I wrote yesterday about how mainstream media members are thankfully beginning to take notice of how aggressively awful and confrontational umpire Bob Davidson has been for years and amazingly he had another “incident” last night.
Of course, given how many “incidents” Davidson has every season the timing of the whole thing probably isn’t that remarkable.
Through his first 92 games as Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson had never been ejected, but Davidson changed that by booting him for arguing about a checked-swing strike call.
Gibson got his money’s worth via a bill-to-bill screaming match with Davidson, who as usual did everything he could to worsen the situation by allegedly trying to goad catcher Miguel Montero into a confrontation earlier in the game.
I’ll let Jack Magruder of FOXSportsArizona.com set the scene:[Gibson] and home-plate umpire Bob Davidson went lip to lip, as Justin Upton called it, after Davidson called Miguel Montero out on a check-swing third strike in the bottom of the third inning. It was the same call on the same pitch--a low, inside breaking ball--that retired Montero in the first, lighting the fuse. ...
Montero was upset after being called out in the first inning, and Davidson appeared to say something to him on his way to the dugout. “I never said anything to him; he said something to me,” Montero said. “I thought he wanted me to say something back, something to throw me out of the game and pay a $500 fine.” After the second strikeout in the third, the D-backs’ dugout was all over Davidson, who ejected Gibson, leading Gibson to run out on the field.In other words, Davidson made a “questionable” call and then tried to escalate the situation by creating a confrontation. Mission accomplished, I suppose. At least if his mission is “be awful at your job and get your name in every game recap.”