Umpires

While saying he still embraces his sport's "human element" and its "pace," Commissioner Bud Selig announced Tuesday that "the time has come" to create a place in baseball for technology by installing limited use of instant replay. "There's nothing that's perfect in life, but the extraordinary technology will help us," Selig said in a conference call with reporters. Starting in three series that open Thursday, including the Angels' matchup with the Texas Rangers, baseball will allow umpires to review replays of disputed home runs when there are questions about whether a ball was fair or foul, whether it cleared the fence, or was interfered with by a fan. In a change to the game that some compared to the introduction of the designated hitter in the American League in the 1970s and wild-card playoff teams last decade, baseball officials said umpire crew chiefs can signal for a timeout in cases when they need to review a play.

CHICAGO - Major League Baseball suspended the crew chief and fined all four umpires who botched a simple application of the rules in Thursday night's game between the Angels and Astros in Houston. Angels Manager Mike Scioscia protested the ruling, which was dropped after the Angels rallied for a 6-5 win, but MLB acknowledged Friday that the "rule covering pitching changes was not applied correctly by the umpiring crew. " MLB later announced that crew chief Fieldin Culbreth received a two-game suspension for the "misapplication" of baseball rules, and the other three members of the crew - Brian O'Nora, Bill Welke and Adrian Johnson - were fined.

The start of the National League baseball season was clouded Monday when veteran umpire John McSherry, 51, collapsed in the first inning of a game between the Cincinnati Reds and Montreal Expos at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium and died of a heart attack. McSherry, beginning his 25th National League season, was working behind the plate when he called time, waved for umpire Steve Rippley at first base, then turned and began walking toward a gate behind the plate.

SAN FRANCISCO - When Don Mattingly asked Adrian Gonzalez how he was doing, the Dodgers' manager just meant the question as a pleasantry. But, for a team that has used the disabled list 10 times in the first five weeks of the season, Mattingly should not have been surprised when the answer was "sore" rather than "fine. " The Dodgers scratched Gonzalez from their lineup Friday because of neck stiffness. Mattingly traced the injury to an incident in Wednesday's game, when Gonzalez collided with an umpire while chasing a foul ball.

In the eternal conflict between baseball's uniformed personnel and umpires, it's the dog-you days of summer. The temperatures soar, the season drags, and everyone wants a piece of each other. Managers charge umpires. Players scream at umpires. Entire teams physically restrain star players who are literally attempting to attack umpires, which, by the way, looks especially dumb. It's so bad, the other day I saw Boston Manager Terry Francona arguing with an umpire who had just made a home-run call after examining instant replay.

Jeff Nelson was the umpire closest to Alex Rodriguez's fourth-inning line drive into the right-field corner. But he didn't have the best view of it. "In this particular play the ball hit something hard, solid," he said. "In my judgment it was the top of the fence." Another umpire, Joe West , thought the ball hit a fan. That left enough doubt among the six-man officiating crew for crew chief Gerry Davis to ask for a video replay, the first time an umpire has done that in postseason history.

A day later, there was still widespread confusion. If anything, there was more confusion. What exactly happened in the ninth inning of the Dodgers' loss to the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night? More to the point, what should have happened? In case you missed it, here's a quick summary of what was visible to the eye: Jonathan Broxton entered the game with the Dodgers holding on to a 5-4 lead. The All-Star closer, who threw 44 pitches Sunday, loaded the bases. That prompted a visit from hitting coach Don Mattingly, who was serving as the manager in place of Joe Torre, who had been ejected.

Major league umpires do not expect a strike this season, the head of their union said Tuesday. General counsel Richie Phillips met with umpires for five hours to prepare for today's discussion with baseball officials on a new contract and saw some progress. Phillips said the two sides "were very far apart, but not at an impasse." He added: "I have recommended the umpires not engage in any kind of work stoppage. . . .

WASHINGTON -- Umpire Kerwin Danley still has headaches, five days after he was hit in the mask by a pitch from the Dodgers' Brad Penny. Danley's condition is being monitored by Major League Baseball and he is not yet scheduled to return to work, the World Umpires Assn. said Thursday. He was briefly knocked unconscious by the fastball to the right side of his jaw and was hospitalized briefly after Saturday night's game. CT scans were negative, the union said.

The umpires' union withdrew its lawsuit against baseball Tuesday, leaving the National Labor Relations Board as the last hope for 22 umpires who want their jobs back. The move came just before the American and National leagues were to file a motion to dismiss the case. The leagues, claiming the suit was frivolous, had planned to ask for legal sanctions against the umpires' union and its lawyers.

Lois "Lolo" Goodman was reinstated last week as a professional tennis umpire in the wake of a decision by prosecutors to drop charges that she fatally bludgeoned her husband, her attorney said. Goodman, a fixture on the U.S. Tennis Assn. circuit for a couple of decades, had been sidelined since October after her arrest in New York on suspicion of killing her husband, Alan Goodman, 80. Last month, prosecutors decided to drop a murder charge against Goodman without revealing their reasons.

