This archive report was first published on 7 September 2019.
Published on September 7, 2019, a shift in the dynamics between baseball managers and umpires was underway. The confrontational style of managers like Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, and Bobby Cox, which had persisted into the 1990s, was slowly giving way to a more harmonious relationship.
Former Texas Rangers manager Bobby Valentine recalled an incident where a veteran umpire invited him to lunch, only to threaten him with career-ending repercussions if he continued to argue with him on the field.
“I thought, Wow, that’s really cool. An umpire wants to get to know me,” Valentine said. “Well, we meet the next day, sit down to eat and all of a sudden the umpire says to me, ‘If you ever come onto the field to argue with me again like you did last night, I’ll bury you for the rest of your career, just like I buried Dick Howser until the day he died.’”
The umpire then got up and walked out, leaving Valentine with the check.
However, the tide began to turn in 2000 when American and National League umpiring crews merged. As a larger, single subset working under the auspices of the commissioner’s office, umpires were warned about their combative style.
“How we dealt with arguments changed at that point,” said former umpire Dale Scott, who retired in 2017. “Baseball wanted us to stop being the aggressors. Of course, that was easier said than done, but you could see the difference in the minor leagues. That’s where the culture started to reverse, with the new guys coming up.”
