A History of Umpire Ejections – Society for American Baseball Research (2024)

Hillsboro Hops manager Shelley Duncan being ejected from the game against the Tri-City Dust Devils by short-season Single-A Northwest League umpire Joe Schwartz, August 26, 2015. (Courtesy of Michael Jacobs)

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. As the game itself evolved, when the so-named Deadball Era rose to life, and the era of the pitcher gave way to the age of the batter, and back again, so too did the fine art of the umpire’s practice of removal from the game.

Ejections throughout the years, much like home runs, strikeouts, or any other viable statistic, have waxed and waned, all the while remaining susceptible to their own trends. Unlike home runs, strikeouts, and the like, however, attitudes toward ejections and how umpires should make use of this disciplinary tool have also changed over the years.

Umpires eject players, coaches, and managers for a variety of reasons — abusive language when arguing the arbiter’s decision, especially balls and strikes, pitchers intentionally throwing at a batter, brawling with an opponent, violating rules such as doctoring pitches or corking bats — but this essay is not about specific ejections. It is about reviewing the pattern of ejections that reflect distinct umpiring eras beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The umpire’s authority to impose discipline for unsporting conduct initially took the form of fines, not ejections, beginning in 1879.1 Indeed, umpires during the subsequent decade believed that fines were a more effective measure of discipline than ejections, as reflected by a late-century National League vote.2 When inappropriate behavior persisted, however, the ejection was born in 1889. As a result, explosive personalities like Baltimore/New York’s John McGraw racked up ejections by the score: McGraw himself was ejected 132 times over the 1893-1931 seasons, including four years with at least 10 ejections each, and 10 seasons with at least five, all 10 ejection-heavy seasons taking place prior to 1917, a trend common to the first era of umpiring and men like baseball’s “Old Arbiter,” William Klem.3

Colloquially deemed the Father of Umpiring, or, as Arthur Daley wrote, “the foundation stone on which that foundation stone [of umpiring] rests,” Klem began his 37-year National League career at a time when there was a distinct lack of respect for umpires, even the concept of the umpiring profession. Klem’s magnificent reach in umpiring certainly extended into the realm of ejections To offset the amount of abuse umpires routinely took during that early era, Klem gained a reputation as a “tough cop” umpire: he was known for drawing a line in the dirt during an argument and using the expression, “Do not cross the Rio Grande.” Those who did received an immediate ejection, as did any player/coach/manager who called Klem “Catfish,” a nickname he detested.

Klem set a frenetic major-league record with 288 career ejections from that of Fred Clarke in April 1905 to pitcher Danny MacFayden in August of 1940, ejecting 26 players, managers, and coaches during his rookie season in 1905; he ejected fellow Hall of Famer John McGraw a record 15 times from 1905 to 1921 and with an MLB-most 5,375 regular-season games under his belt, averaged an ejection every 19 games worked.4 That’s a higher rate of ejection than that of all 76 umpires on the full-time MLB staff in August 2016 as well as all minor-league call-up umpires.5

Klem’s repeated and religious use of the ejection was the tool that brought dignity and respect to the profession. Perhaps this is why Klem averaged 20.4 ejections per season from 1905 to 1911, but just 3.6 per season during his final five full years in the National League (1936-1940): He ejected over 20 players during a season four times (1905, 1907, 1910, 1911), but never hit the double-digit mark during any season after 1920. Klem’s outlier year of eight ejections in 1935 — which was significantly high for later in his career, but would have been significantly low early on in his career –was that high only because of an April brawl that produced four ejections.

Klem had so much work to do, in part, because umpiring was more or less an afterthought in early baseball culture. When National League President William A. Hulbert appointed the first umpiring staff of 20 men in 1879, he allowed teams to select their umpire from this roster. When NL umpire Richard Higham earned an expulsion in 1882 after reportedly colluding with gamblers, the reputation of umpiring — already weak — suffered.6 Baseball officiating only received its first “umpire organizational chart” designating the plate umpire as umpire-in-chief in 1910. The fact that from 1901 through 1946 five managers and 31 players served as fill-in umpires when the regularly scheduled umpire was unable to make his assignment only served as reminders of early umpiring’s transient state.7

