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Umpires Union: MLB Investigators Are Like Secret Police

by Albert Bianchi on January 30th, 2008

Like a secret police force, except they’re just asking questions and everybody knows about them, but other than that stuff it’s just like the Gestapo. There has never been a greater injustice than this.

Lamell McMorris, a spokesman for the World Umpires Association, told ESPN.com that baseball investigators have gone into neighborhood homes in recent weeks and asked a series of provocative and potentially defamatory questions about umpires.

According to the WUA, neighbors of Greg Gibson and Sam Holbrook — MLB umpires who live in Northern Kentucky — were asked if the two men are members of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Major League Baseball’s security staff is essentially defaming umpires in their communities by conducting, strange, surreptitious and poorly-executed investigations resembling that of secret police in some despotic nation,” McMorris said.

These umpires suspected involvement stems from their habit of awarding three straight strikeouts in an inning. (Get it, KKK. What, you not a fan of baseball scoring jokes?) Of course, the Umpires Union handled the issue calmly, without making gross exaggerations or off-base comparisons.

“We’re in an environment where there have been incidents with nooses in the country,” McMorris said. “There was the ‘Tiger issue’ in a golf magazine, and we’re in the middle of a presidential election where clearly race is a major factor. And now you’re going to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask if an umpire is a member of the Ku Klux Klan?

“That shows a tremendous amount of ignorance and insensitivity, frankly. And we take exception to it.”

Now, when he said “that shows a tremendous amount of ignorance and insensitivity” he was talking about MLB’s investigation, not his poor comparison, but I understand how you could have gotten confused.

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POSTED IN: MLB