Umpire Joe West blasted the Yankees and Red Sox just before Wednesday's game, accusing the two clubs of being "pathetic and embarrassing" in dragging the pace of games and refusing to work with umpires.
The two teams, notorious for the slow tempo of their games, were denied some timeouts in the batter's box by home plate umpire Angel Hernandez during Tuesday night's 6-4 Yankees victory.
"They're the two clubs that don't try to pick up the pace," said West, chief of the umpiring crew that worked the three-game series in Boston. He was the home plate umpire Sunday. "They're two of the best teams in baseball. Why are they playing the slowest?
"It's pathetic and embarrassing. They take too long to play."
"All of baseball looks to these two clubs to pick up the pace," West said. "Angel did everything he could. The players aren't working with us."This is embarrassing, a disgrace to baseball."
When you type in "worst umpires in baseball" on Yahoo or Google, you end up finding a lot of lists with Joe West's name near the top, which shouldn't be a surprise to any Yankees fan. Plus, he's also been voted as one of the worst umps in baseball by the players themselves on several occasions. Now that's embarrassing and disgraceful."I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to do," he said. "I don't know how to make them pick up the pace.
"It's sad when school kids can't watch the end of the game because it ends too late."
West also ignored the fact that his strike zone for Sunday night's game was crap for both teams. As Jason from IATMS pointed out earlier today, he squeezed the zone and failed to correctly call many low strikes, which to me would also slow down the pace of the game.
