Eric Cooper Stunk it Up on April 1, 2014 in Arizona

Eric Cooper. Had trouble with balls and strikes and missed a tag play at the plate. Maybe he smelled good upon arrival for the game but by game's end he most surely stunk.

How tough is it to call balls and strikes?
How tough is it to get into position to make a call on a tag play?

Evidently these are things the people who grade the umpires are still working out. Like with instant replay, in all of the preparation for using replay on questioned calls and it had not been established that on all plays at the plate, these were grounds for a reviewable call.

Anything that causes one team to score or not to score, that is the question. And Major League baseball did not think to implement into the replay procedures. It somehow slipped the minds of everyone involved. They were spending too much time worrying about the "pace of the game." But when it was determined to GET THE DAMNED CALL RIGHT you threw out the "pace of the game."

C'mon people, get your priorities in order. You've may have already cost a team a game (unfortunately it's the team I root for) and you don't think plays at the plate warrant a view from the important people in New York? New York, everything about the need to go to New York smells like low tide at Candlestick or a rainy night at the former Oakland Coliseum, home of the A's and Raiders.

And that smell last night was Eric Cooper, home plate umpire in the Giants @ Diamondbacks. Game 2 of the 2014 season.

Kevin J. Marquez