Another series won, and yet I still feel awful about my team. Let's get the obvious preliminaries out of the way. I think ejections are vastly over-hyped. I do not believe they have any sort of intrinsic or quantifiable value on a team, good or bad. What I mean is, they don't automatically help or hurt a team just because they happen. I also believe that the real story of this game is not the ejections, but Bobby Jenks nearly blowing a 4 run lead in the 9th inning by not throwing enough strikes.
Buehrle has had a long history of having a borderline Balk pickoff move to first base his entire career, similar to a lot of left handed pitchers i.e. Andy Pettitte. Ozzie Guillen has had a long history of getting tossed from games. Joe West has a LONG history of not only ejecting Ozzie Guillen out of games (so much so West's Wikipedia page has a pic of him ejecting Ozzie in 2007 for gods sake!), but for also making himself become a focal point/attention grabber of games he umpires. You combine all of this history going into today's game, and it's no wonder things got as heated as they did.
Were the two pickoff attempts today balks? Well technically yes they probably are. Are they any more egregious than other left handed pitchers in baseball? Not really. Did Buehrle do anything in those two moves, that he hasn't done in the (yes I went back and counted them) 70 pickoffs versus 12 Balks he's thrown in his career? It sure didn't look like it, but still it's the umpires job to make those calls if he deems them balks in his judgement.
You can certainly question whether West's motivations were to get the calls right, or inject himself as a focal point of the game but where West doesn't get a pass from The Beard is how he conducted himself afterwards. I have no problem with him ejecting Buehrle for throwing his glove down after the second balk call. It's been long established that throwing equipment as a direct result of an umpire's call will get you thrown out. Buehrle knows not to do that, and he did it on the first balk call but West gave him a pass on that. West did go over the line though when (in my opinion) he baited Ozzie Guillen into getting tossed out. When you look at the footage, West immediately gives Ozzie the back of his hand is a dismissive gesture that seemed to say "Don't try it..." yet he allowed Guillen out of the dugout for what Ozzie described as wanting to know why West was showing Buehrle up. West then continues his dismissive hand gesture almost knowing that Guillen will lose his temper and therefore will be able to eject Ozzie without any fear of consequence.
As I stated before, the history of the three participants led to this. All three of them acted like children, but of all of them, West should be the one that receives the most vitriol. It's not his job to be the center of attention, yet he clearly has been guilty of relishing any spotlight cast his way over the past several years. You can ask Andre Dawson if you don't believe me. When it comes to Benefit Of The Doubt, West should be familiar with that call:
Strike Three...
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