Something for all of baseball to be thankful for this year
Consider this Thursday's newsletter too. It's like two in one! Except in size, content, ideas, and basically every other way.
For the second straight year, it has been A Tough Year. Millions of people worldwide died of COVID, including hundreds of thousands of Americans, there’s all kinds of political strife, apparently murder is legal in Wisconsin now, and America is, as always, inching ever closer to the total collapse of its social fabric.
We need something to rally around. We need some good news. We need one unambiguous good thing in the world, one boon that everyone can rally around, regardless of their political affiliation. In a time when we are all so divided, it’s important to have one thing to unify us in joy. And during this Thanksgiving week, it’s more important than ever.
We do have that thing. It’s right here in front of us.
My friends, Joe West has retired.
Doesn’t that feel nice? Like a cool breeze on a hot day, or a twenty in your wallet that you forgot you had? Joe West is gone. He won’t umpire any more baseball games. His weird crap isn’t your problem anymore.
Has that sunk in? It’s not your problem anymore.
All those years of dreading Joe West calling balls and strikes, rolling your eyes thinking about the #umpshow he was sure to put on, throwing up your arms in exasperation when he calls a pitch three inches outside a strike, wondering just why in the hell an umpire gets to just define his own strike zone and everyone’s fine with it:
It’s over now. It’s all over now.
Are we completely out of the woods here? Of course not. It’s not like Joe West was the only bad umpire in baseball. Angel Hernandez is still around. The rest of the Giants-Dodgers NLDS crew (of which Hernandez was, somehow, not one of the worst umpires) is also still around. There will be other umpires who miss calls, put the Giants in a hole, and have bad games. It willl absolutely happen.
But there was something special about Joe West. There were other bad umpires, sure, but none so proud to be bad, so sure that they were right and the players and managers and broadcasters and rulebook were wrong. No other umpire has that mix of arrogance and self-mythologizing, How dare you say I’m wrong mixed with It is literally impossible for me to be wrong.
Joe West’s nickname is Cowboy, and you can be damn sure he’s proud of that. It’s clearly how he’s always seen himself: as one man against the world, an old soul facing down a modern world, a roguish outcast facing the forces of civiliation, for good or ill. Everything he does has always been on his own terms, whether it’s staring down Madison Bumgarner for bizarre reasons, or getting on stage and singing country music.
When Joe West was umpiring a game, it was his game, and no one else’s. Sure, you might not have been watching a baseball game to see the Joe West Show, but you got it as a neat little side bonus, like an artichoke in your apple pie. He was a character in a job that is better served without characters, but there he was, regardless. For better or worse — and it was mostly worse — you knew when you were watching a game that Joe West umpired.
Will I miss anything about Joe West? No. But will there be nights when the Giants are losing 8-1 in the 7th that I wish Joe West was behind the plate, just to shake things up a little? Also no. But will baseball be missing a little something without Joe West’s presence? Again, absolutely not. This is a purely good thing.
So let’s celebrate! And let’s give thanks. No one has ever needed Joe West umpiring in a major league baseball game, which is ironic because he has umpired more major league baseball games than anyone else. Now, no one will ever see it again. This one tiny moment is one that every baseball fan can celebrate. Let’s come together and feel that communal joy one more time. Joe West is gone. Long live Joe West being gone.