would have missed 99 days. The number on his back? Kind of weird, right? We'll see what he does against the Rockies tonight. So, I come down kind of on both sides of this next topic.
See if you can follow me on this. So, the Rockies are playing the Cardinals. And a kid, Hansel Rincon Pitcher, making his Major League debut. He comes in. Doug Eddings is the home plate on fire.
And the kid's hat is tilted a bit. And Eddings makes a big deal of it. And makes the kid like straighten his hat out.
And then there are quotes from him.
Nobody's going to wear their uniform like that on my field. Some of these umpires, man, it's not your field. If anything, it's the players' field. It's not your field. You're an umpire. This is not your field. And that is an umpire who's feeling his oats, who thinks he's way more important than he is. Now, umpires are important. I'm not diminishing what they do. But when you go out of your lane to tell a guy how to wear his hat, I mean, did anybody tell CC. Sabathia to straighten his hat? There's a lot of pictures. Remember Fernando Rodney? His hat was really crooked. And we find out that he did it because that, you know, his late dad used to wear his hat like that when he played. So, it was an homage to his dad. So, be careful before you knock anybody for the way they wear your uniform. Now, Eddings essentially, you know, met with two members of the media afterward and said, you know, the batter said, you know, what's the deal with his hat? Well, the batter at the time was Hunter Goodman, the real good catcher for the Rockies. And after Eddings used that as an excuse, Hunter Goodman the next day said, I never said a word. I have enough trouble going up there and hitting. I don't care what the guy's wearing or how his hat is. I never said a word. Now, Eddings never said the word Hunter Goodman, never said those words. But he certainly intimated it by saying that, you know, the guy at the plate, Hunter Goodman said, it's not true. I never said it. This is an umpire who's overstepping his authority. He's overstepping his authority. Now, an umpire is right if the laces on a glove are flapping around, or if the guy's sleeve has been cut to make it looser for him, and if it's a distraction to the batter, he has a right to make them change the glove or change the uniform top. He does. But you do something like this, and the kid, by the way, got his butt handed to him. And then the next day, Eddings, probably scalded by the league, goes up to Rincon and kind of, you know, looks like he's apologizing. The only problem is Rincon doesn't speak English, and Doug Eddings doesn't speak Spanish. So that's all that's all I wash, as David Cohn would say. I mean, what did Rincon really take out of it? Rincon said afterward, through an interpreter, it's all good. It's all good. And, you know, he took the high road. But when a guy like Doug Eddings does that, and impacts himself on the game, other than calling balls and strikes, why isn't he suspended?
I know they have a great union. I get it. And then I'm probably going to have a terrible game behind the plate, make terrible calls. They don't get taken off active duty. They don't. But when you do something like this, which is such a bad look for baseball, why isn't Doug Eddings disciplined? Some umpires just take it a little too seriously. Now, I know their job is serious. But to put themselves above the players, I don't know, man. Nobody's paying to see an umpire umpire. Maybe in the old days, it paid to see Ron Luciano. For you younger fans, look it up on YouTube. But the bottom line is, umpires are there and if you don't know their name, then they did a good job. The fact that everybody who's a baseball fan or a sports fan knows who Doug Eddings is is not a good thing. It's not a good thing. Now, here's where I come down on the other side.