Joey Crawford was an NBA referee for 39 years and could only remember receiving a couple of death threats. Crawford never took them seriously, and he doesn’t remember fans yelling about the score difference from the stands.
“They didn’t yell it, and I just didn’t notice it,” Crawford, a Haverford native, said by phone recently. “We get accused of it anyway. It goes in and out of your ears. But in today’s sports world, if you don’t notice it, you’re a total idiot.”
Yes, it’s everywhere. Traditional gambling, daily fantasy, prop bets, and since May 2018, the Supreme Court Murphy v. NCAAThe court ruled that laws banning gambling outside of Nevada were unconstitutional. The problems are manifold and growing, and even recent developments that were generally viewed as positive for Major League Baseball should have taken on an ominous tone.
Last week, Angel Hernandez “retired” as a major league umpire. That was the official term for his retirement, but the public reaction was one of celebration, as if all 30 teams had won the World Series at the same time. Hernandez was bad at his job, and especially arrogant in the face of his own incompetence. A bad umpire is no longer a umpire. Great. What’s the problem?
As of now, there isn’t. But Hernandez’s departure and the reaction to it highlight why Major League Baseball, the NBA and every other major sports league and association should do everything in their power to automate as many of their umpires as possible, as soon as possible. Let robots call balls and strikes, let sensors tell you if a rebounder stepped on the baseline or if Jalen Hurts got far enough on a quarterback sneak to get a first down.
Take anything that should be clear and objective out of the jurisdiction of the umpire or referee. Do it all, and do it as quickly as possible. There are two reasons for this.
One, billions of dollars Legally When it comes to betting on sports, leagues need to eliminate any possibility that refereeing errors could affect the course or outcome of a game. Before technology and replay reviews allowed everyone to see exactly what happened on each play, human error had a unique allure. Now, for better or worse, leagues are investing so much money in betting that they can’t afford to have an outcome deemed unfair because of obvious refereeing mistakes.
Of course, we can never eliminate all such calls — one official’s hand check can be another official’s reach-in foul — but we can eliminate many of them, and it is in those situations where incompetence, or worse, cheating, has the most serious impact.
The NBA was already tainted by a rogue referee named Tim Donaghy, and the temptation to create a similar scandal is even greater now that many of the cultural guardrails are gone. Officials and officials cannot be more worried about replays undermining their authority. Accuracy and integrity must come first.
“As an umpire, you want the play to be right,” Crawford said. “Mistakes are made and there’s no harm in having that margin. ‘Give me the out-of-bounds play.’ And when you see it and it gets overturned, it’s a relief. ‘Oh, thank goodness.'”
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Second, while there was joy at the end of Hernandez’s playing career, there was the anger felt by baseball officials, sports fans, and, frankly, bettors toward him while he was calling the games. Every time a video went viral making fun of how ridiculous Hernandez’s strike zone was, there were hundreds of depraved gamblers who cursed his name and blamed him for their losses.
Already, abuse against professional and college basketball players — verbally during games and digitally through social media — is proliferating as more people gamble on them. The longer important calls are left in human hands, the greater the chance that a crazed gambler will harm the official who lost all his money.
Is it really so crazy to suggest that someone might be so angered that they commit a terrible act of retaliation?
“I don’t think you’re crazy at all,” said Crawford, whose brother Jerry and father Shug are longtime major league umpires. “As an umpire, you know something could happen at the end of the game and a security guard could come in and say something. There could be a crazy person sitting in your parents’ basement.
“My brother and I talk about it a lot. Has gambling caused more problems? Yes, but as an umpire, gambling is just part of the problem. I’m not going to eliminate gambling. It’s just another aspect of the job of a professional umpire. You have to deal with it and move on to the next game.”
That’s fine. But it would be better for everyone if the umpires didn’t have to do so much. Do you want to wait for the next Angel Hernandez to go? Too bad. The stakes are too high.