Similarly, Klem’s National League brethren tended to take a more abrasive approach than American League counterpart Tommy Connolly’s diplomats. 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. Consequently, the league’s head umpire — the 5-foot-7, 170-pound Connolly — along with his AL staff, commanded respect through his rules knowledge, fairness, and “firm manner.”8

In the late 1930s umpire history began to change dramatically with the advent of formal umpire training. George Barr founded the first School for Umpires in 1935 and Bill McGowan followed suit in 1939; his school subsequently fell into the care of fellow umpire Al Somers after McGowan died in 1954, and was continued by Harry Wendelstedt following Somers’ retirement in the late 1970s and son Hunter Wendelstedt in 2012.9 The creation of an actual school or educational program for officiating professional baseball not only identified skilled personnel and standardized techniques, but also solidified the permanence of umpiring as a legitimate craft and profession. Though 36 men both played/managed and umpired in the American or National League during the first half of the twentieth century, not a single active player or manager has served as a major-league umpire since Bill Kunkel in the 1960s.

Professionalization of umpiring changed the attitudes toward and treatment of umpires, correspondingly impacting ejections. By the mid-twentieth century veteran umpires collectively tended to eject less and less frequently, from Jocko Conlan’s once-per-32 games rate to Al Barlick’s one-in-52 mark. Umpires embraced Conlan’s words, “I demand respect on the field from managers and players. To me, that’s 75 percent of umpiring.”10 During this era, an umpire like Marty Springstead could be described as someone who was “not shy about arguing with players and managers” because he led the league in ejections in 1971.11 Yet Springstead never ejected more than six players during any one season (he ejected six twice: once in 1971 and again in 1975), which is considerably less than the double-digit marks common to early-era umpires.12 Springstead’s 60 ejections over 3,010 games worked is a rate of approximately one ejection for every 50 games, about average for his time. Even Terry Cooney — who was lambasted for ejecting Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, alongside Marty Barrett, for multiple profanities regarding the strike zone during the 1990 American League Championship Series13 — only ejected 40 people during his 2,232 regular-season games in the American League, a rate of one ejection for every 56 games worked.14

For Cooney and Springstead’s era, perhaps the advent of televised games caused an overrepresentation of umpire aggression and ejection to give some umpires a hotheaded reputation — after all, the manager-ump rhubarbs were now broadcast visually and over the radio as well — but there is no denying that umpire ejections were trending downward. There is perhaps no umpire who epitomized the concept of the consistently rare ejection during this period more than “God” himself, Doug Harvey.

Harvey worked over 4,600 games during his 30-year career before retiring in 1992, and ejected just 56 — with season highs of seven ejections apiece in 1963 and 1987.15 Though Harvey’s ejections total and one-per-82-plus rate were both lower than those of many earlier umpires, Harvey still entertained managers and players who wanted a good old fashioned argument (see Harvey’s memoir They Called Me God for anecdotes of his favorite arguments) and earned the respect of many, including the major leagues’ managerial ejection record-holder, Bobby Cox: “Doug’s a real class guy. You feel good when he’s working your game.”16 Another famous face with a low ejection rate during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s was Don Denkinger (1 per 83), as well as Hall of Famer Barlick, who, after ejecting a career-high 12 players and managers in 1951 and a total of 52 people from 1941 to 1951, ejected no more than three people per year for the final two decades of his illustrious career, or just 29 over the 1951-71 period (overall rate: 1 per 52; rate from 1951-71: 1 per 97).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.

The era could also be categorized as more colorful or flamboyant with respect to umpiring mechanics and even uniforms, such as the American League’s maroon blazers. Looking back on his career, NL veteran Dutch Rennert (21 ejections in 2,693 games — 1 per 128) remembered the officiating philosophy of the late twentieth century: “You’ve got to add something to your work, you’ve got to be a little more colorful.”18 NL umpire Jerry Dale wrote a master’s thesis on umpiring in the 1980s, noting that umpires must develop an “aggressive and volatile persona” in order to survive in the big leagues.19 Players and managers responded to the added flair, and arguments could successfully subside without an ejection. The classic rhubarbs were spectacles in their own right, but those didn’t come about every game.

