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You're Out of Here: A History of Umpire Ejections

’re Out of Here: A History of Umpire Ejections This article was written by Lindsay Imber This article was published in The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring The theater of baseball contains many acts and scenes, from the overarching storyline of a masterful pitching performance or offensive feat to the intricate beauty of the pitcher-batter dialogue, yet no sideshow features more prominently in the baseball movie house than the ballad of the ejection. Throughout the years, arbiters from Adams to Zimmer ejected firecrackers from Aaron to Zupo for a variety of offenses, and in doing so provided fans with a brief intermission from baseball’s expertly crafted feature presentation.

Whereas Klem and the NL staff tried to command respect through an “autocratic personality” that wasn’t above the occasional show of force or ejection, American League President Ban Johnson tried to eliminate rowdy behavior from the administrative level. 17 In other words, Barlick himself could be considered a microcosm of the difference in the early vs. late twentieth century umpiring eras’ approach to the ejection, similar in general trend to Klem’s statistics, but with a turning point much closer to the beginning, as opposed to the end, of his time in the National League. In 2015 umpires ejected eight managers and coaches for arguing decisions related to warnings and similar non-ejections of pitchers; in several of these games, these actions nonetheless preceded a bench-clearing incident as the result of a later hit-by-pitch, which may both give credence to this theory and help to identify the prevailing subject of the modern baseball fight.

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