While the past week has been blessfully free of the brand of hooliganism most recently displayed by Tigers head coach Koichi Tabuchi, it was pretty typical in terms of bad decisions on the part of the men in blue.
Everyone knows it's a problem. The fans, the owners, the managers, the coaches, the players, the trainers, the groundskeepers, the PA announcers, the bat boys, the ball girls, the mascots, they all know it. Heck, even the little kids who take part in the pre-game activities--catching flies in the outfield or throwing the farthest or dancing along with cheerleaders--know it.
So now that it's been scientifically established that everybody even remotely connected with the game, who is not or has ever been an umpire or a member of an umpire's family recognizes there's a problem, what do we do about it?.
Here are a couple of solutions:
1. Hoshino Hell. This is Tigers' manager Senichi Hoshino's typical bullying and abuse carried to its inevitable conclusion.
Since the leagues are so skittish about punishing players, coaches and managers who physically abuse the arbiters, why should the establishment care if umpires are hustled off the field after a particularly bad call in order to be beaten up by people who are good at that sort of thing.
If this solution is adopted each team will get a squad of three or four heavies, whose job it is to keep the umps minds on the fair and impartial execution of their judgment.
OK. So that's not a very humanistic solution. How about this?
2. The joy buzzer. In this scenario, each umpire would be wired, not for sound, for electric shock, and in front of each dugout would be four buttons mounted on a podium, which the managers could use to torment the umps who fail to agree with them.
Since the leagues acknowledge that their own umpires are a problem, it makes perfect sense to let them in on the act. A league official could be on hand with a console that determines how much juice each ump gets per shock and the executive committee of Japan Professional Baseball could determine the acceptable limits.
One can say that the leagues do not condone physical violence against the umpires, but what happens when umpires are pushed around? Nothing.
Tabuchi, who left the bench not to argue the call but because skipper Hoshino had been ejected, slammed into umpire Koichi Uemoto with a forearm or two. For this, Tabuchi was fined \200,000 but not suspended.
The message is: "Argue and shove the umps around, because they aren't very good, but don't overdo it."
This situation is caused because the leagues hire umpires without adequate experience who, like most employees in Japan, cannot be fired for incompetence. If you want to get fired you have to be accused of a crime--falsely or not as the mere suspicion of wrong doing is grounds for dismissal.
PL players say there are three or four umpires in their league who have no business at all being there. One assumes these guys are conscientious and doing their best but are just not up to the task.
Umpiring is a tough job. People who can do it adequately should be well rewarded but be forced out of their jobs if they don't meet the standard.
Until the leagues have an independent pool of experienced umpires to draw from, there will be no one to replace the umpires who have to be cut loose. This is yet another argument for the formation of independent minor leagues in Japan.
Japanese baseball should re-negotiate its contract with umps so it precisely reads that continued annual employment will be subject to careful review.
Japanese baseball needs to hire the best available umpires, and lacking a solid domestic supply of experienced umpires it should look abroad.
"We all make mistakes," said one player recently of the poor umpiring. "But we work to correct them, but year after year it (the umpiring) is the same, it never changes."
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .