Things We All Hate is the newsletter from OZY that explores how our shared dislikes can help bring us together in hard times.
Things We All Hate
Umpires and referees are at the heart of the sports we love to play and watch, and their decisions impact those contests on a moment-to-moment basis. And if they weren’t so blind, stupid or (fill in the blank), of course our team would have won the game.
Are umps and refs in professional sports really that terrible? Or are we equally blind to the challenges of such an inherently controversial calling? In this week’s Things We All Love to Hate, we review the instant replay, consult the tape, and crunch the numbers in order to make the call.
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Why Do the Refs Suck?
They’re Human
Referees and umpires are not imported from another planet. They come from our own, as loath as we may be to admit it. And while with other professions, we possess some tolerance for human error and fallibility (how often is a meteorologist wrong?), when it comes to the decisions affecting our favorite sports teams, it is hard to be so accepting. This has become especially true in an era of high-definition television and multiple replay angles that reveal every mistake over and over again in slow motion (and only some are correctable).
They Make Too Many Bad Calls
Humanity aside, the number of missed calls can be astounding at times. For a long time, comprehensive data on umpire performance in Major League Baseball was not tracked, and we are starting to see why. According to one recent analysis of ball and strike calls, MLB home plate umpires make incorrect calls at least 20% of the time – one in every five pitches! When a batter has two strikes—and there is more at stake—the error rate increases to 29%.
Too Many Flags and Fouls
In the National Football League, referees are throwing more — and often controversial — flags than they did in the past. In 2019, NFL refs threw 4,140 flags during the regular season, up more than 15% from 3,547 flags in 2009. Fans of the National Basketball Association have also grown frustrated with some of the types of fouls called, from the Hack-a-Shaq (when a player intentionally fouls a team’s worst shooter) to “flopping” (when a player essentially tricks the ref into calling a foul).
How Did We Get Here?
Humble Origins
The term “referee” originates from soccer, where team captains used to consult on disputed calls before it became apparent that a third-party neutral official would work better. The first MLB umpire took the field in 1876, a time when umpires earned about $5 per game. Early professional football referees wore white dress shirts and black bow ties rather than the black-and-white striped “zebra” uniforms they wear today. They also blew horns instead of throwing flags.
Diversity and Bias Issues
A lack of diversity has always affected the ranks of umpires and referees. There are still no female umpires in MLB, and only two (out of more than 230) in the minor leagues, where only 3.5% of umpires are Black. Such a lack of diversity may play a role in some of the bias found in current (largely white male) umpires’ calls: one recent study of MLB suggests racial bias impacts more than 1,000 pitch calls each year.
Lack of Accountability
Umpires and referees may take a lot of abuse from fans at games, but they do not face any serious accountability off the field for poor performance. MLB umpires receive private performance analyses from the league after each game, but umpires are rarely held publicly accountable for their poor calls. They’re not forced to take questions from the media nor are they sent to the minor leagues for poor performance. Similarly, NFL referees are evaluated by the league, but none of their grades are made public.
Fun and Frustrating Facts
Believe it or Not
In the early days of the game, baseball umpires sat behind home plate in rocking chairs. In 1956, two MLB umpires, Ed Rommel and Frank Umont, overcame one of the game’s longest-standing barriers: they became the first umpires to wear eyeglasses on the field.
A Nice Gig
The starting salary for MLB umpires is about $110,000 with senior umpires earning up to $430,000. The average NFL official makes about $205,000 per year.
Older and Worser
The MLB umpires that make the highest number of errors are not the younger, less-experienced ones but the older veterans. The average MLB umpire is 46 years old, but the average age of top performers is 33—with less than three years of experience at the big league level.
Could the Refs Suck Less?
Outreach and Accountability
Recruiting and outreach efforts could increase the diversity in professional umpire and referee pipelines. Releasing performance evaluations to the public could also give some umpires and referees a major incentive to improve. So could shuttling them down to the minor leagues.
Robot Replacements?
MLB has been experimenting with an Automated Ball and Strike system (ABS) in the minor leagues. If this “robo-ump” system—in which the ABS tech feeds the correct ball or strike call to the umpire through an earpiece—works and gains some acceptance, it could see MLB action soon. Some coaches and players, however, view the robo-ump as another high tech intrusion, one which could spoil the catcher's fine art of deceiving umpires into calling strikes.
WATCH MARC CUBAN
on The Carlos Watson Show, season 4!
This Will Make You Feel Better
Steeeeeriiiiike Threeeee…
The final part of the zany 1988 comedy film “The Naked Gun” contains a number of memorable moments, perhaps none more entertaining than the efforts of undercover detective Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen, to thwart an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II while umpiring a MLB game.