From the beginning, the death of professional tennis umpire Lois Goodman's husband was beset by contradictions. When Alan Goodman, 80, was found dead in April at the couple's Woodland Hills condominium, paramedics noticed a suspicious cut to the side of his head. But Los Angeles police initially agreed with Lois Goodman's account that her ailing husband had fallen down a flight of stairs. Days later, a coroner's investigator found that the injuries were consistent with being struck by a sharp object.

Normally, baseball umpires are the ones who declare a rain delay if inclement weather comes during a game. But in Compton on Saturday it was the operators of Major League Baseball's Urban Youth Academy who were watching the skies for a predicted rainstorm from a Gulf of Alaska storm front. Had it turned rainy, the final exam for 54 fledgling umpires wrapping up a weeklong crash course in how to conduct baseball games would have been moved off a pair of ball fields and under cover, according to Rich Rieker, director of umpire development for MLB. Located on 10 acres next to El Camino College's Compton Center campus, the $10-million MLB-run sports complex features two big-league-size ball fields and two smaller softball fields.

Tennis umpire Lois Goodman, charged with bludgeoning and stabbing to death her 80-year-old husband in April with a coffee mug, has passed a lie-detector test administered by a former FBI examiner in which she denied killing her husband, her attorneys said Tuesday. The attorneys said they would give the results to prosecutors in hopes the charges against the 70-year-old Woodland Hills resident would be dropped. She has pleaded not guilty. The examination, in which Goodman denied killing her husband, Alan, or having any involvement in his death, was conducted by former FBI polygraph examiner Jack Trimarco during the first week of October, Robert Sheahen, one of her attorneys, said.

A week and a half after a blown call by replacement referees on "Monday Night Football" sparked a national outcry, baseball's umpires ignited similar outrage Friday with a controversial call that marred the St. Louis Cardinals' 6-3 victory over the Atlanta Braves in the National League wild-card game at Atlanta. Trailing, 6-3, with runners on first and second in the eighth inning, the Braves appeared to catch a break when an Andrelton Simmons fly ball to short left field dropped between Cardinals shortstop Pete Kozma and left fielder Matt Holliday after a mix-up over who had it. A crowd of 52,631 roared, assuming the bases would be loaded with one out and Brian McCann, a .339 hitter with nine grand slams in 109 at-bats with the bases loaded, on deck.

Attorneys for a renowned tennis umpire charged with killing her husband with a broken coffee cup failed Wednesday to stop police from collecting a sample of her DNA. Lawyers for 70-year-old Lois Goodman suggested that the DNA would be meaningless since prosecutors already knew she gathered up the shards of the broken coffee cup and offered them to police, who initially dismissed them as meaningful evidence because they believed the death was an...

National League President Bill White and the umpires settled their dispute Tuesday with help from Commissioner Fay Vincent, agreeing to set a policy for breaking up fights that will not single out umpire Joe West. "I'm happy it's resolved and that we can get on to other things," Vincent said after meeting in New York with White and the umpires' union chief, Richie Phillips. "We're pleased with today's resolution," Phillips said. "Joe West will be treated like all umpires."

Why did Roberto Alomar appear in such a funk last season? In the opinion of Eric Davis, it wasn't that Alomar disliked Manager Ray Miller. It wasn't that he was in the final year of his Orioles contract. It wasn't that he was frequently booed on the road. No, Davis said last week that the source of Alomar's discontent was his difficulties with American League umpires, who continue to seek retribution for his spitting on umpire John Hirschbeck in 1996.

Two decidedly different portraits emerged Wednesday of the U.S. Open tennis umpire accused of killing her 80-year-old husband and then trying to pass it off as an accident. Prosecutors said Lois Goodman, 70, bludgeoned her husband, then callously left him to die as she went to "tennis and to get her nails done. " Deputy Dist. Atty. Sharon Ransom accused Lois Goodman of meticulously planning the killing in advance, but did not lay out any evidence to support that claim. She said the umpire used a broken coffee mug like an "improvised knife," stabbing her husband 10 times.

Major League Baseball Umpire Jim Joyce made one of the most critical and  and fan-popular calls of his career the other night in Phoenix. But it had nothing to do with America's pastime. The 24-year veteran umpire rushed to perform life-saving CPR on a food service worker before the game this week between the Florida Marlins and the hometown Arizona Diamondbacks, Russ Amaral, vice present of ballpark operations, told the Los Angeles Times. Joyce, the game's umpire crew chief who was scheduled to call balls and strikes behind the plate, was walking down a ramp that leads to the umpire's dressing room when he spotted trouble, Amaral said.