(Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
On Monday, Philadelphia Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto was ejected by the home plate umpire in the game against the Toronto Blue Jays.
You would think that he was arguing balls and strikes with the umpire, or that he called him names.
But no: none of those things happened.
This is what happened:
yeah this just happened
dude you need to lighten up pic.twitter.com/CvaxWZgfpF
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) March 27, 2023
What?
Realmuto extended his hand, asking for a ball, but retrieved it sooner; just before the umpire tossed a ball.
It didn’t land in Realmuto’s mitt because he took it away.
Whether it was unintended or not (it looked that way), it’s certainly no reason to toss him from the game.
At least it wasn’t a regular season game, but still!
The umpire must have felt disrespected, but he really didn’t have any reason to feel like this.
It looked like an accident.
The baseball universe reacted to the bizarre sequence.
“Welcome to the ump show” was probably the most frequent line from fans after watching the clip.
This is also true:
a robot ump has a better sense of humor
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) March 27, 2023
Dude umpires are bigger divas than any star player in the sport
— Rob Thomson (@HokagePapi) March 27, 2023
The umpire’s name is Randy Rosenberg.
He will be remembered for this for a long time.
Again, this shouldn’t happen under any circumstances, but if it needed to happen for whatever reason we don’t know or understand, it’s a good thing it was in spring training play.
We can’t imagine a team losing its All-Star catcher in an important clash because of something like this.
It was definitely one of the weirdest moments – if not the weirdest – in baseball in 2023.
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