Television in general helped popularize the sport as entertainment, though managers have long played to an in-stadium crowd; TV just made this crowd larger and faceless. Ted Barrett recalled one such ejection that, from the audience’s perspective, would on its surface appear to be a contentious battle: “I started chuckling at him, and the guy gets up in my face and says, ‘Don’t you laugh. If you laugh, then they know this is all an act.’ So I did everything I could just to bite my tongue.”20 Veteran Dale Scott summed it up thusly: “Sometimes you’re going to be the prop for their little stage show.” As journalist Jerome Holtzman noted in 1990 during one such ejection, “Durocher had no case and knew it, but the more he argued, the greater the cheers.”21

Toward the later portion of this historical era, baseball as a whole solidified and expanded the scope of umpiring’s organization. The Joe Brinkman Umpire School and Jim Evans Academy of Professional Umpiring provided an alternative for the McGowan/Somers/Wendelstedt training program, while baseball itself had founded the Umpire Development Program in 1964 and the Professional Baseball Umpire Corp. (PBUC) by 1999.22

The Major League Umpires Association gained recognition by both the American and National Leagues in 1970, and thereafter won several significant pay raises for its umpire membership.23

Umpires during this era “controlled the game,” were “very well respected,” and got “the players [to] respond to [them]” in a way far different than the response Klem might have seen during his early seasons in the big leagues.24 These contemporary umpires learned, possibly through McGowan/Somers’ educational program alongside individual experimentation, ways to control the game that did not often need to result in an ejection. What worked for a Harvey may not have worked for a Rennert, and vice versa. “To each his own” seemed to work just fine during this evolving period.

The current era of umpiring comprises the twenty-first century: that which came after the merging of the American and National League staffs into one big Major League Baseball umpiring family.

In 1999, the Major League Umpires Association executed the controversial collective-bargaining strategy of mass resignation, due in part to a no-strike clause in the umpiring contract: Only some of its members submitted and maintained resignations while others did not or submitted and rescinded their resignations. According to union leader Richie Phillips, “(T)he relationship between Major League Baseball and umpires [was] at an all-time low,” citing the tendency of league officials and team personnel to monitor, evaluate, critique, and ultimately decry umpire performance based on “amateur” analysis of television replays.25

In the aftermath, baseball accepted 22 resignations, leading to 22 lost jobs in 1999, umpires voted out Phillips as union chief, actually disbanded the 30-year-old union, and replaced it with the World Umpires Association.26 The separate and distinct AL and NL staffs merged to form one major-league staff and the standardization of umpires was under way. As Rennert remarked, “We just had one league, National League, it was terrific. That was the only way; we took pride in the National League staff. … That’s all gone now. They take away all the colorful umpires. They want them to work one way, all uniform, same way.”27

On a related note, the burgundy red uniform jackets were retired and replaced by black jackets, the red shirts replaced by black ones, and the colorful NL and AL logo caps, along with the associated breast-pocket logo patches, were sent packing in favor of the generic black-and-white MLB graphic.

In 1999 NL umpires experienced 107 ejections while the AL staff generated 100 ejections for a grand total of 207. In 2000 the combined major-league staff threw out 228 players, managers and coaches, climbing to 242 ejections in 2001 before hitting a modern-era high of 282 heave-hos in 2003.

So what happened during the first few years of the new millennium that could possibly account for that spike in ejections?

First, getting rid of 22 umpires meant that MLB found itself in a hiring spree — prior to merging, the American and National Leagues hired a combined 25 minor-league umpires in the wake of the mass resignation — and statistics dating back to Klem indicate that umpires tend to eject more frequently earlier in their careers; this trend was much more pronounced back in Klem’s day, but made another collective appearance with the mass hiring at the beginning of this umpiring era.28

Second, MLB in 2002 introduced a revolutionary new computerized pitch-mapping system known as QuesTec. The league office set goals for every umpire to maintain a certain minimum accuracy level in pitch calling (about 90 percent when introduced, and higher ever since), and umpires — a handful of them new to the full-time MLB level, and the rest of them new to either the AL or NL teams — felt the pressure. Speaking about the system in retrospect, then-crew chief and now Director of Umpires Randy Marsh recalled being thrown into the fire, only to gradually have cooled off ever since: “Guys have calmed down since then, partly because now a supervisor also looks over video of your calls.”29

