You tell ‘em, Cowboy
“They’re two of the best teams in baseball. Why are they playing the slowest? It’s pathetic and embarrassing.”
- Umpire Joe West, as told to the Bergen Record.
West’s comments are meant to defend his colleague, the widely reviled Angel Hernandez, for not granting time to several Yankees and Red Sox during Tuesday’s game in Boston.
I watched, and it did look weird to see Hernandez denying Derek Jeter time. How dare he! Then again, it looked pretty weird to see so many Yankees and Sox calling time so frequently, but I wasn’t sure if I was just noticing it more than I normally would because Hernandez wasn’t granting it, so I was paying attention.
Either way, West’s probably right. I’m not sure if the Yankees or Sox step out of the box or more frequently than any other teams, but if he and his crew are under the gun to speed up games, then by all means, deny Jeter his precious batting-glove adjustment time.
It’ll ameliorate all the sportswriters who are so bent out of shape about the length of the games, at the very least.
It does, however, fly right in the face of something Cowboy Joe West himself says on his spoken word album about baseball, Diamond Dreams:
It’s the only sport where you can manage right along with the manager. In no other sport can you do that.
You can’t do it in basketball, because you don’t know what play they called.
And in football, as soon as the ball is snapped, everybody’s running into each other.
But in baseball, it’s all pretty, and it’s all out there for you to see it.
And this game’s not run with a clock; it can last forever.
More importantly, umpire Joe West has a spoken word album. I’m obviously buying that.
UPDATE: I really thought I’d be the first to bring to the blogosphere, or at least refresh to the blogosphere, news of Joe West’s musical exploits. But then, upon finishing this post, I went to my Google Reader and noted that Big League Stew beat me to the punch. Check that site out for more on this West thing.
