An official rant

You've seen it before. It happened a couple more times earlier tonight during the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins. An official throws a penalty flag for a violation -- but a few seconds later, after the zebras "consult" -- the boss official (referee) will turn on his microphone and announce to all that no foul occurred. The flag is picked up and the game goes on like it never happened.

But it did happen, and that raises a couple questions. What gives with these guys throwing penalty flags for violations that never occurred? Shouldn't it be like a court of law, where all the evidence has to come in before a guilty verdict is rendered? After all, in the case of NFL plays, it would only take a couple more seconds to get it right in the first place. It's like some of these guys have a predetermined notion as to the outcome of a particular play before it's actually played itself out. They're reaching for and throwing their yellow hankies -- sometimes on what turns out to be phantom fouls. And I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. Sure, mistakes will be made, because while the refs usually get 99% of the calls right -- they're human too. I get that. But judging a particular play while it's still in progress, based on how they think it will LIKELY turn out, is unacceptable at ANY time.

The umpires in major league baseball have long been the same way, and you've seen that too, but it's much more subtle. Yes, MLB is done for this year after the Bosox just won the World Series, but check it out when they fire up again next year. It will still be there, because it always has.

Given any close play at a base, particularly first because more action occurs at that base than the others, watch the umpire closely just before he makes the call. You will find they usually have their right hand cocked to call the runner out, and have to pull it back to signal the safe sign if the runner actually beats the throw. Like their NFL counterparts, it's like they want to call something before it actually happens.

Even in the recently concluded World Series, a 2nd base umpire was blatantly guilty of making a phantom call. In a potential double-play situation, a ground ball hit to the 2nd baseman was flipped to the shortstop for a force play. 99.9999% of the time, that's going to be an out. And the ump called it so. But the ball deflected off the shortstop's glove and fell to the ground. Both teams, the crowd in attendance, and the billions of people watching on TV saw what happened -- and what didn't happen. The runner was obviously safe. But the ump had made up his mind that an out was highly likely to occur, so he called it before the play was over. Not good enough.

Worse yet, unless that ump was biased towards one team -- which is also highly unacceptable -- or an arrogant mental midget incapable of admitting wrong-doing, he should have corrected himself immediately. But of course, for the most part, major league umpires are a narcissistic bunch, and they aren't wired like that. They can do no wrong -- in their own eyes.

So while everybody else the world over that was watching the game twiddled their thumbs, the whole umpire crew -- all 6 of them -- had to huddle up for a confab to sort out what even Stevie Wonder or my dog Spyke (who's been buried behind the shed for 12 years) would have seen a little better.

God bless em -- at least the umps finally got that one right. Like cops, soldiers, judges, political partisans, and a few others -- getting them to admit one of their own made a terrible mistake doesn't happen very often -- despite the overwhelming evidence against them.

But that doesn't make it right.

And after all -- we're the ones paying for all this in one way or another.

The least we deserve is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

And quicker rather than later........