Though the modern era of umpiring may also be known for its breakneck pace of technological advances, the ability of MLB to forgo QuesTec in favor of the Pitch f/x and Zone Evaluation system effectively signified the league’s acknowledgement that umpiring cannot be 100 percent automated: While QuesTec relied nearly fully on technology alone to evaluate an umpire’s strike-zone performance, Zone Evaluation is a system that uses Pitch f/x data (essentially QuesTec’s successor), combined with a supervisor’s oversight and the ability to throw away bad pitches (such as those poorly caught by the catcher, missed when the catcher blocked out the umpire, etc.), to generate a pitch-calling report in addition to various evaluations for other elements of the umpires’ game, such as the Supervisor Umpire Review and Evaluation (SURE) system.30

Even situation handling is reviewed — as Rennert noted, the “colorful” antics of the classic umpire-manager “rhubarb” found itself being taken out of baseball. For example, MLB suspended umpire Bob Davidson for violating the Office of the Commissioner’s standards on situation handling after a 2012 rhubarb with Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel.31 Thirty years before, that same argument would have been commonplace. As Randy Marsh explained, the modern umpire is one who can follow present-day officiating’s golden rule: “Keeping yourself under control.”

Situation handling and other similar duties have been standardized and placed in the Major League Baseball Umpire Manual (MLBUM), released annually to MLB umpires directly by MLB — not by an umpiring school or other third party. Umpires in the modern era are told that “over-elaborate, excessive signals [are not] an acceptable technique,” and receive specific instructions related to character, dress code and appearance, fraternization, and other similar guidelines that follow umpires both on and off the field.32 MLB looks for “staff uniformity in dealing with situations on the field” while stressing that its umpires shall “remain calm, confident, and non-confrontational.”33

MLB and its minor-league PBUC (now called MiLB Umpire Development) counterpart began issuing “Standards for Removal from the Game” guidelines, which also appear in the MLBUM. These standards for ejection include the expected clauses regarding use of profanity directed at an umpire, vulgar insults, physical contact, histrionic gestures, and other similar unsporting conduct, along with instructions on the timing of certain ejections — eject a player/coach/manager who leaves his position to argue balls/strikes/warnings after warning him to immediately return. Put together, the MLBUM criteria or standards for removal further enforce the goal of “staff uniformity in dealing with situations” in the modern era.

In addition to the increased review and evaluation process, MLB developed a network and emails that have allowed baseball to effectively distribute “Heads Up” alerts to crews working games between two teams with bad blood. As major-league umpiring supervisor Steve Palermo explained in 2005, “We don’t take any of this lightly.”34

Does “Heads Up” lead to more ejections for intentional hit-by-pitches or fighting? In May 2004, MLB sent a “Heads Up” alert to Bruce Froemming’s crew in Cleveland after a heated Twins-Indians series earlier in the year and, in lieu of officially warning the teams prior to the series, notified the two clubs that any intentional HBP or other retaliation would result in an immediate ejection. Over the four-game series, only one batter was hit and no ejections occurred. 35

Former Washington Nationals manager Davey Johnson, for one, felt that umpires in the modern era overuse the warning allotted by Rule 6.02(c)(9)(B).36 “What I grew up under, if somebody was intentionally plunked, very obviously and you knew it, ‘Gone.’”37 One theory regarding baseball’s preference for the intentional-HBP warning over ejection posits that the league office itself is lenient in attitude toward the intentional hit-by-pitch through its lack of meaningful, strict punishment, thus implicitly encouraging the eons-old practice with, as Johnson states, more emphasis placed on the intermediate penalty of warnings, rather than on ejection: “By leaving ejections to the discretion of umpires, MLB creates a perverse incentive to strike first: The retaliatory hit-by-pitch is far more likely to warrant an ejection than the event that precedes it.”38

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.39 The misunderstanding that all hit-by-pitches after a warning is issued must be accompanied by ejection similarly perpetuates the theory, while the entire event of the post-warnings intentional HBP collaterally explains the presence of an extra ejection or two per fight-inclusive ballgame (since the manager/acting manager is ejected alongside the pitcher).40

Umpiring’s modern era may be further divided into the following segments: one with no video instant replay, the second with limited replay, and the present with expanded replay. In the middle of the 2008 season, baseball adopted limited instant replay review specifically for home-run boundary calls — whether the hit was fair, foul, live, dead, or subject to spectator interference.41

From 2008 through 2013, baseball experienced 392 total replay reviews of home-run boundary calls, 132 of which (33.7 percent) were overturned.42 A corresponding decline in ejections followed, bottoming out at 164 in 2009 and 179 in 2012.

