Screenshot via Twitter / @RoutineBaseball
Being an umpire is just about the world's shittiest job. You've literally put yourself directly in harm's way, you're watching a game but only the boring minutiae of it, and you get constantly berated when things aren't necessarily your fault. Which is totally unfair—except when it really, really is your fault.You can forgive the players and coaches in this baseball game between Mexico and Laguna on July 17 for getting a little upset about the following call because… well, just take a look:
For even the most empathetic sports fan, there are certain calls that you can say, "I understand how you might have misread that—these things involve a lot of tricky grey areas, and I respect you and your occupation, good sir." But this call has even those eternal optimists saying, "what the fuck, dude?"Basically what's going on here is that the batter clearly swung at the pitch and missed, but for some cockamamie reason, the ump froze and had no idea what he just witnessed. So he signaled down to the first-base umpire for help and things continued to get even weirder when he ruled that it was a check swing and the batter didn't go around. Therefore, a clear and swing-and-miss strike was called a ball.According to Yahoo Sports, the two umps were suspended by the league for the rest of the season to go figure out what baseball is. Maybe a little harsh, but who knows? Maybe there's some conspiracy about them throwing the game? If that is the case, you've got to do a lot better job of selling it than that, guys.