SEE MARLON JUMP.
See Marlon throw his helmet.
See Milton get tackled and injured by his own manager.
See CB see, not see, see again, then not see again.
See Chipper chirp. See Ned wail.
See Jamie Moyer pick his hat up several times and scratch his head as he tried to figure just exactly what looked like a strike to umpire CB Bucknor behind the plate Tuesday night.
See Marlon do much more than that when he figured out what CB saw at second base in that season-swinging game a few weeks back.
It sure has been a wild month here in the helter-skelter National League. Maybe baseball's best teams are over in that other league, but it can't be anywhere near as much fun as it is over here.
Over here, the genie seems to be out of the bottle again. Strike zones seem to be expanding and contracting nightly throughout the league, umpire by umpire, inducing some notable tantrums at the plate and in dugouts.
"Abysmal," Chipper Jones griped after he was called out on strikes with the bases loaded last week. "Umpires have to be held accountable."
This week, one of them was, but not for a call he made. Mike Winters, a 48-year-old veteran who was part of last year's World Series crew, was suspended for the rest of the season by major league baseball after a first-base confrontation with Milton Bradley in San Diego Sunday resulted in the Padres' outfielder suffering a season-ending knee injury.
Bradley believed that Winters had told home-plate umpire Brian Runge that he had thrown his bat toward him after a previous plate appearance. When he reached first, Bradley challenged Winters about it. Winters, according to the player, called him "a [expletive] piece of [expletive]."
Rockies first baseman Todd Helton and Padres first-base coach Bobby Meacham were close enough to hear. Helton called the exchange of words "very interesting," and Meacham said afterward, "In my 26 years of baseball, that was the most disconcerting conversation I have heard from an umpire to a player. The way Winters responded was bizarre. It was almost like he wanted to agitate the situation."
That same day in Milwaukee, after a contentious game between the Brewers and Cardinals, Milwaukee manager Ned Yost also complained about the "effort" from his umpiring crew.
"It wasn't even just today," said Yost. "It was the whole series."