When MLB expanded replay review to cover safe/out, catch/trap/transfer, select fair/foul, and HBP/foul/pitch calls for the 2014 season, some theorized that the more cordial process of asking an umpire for a replay review would drastically reduce if not wholly eliminate arguments and ejections from the game: “The advent of replay could spell the end of the flamboyant manager ejection.”43

One of the reasons Hall of Famer Harvey cited as his opposition to expanded instant replay in 2014 was precisely the manager-umpire argument: “That’s part of the game. That’s getting fans into it. Now you’re taking that away and saying, ‘OK, we’ll check with the replay.’ Bull! Bull! That’s not baseball.”44

Fortunately for fans of the ejection, that ominous prediction has not come to fruition. Predictably, managers, coaches, and players were ejected 37 times for arguing a safe/out call in 2013 before a severe drop-off occurred thereafter when expanded replay took hold. In the replay-laden 2014 season, that figure had dropped to just five not-replayed safe/out ejections (32 fewer ejections), an 86 percent decline; there were also five safe/out ejections in 2015.45 However, balls/strikes ejections grew from 83 in 2013 to 96 in 2014 (13, or 16 percent, more ejections) and 97 in 2015. MLB saw an additional 24 ejections for arguing a replay review in 2014, 15 replay review ejections in 2015, and 12 in 2016.46

In sum, it appears that the quantity of ejections since expanded replay came into existence has not decreased — to the contrary, it has increased — but instead simply has taken a different form or reason for ejection. Replay review ejections may be on the immediate decline following expanded replay’s inaugural season, but MLB in 2015 also experienced the most regular-season ejections (212) since the pre-replay era (2007’s 215 ejections).47

As far as ejection quality of correctness is concerned — whether the umpire made the correct or incorrect call on the play or pitch that was the subject of the ejection — statistics indicate that umpires were and continued to be correct a majority of the time, including a high of 72.3 percent ejections-specific accuracy in 2013.48

In the end, it appears that the umpire’s accuracy or correctness seems to have little bearing on the ejection: What truly seems to matter is how the disagreeing or offended party/parties conduct themselves and whether their conduct violates the modern, uniform, and “colorless” umpire’s standards for removal from the game.

As such, it appears that umpiring is set to cross a final threshold: Umpires in baseball’s infancy were afterthoughts who struggled to establish their legitimacy as a working class within the game through frequent use of the ejection to establish their influence. This gave rise to arbiters who sought to preserve this legacy through individuation and vivacious distinctiveness during the latent era of the twentieth century’s second half while resorting to ejection only when respectability and similar personality-based management failed. Finally, the modern umpire, burdened and pressured by a movement toward uniformity, systematically selects from his toolkit the hook of ejection only when appropriate, pursuant to a checklist of standards growing ever more uniform and, pursuant to league policy, unemotional in nature.

For more information and insight into the modern ejection, the website Close Call Sports & The Umpire Ejection Fantasy League, available at closecallsports.com, contains analysis of each ejection event, updated as such events occur. The data spreadsheet itself is available on the UEFL Portal section of the website.

LINDSAY IMBER is the founder of Close Call Sports (www.closecallsports.com) and chief commissioner of the Umpire Ejection Fantasy League, dedicated to the objective analysis of close and controversial calls in sport with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game; in addition to extensive rules analysis, specialties include replay review, ejections, and interpretation of pitch f/x location data. During the off-season, Lindsay serves as organist for hockey’s Anaheim Ducks and previously worked with baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers.

A History of Umpire Ejections – Society for American Baseball Research (2024)

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