Weathermen aren't the only ones....

Wouldn't we all be so lucky at our jobs if we could routinely get stuff wrong and still show up the next day at our jobs?  Well, unless you are a weatherman or Major League umpire, keep dreaming.  Last night, home plate umpire Chad Fairchild forgot what a strike zone was supposed to look like, especially during Jorge Posada's at bat that ended the game and then Crew Chief Dana DeMuth got a home run call wrong AFTER video replay and then refused to comment about it after the game.  Major League Baseball needs to crack down on these umpires.  The strike zone shouldn't differ by umpire on a given night but rather by the batter's height.  Letter to the knees, the width of home plate.  Is this so hard?  And as for Mr. DeMuth, someone needs to understand the ground rules of the ballpark he is the crew chief in!  Seriously, this is a home run, a play you have time to take a video replay on.  And then, to add insult to injury, you refuse to comment, thereby refusing to take accountability or offer an explanation on the call?  The audacity!  The nerve.  Umpires should always be a peripheral of the game, something that is part of the game but isn't THE game.  When umps do this kind of stuff, thumbing their noses at the teams and the fans, that crosses a line.  What's next? Umps ejecting fans for booing?

Needless to say I am not a fan of umpires.  They don't enforce rules when they should, such as the 12 second rule between pitches, routinely letting pitchers take up to 30 seconds between pitches with nobody on base.  If MLB were serious about speeding up the games they should enforce this rule instead of sending a note to a pitcher asking them to speed it up.  Take longer than 12 seconds?  Ball.  Wanna do it again?  Ball.  And the same goes for hitters.  Who needs to adjust batting gloves after every pitch?  Seriously, you didn't even swing and you need to step out of the box?  Stop it.  Check out a game from the 1970's or early 1980's and check how many times batters stepped out of the box.  Count how many seconds between pitches.  How come games back then took about 2 hours and today we have to sit through games twice as long?  I can understand  a slugfest where outs are impossible to come by, like A.J. Burnett pitching against Carlos Zambrano with no bullpen help, but a 3 hour pitchers duel?  MLB needs to tell its umps to get on players that bore us into not giving a damn anymore.  I really have time to go take a leak between John Lackey pitches?  I could have done that and gotten a beer with Steve Tracshel on the bump.  Enforce the damn rules or eliminate them.  And make the umpires accountable for calls they make.  If MLB wants to keep the human element in the game then force the humans to be held accountable for calls they make.