Madison Bumgarner ejected after umpire provocation

After the first inning of the Arizona Diamondbacks game against the Miami Marlins on Wednesday, MLB umpire Dan Bellino bullied Madison Bumgarner into a reaction, just so that he could have an excuse to eject him. That’s right, Bellino bullied him. A supposedly-neutral arbiter of the rules goaded a player into an ejectable offense, knowing that no man would back down from such provocation.

Everyone has experienced bullying, either on one side or the other. It is a well-trodden path, proven to work at all times, against all people. You push as close as you can to them, toeing the line between what they can take and violence, and when they react, you can attack them with full force, safe in the knowledge that you were simply reacting to them. It is how all great empires were formed, and is the basis of American foreign policy. It is what Russia is doing right now in Ukraine.

At no point did Bellino even pretend that he was doing anything other than challenging Bumgarner to say something. Oh, sure, he used the excuse of checking Bumgarner’s hand for sticky substances as the basis for the encounter, but his eyes were drilling a hole in the pitcher from beginning to end. The hand-check went on ten times longer than normal, five times longer than is comfortable, and at least twice as long as anyone could reasonably bear. No, this was not anything other than a good old fashioned bully-session. “Go ahead, do something” was the only message that Bellendo, sorry Bellino, was sending.

Predictably enough, the umpire later claimed that he ejected the Diamondbacks pitcher, not for any substance found, but for “profanity directed at an umpire”. Lip reading the exchange would seem to indicate that Bumgarner’s actual words were “take your time”. There was no profanity before the ejection, although there most certainly was afterward.

What happened was that an umpire decided to toss the pitcher and used any method available to him. The 2022 baseball season is becoming about the umpires, not the players or the game. From Angel Hernandez to Dan Bellino, the entire umpiring corps needs a root-and-branch retraining. The difference is that Angel Hernandez isn’t a bad man, or even a bad umpire, he just can’t call balls and strikes. On the bases, he is a fair judge of the game. Dan Bellino is just as good a judge of the game, but his character flaw is that he is a bully. And that alone should bar him from being in any position of power.

Even the MLB calls this encounter “puzzling” and “unfortunate”. Those are understatements if ever there were. MLB routinely deals harshly with players for minor infractions. Ejections lead to fines, more serious behavior leads to suspensions. From Cy Young winners like Trevor Bauer, who was suspended for two years after being cleared of sexual assault, to sure-thing hall-of-famers like Pete Rose who was banned for life for placing bets on baseball games, an offense which no longer exists. Baseball is brutal with bad behavior. Except when it comes to umpires. They are then protected, no matter what the cost.

Madison Bumgarner had every right to lose his cool with Dan Bellino. In any other situation, Bellino would have received a fist in the mouth. And it would have been justly deserved. But then again, Bellino seems like the kind of guy who would have liked nothing better.