2008-09-10T07:14:17-04:00
Are Baseball Umpires Racist?
2007-08-13T15:09:33-04:00
46
2008-09-10T06:39:55-04:00
1
5
10
2007-08-20T09:25:30-04:00
2
IL
TheSlav
South Elgin
90865
LA Willie,
the recent study of bias among NBA officials from a study by, I believe, the same researchers, found higher rate of bias then the 1% found here. Wouldn't that lead inner-city balck kids to run away from basketball.
1% of 75 calls is actually less than 1 call per game. Seems like we're really splitting hairs here and imaging a boogey-man in that one call. The only way yoyu can do better than one call in error per game, it seems to me, is to call a perfect game. Laudable goal. But a goal nontheless.
When I umpire, my goal is to have only one ball/strike call per game per team that I would like to have back. That I think I missed for reasons that never have to do with race. Catcher moves and blocks your sight, pitch fools you (it happens), check swings, etc.
SI did a story where one of it's reporters umpired MLB pre-season games, he reported Questec showed a 5% error rate among umpires vs. the computers subjective opinion. Seems high but I suppose it's possible.
Zamrano got the benefit of two ?? calls vs. Pujols last night. Either the ump was clearly off-center with his positioning, or he was delivering a message to Pujols re: complaining about calls.
Sometimes academic studies don't include a good grasp of what happens "down in the trenches".
50794
2007-08-17T20:16:34-04:00
1
CA
gpot9883
San Francisco
92518
The article cites a non-peer reviewed, un-published study. You can read the study on the author's website: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/Baseball4Authors.pdf
The statistics used are confounding, and not clearly explained.
I take the findings with a grain of salt: an interesting trend of dubious significance, but fun to bring up at parties.
47023
2007-08-16T23:49:21-04:00
2
CA
L A Willie
San Pedro
91496
Your comment
50255
2007-08-16T23:49:05-04:00
2
CA
L A Willie
San Pedro
91496
So what else is new. Any one that knows anything about objective sports knows that baseball is the most subjective team sport out there. When you have an umpire calling balls and strikes with all the implications and ramifications of the imaginary strike zone thrown into the mix, the propensity of the sport to lend itself to bias becomes stupendous. The game is by its nature is therefore held hostage to the subjective undepinnings of the umpires biases, be it race based or otherwise. Why do you think inner city black kids don't play baseball anymore like they used to? In a sport like cricket for example, you have a wicket and when the lid falls of the wicket, the batter is out. Now there is an objective sport.
LA Willie.
50279
2007-08-16T06:59:12-04:00
2
VA
topguncali
Midlothian
91575
I think many of you are like me in that when a pitch is coming in, it takes all of my concentration to focus on the watching that dang ball. The last thing that I'm concerned about is what the pitcher looks like.
In order to make a sweeping statement that umpires are swayed by race, we must ask ourselves, what is race anymore? 99.9% of people would categorize me as "white". The other .1% would categorize me correctly an Italian, Irish, German, Whelsh, Cherokee Indian, Greek American. Or all around American mutt you might say.
The problem is that racism is usually associated with specific people groups: ie Jews, Italians, Polish, Russian... etc
Sometimes they are broader: Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arab
About 70% of Americans would generally be called white. About 12% Black, 8% Hispanic, 4% Asian, 6% others.
I'm assuming that by race the researcher was using broad racial terms like white and black, because what are the chances of the Hungarian umpire facing a Hungarian pitcher?
There are 30 major league teams that each play 162 games. Let's assume that the major leagues has roughly the same make-up as the American population (some sports have a higher concentration of certain ethnicities, but fir the sake of simplicity...). Let's also assume that umpire share this make-up.
With that break down there is a high probability of a white pitcher and a white umpire (and we must creep inside the umpire's head and make sure it's just a white thing, because Lord knows that there has never been a case of a white German being racist towards against a white Polish Jew, or a Greek and Bulgarian). So when we have white on white, black on black, Asian on Asian, everything is fine. So that means that a white umpire is racist 30% of the time, a black umpire is racist 88% of the time. A Hispanic is racist 92% of the time. And the poor Asian umpire is racist 96% of the time.
...because of course, when the pitcher looks different than you, you umpire differently and that Asian umpire and Asian pitcher combo is rare so an Asian pitcher is SOL right from the get-go.
Maybe instead of bringing in a reliever based on whether a lefty or righty is coming to bat, manager should base it on the race of the umpire.
A good strong pitcher can throw 100+ in a game. Let's say that we have a white umpire and white pitcher again. Then a Cuban reliever comes in and only faces 2 batters and throws 10 pitches. By the one percent finding, how does an umpire bias a pitcher by messing up .1 pitches? How does that work?
In conclusion, perhaps there are one or two racist MLB umpires that let it effect their game. But racist against who? As I said before, racism is usually targeted such as "I hate hispanics" or "I hate Asians" not "I hate everyone that doesn't look like me" as in a white being racist against blacks, hispanics, asians, American Indians, AND Pacific Islanders.
You just can't generalize that kind of stuff.
In short, this guy is an I D I O T
46123
2007-08-16T06:58:52-04:00
2
VA
topguncali
Midlothian
91575
I think many of you are like me in that when a pitch is coming in, it takes all of my concentration to focus on the watching that dang ball. The last thing that I'm concerned about is what the pitcher looks like.
