Attempting to Explain the Unexplainable
“There’s just no excuse for that,” people wrongly often say of things. Truth be told, there’s pretty much always an excuse — it’s just a matter of whether or not the excuse is thought to be good enough. People don’t do the wrong things without reasons, and sometimes they even have the best intentions. There are, of course, deliberate rule-breakers. But there also are rule-breakers who were just trying their best, with lousy results. That in itself is lousy and common.
Umpires are people and umpires get things wrong sometimes, even though they’re not trying to be wrong. Their very livelihood depends on not screwing up. What they get wrong most often are strike/ball calls, because they call so many dozens of pitches a game, some more important than others. It can be understandable when an umpire makes a questionable decision on a pitch on the edge. As much as we’d like to think of the zone as being black and white, it’s practically impossible for things to work that way. But sometimes umpires call balls on pitches more or less right down the middle. For this, people would say there’s no excuse. Myself, I’d like to know about the excuses. Because, after all, they have to exist. Umpires don’t try to make obviously wrong calls because that could jeopardize their careers. Read the rest of this entry »
