Nice Guys Finish Last . . . unless
they figure out how to do battle on their own terms.
Matty has an article up on the bag job the M's got from the umps Saturday, and on Wakamatsu's lack of reaction to it. (Here's an article about Wakamatsu's baby-soft treatment of the umpires in his rookie season.)
This one -- the bases-loaded phantom strikeout that decided the game -- was outrageous, and in umpire terms it was a loogie into the M's dugout. Sorry, not wishing to be vulgar, but that's what it was.
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It's a tough call here, because Wakamatsu is brainy, respectful and polite, and he obviously has a strategy in mind -- pay your dues as a rook so as to get their respect later.
I can appreciate somebody saying, "Hey, that's not me, to scream in another person's face." It's not me either, as it's not Jon or Russ or a lot of us. If I managed 20 years in the majors, there would never be a shouting incident on the field. The same may be true of Wok IRL.
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But! as Bruce Froemming put it, "this is a game of personalities and a game of sales." The manager has never lived who could survive in MLB without pushing back when he gets pushed.
Walter Alston, probably the most low-key great manager I can ever remember, would go out and he would use an indoor voice. But it's not like he went 23 years with 0 ejections. He could make an umpire feel absolutely terrible about the way he'd blown a play.
Froemming once talked about when he was a rookie, and he blew a call on a catcher trapping the ball against the fence, and Alston came out with anger in his face but not in his voice. "What's the story?" Alston said, quietly but dangerously.
Froemming's reply was snotty and sarcastic. Alston narrowed his eyes. "That's how you're going to talk to me?," Alston bit the words off. And shut up and waited.
Froemming remembered the humiliation for 30 years, or something. "I had nowhere to go from there. But you learn."
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Not all MLB umps are professional. Some are smirkers, some bait players and managers hoping for a fight, some are lazy, some hold grudges, some are just creeps. And some are great umps. According to the men who've written books about it, that is.
Wok simply does not have the luxury of letting umps push his team around with impunity. I admire his spiritual bearings, but he needs a spiritual solution to a secular problem.
The super-spiritual men that I have known, who have been good coaches at the amateur level, were not afraid to fight with the refs. They fought in honorable ways, but they were just as insistent about their rights as anybody else.
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Nobody's questioning Wakamatsu's personal toughness. There's no such thing as a major league catcher who isn't a very tough man. ... Wok's masterfully gentle-but-forceful handling of the Carlos Silva showdown, early in 2009, could have served as a textbook chapter for Mike Hargrove in the art of veteran - management.
We'll see what Wok has in mind, with respect to the umps taking advantage of him. Wouldn't surprise me if he was two steps ahead of us on this thing. I hope so. :- )
Russter, what exactly would you do in Wok's shoes?
BABVA,
Dr D