In order to make a sweeping statement that umpires are swayed by race, we must ask ourselves, what is race anymore? 99.9% of people would categorize me as "white". The other .1% would categorize me correctly an Italian, Irish, German, Whelsh, Cherokee Indian, Greek American. Or all around American mutt you might say.
The problem is that racism is usually associated with specific people groups: ie Jews, Italians, Polish, Russian... etc
Sometimes they are broader: Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arab
About 70% of Americans would generally be called white. About 12% Black, 8% Hispanic, 4% Asian, 6% others.
I'm assuming that by race the researcher was using broad racial terms like white and black, because what are the chances of the Hungarian umpire facing a Hungarian pitcher?
There are 30 major league teams that each play 162 games. Let's assume that the major leagues has roughly the same make-up as the American population (some sports have a higher concentration of certain ethnicities, but fir the sake of simplicity...). Let's also assume that umpire share this make-up.
With that break down there is a high probability of a white pitcher and a white umpire (and we must creep inside the umpire's head and make sure it's just a white thing, because Lord knows that there has never been a case of a white German being racist towards against a white Polish Jew, or a Greek and Bulgarian). So when we have white on white, black on black, Asian on Asian, everything is fine. So that means that a white umpire is racist 30% of the time, a black umpire is racist 88% of the time. A Hispanic is racist 92% of the time. And the poor Asian umpire is racist 96% of the time.
...because of course, when the pitcher looks different than you, you umpire differently and that Asian umpire and Asian pitcher combo is rare so an Asian pitcher is SOL right from the get-go.
Maybe instead of bringing in a reliever based on whether a lefty or righty is coming to bat, manager should base it on the race of the umpire.
A good strong pitcher can throw 100+ in a game. Let's say that we have a white umpire and white pitcher again. Then a Cuban reliever comes in and only faces 2 batters and throws 10 pitches. By the one percent finding, how does an umpire bias a pitcher by messing up .1 pitches? How does that work?
In conclusion, perhaps there are one or two racist MLB umpires that let it effect their game. But racist against who? As I said before, racism is usually targeted such as "I hate hispanics" or "I hate Asians" not "I hate everyone that doesn't look like me" as in a white being racist against blacks, hispanics, asians, American Indians, AND Pacific Islanders.
You just can't generalize that kind of stuff.
In short, this guy is an I D I O T
45755
2007-08-15T19:26:21-04:00
http://img.fannation.com/upload/user_profile/image/911/38/thumb/HilltopPark1910.bmp
1
NJ
MarkRuck
Glen Rock
91438
What a crock!
To say that 2-1 pitch was called a certain way because of an ethnic/racial bias is beyond belief.
Allowances made for differences in the strike zone, I'd tend to think that umps tend to call things "down the middle," even against pitchers who have given them lip in the past.
That said, I do wonder if there's a bias within a given game--when a pitcher argues with an ump, does an ump tend to tighten up the strike zone against that pitcher (or even team) for the remainder of that game?
47925
2007-08-15T10:34:50-04:00
5
FL
mexyank
Miami
90571
In the study, then, about 21,000 pitches were called one way or another due to race. How does one determine this? By video? Interviewing the ump after the game and asking him? Or were all the pitches throw at Gary Sheffield????
47557
2007-08-15T08:43:27-04:00
2
IL
TheSlav
South Elgin
90865
One call per game? And that shows bias? The only way
they could be less "Biased" is if they were perfect.
So does this show anything other than they are
somewhere between human and total F-ups, but closer to
perfect than anything. What am I missing here?
And even Questec has a margin of error on what it
considers a "bad" call and a "right" call, because by
definition the calls have some bit of subjectivity
involved.
I umpire games and I've played before with umpires I
thought were biased against me (because I'm short) and
you'd have to mess up 1 call per at bat to take the
bat out of a teams hands, that would be a ratio of
around one bad call per 6-7 pitches on average.
Otherwise, even if you were trying to hose a team, the
batter still has the bat in his hand and can
reasonably insure that the ball doesn't even get back
to the home plate umpire. No calls in that situation.
I'd have to see more than this or more than 1% before
I'm convinced
48102
2007-08-15T07:03:01-04:00
2
WI
Johnny G.
Kenosha
90960
I find this an interesting study but I think you have to factor some personal bias the umpire may have against a player(s) when he bats.That player may never see a called ball.I have heard it said that the best umpires are the ones that do not cause attention to themselves during a game.Should an umpire hold a grudge,be envious of,or be biased toward a coach,batter or pitcher,that is where the problems exist.It only takes one bad pitch,one blown call or one missed call to decide the outcome of a game-I agree,baseball is a very evenly matched game and it doesn't take much to change the outcome of a contest.Umpires have to have small ears,very thick skin and the patience of a junior high teacher.
48151
46
<p>Time magazine <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1652338,00.html" target="_blank">is reporting</a> that, "According to a new study led by <strong>Daniel Hamermesh</strong>, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, Major League Baseball umpires tend to call more strikes when the pitcher is of their same race. When they're not, umps call more balls. It doesn't happen all the time - in about 1% of pitches thrown - but that's still one pitch per game, and it could be the one that makes the difference."</p><p>The magazine goes on to say that Hamermesh reached this conclusion after he and his team of researchers "analyzed the calls on 2.1 million pitches thrown in the Major League between the 2004 and 2006 seasons."</p><p>What's your initial reaction to the report? </p><p> </p><p> </p>
2327
18
NY
The SI Staff
New York City
21244