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Show Suspend Umpire? One has to smile at Billy Martin's plea to the American League to suspend an umpire. But it's not that irrational, after af-ter all, upon reflection: Whether or not an umpire bumped Billy is as yet unclear. But if that happened, the umpire is guilty. BILLY MIGHT have given the ump reason to blow his cool, but the ump can't forget his plac-; or restraints he too must fc.low. That's part of the game. Managers have long vied with each other in ways to needle umpires. Martin is an expert. But if umpires want players suspended when they seek to intimidate or retaliate against umpires with physical abuse, so too umpires must follow the . same code. Their authority is almost total. They need no resort re-sort to anything else. UMPIRING IS, unfortunately, unfortun-ately, not what it should be. Too many balls and strikes are missed and too many close plays are blown. The league should solve this problem which would solve the problem of physical abuse to a large degree by utilizing instant-replay television with an extra umpire in a special box doing the utilization. THAT WOULD eliminate the worst missed calls and many of the strongest protests, which sometimes lead to physical phy-sical incidents. |