Ejections: A Bevy of Tearful Departures

The title of this section comes from the syllabus of a course we took in college—itself the title of the last class session of the semester. The professor was being sarcastic. No tears were actually shed, and when that final hour ended and we filed out, he closed the door behind us with evident satisfaction. It had been a long, trying semester, and he was deservedly relieved to be free of us.

Prior to 1880, no similar cathartic departures were possible for baseball umpires, because rules in the two major leagues did not permit them. Initially, umpires had no power to eject anyone—players, managers, spectators—from baseball games. Their only stick was the authority to levy fines on behalf of the league, but this was a delayed punishment which sometimes failed to land in the moment, like when a parent grounds a badly-behaving child for a week and is forced to keep adding days when the offender is too upset to back down:

“I don’t care, make it two weeks, why don’t you?!” Sometimes what the kid really needs is a time out.

Armed with new powers for the 1889 season, umpires sent 11 naughty people to their room to cool off. They got fined, too.

We often run into notable ejections in the course of our work at Project 3.18. Given our interest in baseball’s more, ahem, spontaneous moments, this makes sense, as ejections are one tool umpires have to try and set things back on an orderly course. But, as anyone who has done (or tried to do) home repair knows, tools can just as easily make things worse, particularly when you are angry when you use them. 

Riffing on the Shoulders of Statisticians

Thanks to the wonderful work of several generations of researchers and historians, whose ability to sustain focus on one topic far outstrips our own, we have a record of nearly every ejection in major league history. From that modest start in 1889, a hundred years later, in 1988, 165 people were “chased,” including Pete Rose and Pedro Guerrero. As of the end of 2023, there had been over 19,000 ejections from baseball games.

A macro glance across the data can be pleasing all by itself. Here, for example, is the list of the various constituencies umpires have thrown at at least once. We’ll go from most obvious to least:

• Players (approximately 11,300 ejections)

• Managers (6,200)

• Coaches (1,500)

• Fans (6)

• Trainers (18)

• Mascots (4; though we expect the story from 1908 will be very different from the three in the 1980s and 1990s, as that label was applied very differently in each era)

• Video operators (3)

• Equipment managers (1)

• Owner’s sons (1)

• Celebrities (1)

Thanks to researchers including Doug Pappas, David Vincent, and David Smith, we have a lot of fascinating information on trends in the data, if not always an explanation for them. Here is a chart from Smith’s work, showing trends in ejections per game over the years.

Credit: David Smith

As you can see, ejections soared during the Deadball era of 1900-1920 and then crashed just as suddenly. It’s not clear why, but we suppose when home runs started driving offense, there was just less stuff to argue over. It got over the wall, or it didn’t.

The next big spike came in the 1950s, but again, we don’t really have one good explanation. Perhaps World War II taught a lot of returning players how to fight and they brought that attitude back to the office. 

Another detail we appreciated: Historically, players were ejected at a much higher rate than managers, but since the twenty-first century began, that trend has collapsed, and these days everyone gets thrown out in equal measure.

And while we are careful not to pretend we are a scholar, having never, for example, taken a Statistics course¹, we do wonder if the pronounced spiciness of the Deadball era also had something to do with the fact that there were fewer umpires on the field in those years. Before 1912, only one umpire was used per game, and he had to call everything, even things that are tough to call today with multiple close-up camera angles to fall back on. The idea of one all-seeing umpire seems ripe for challenges by, for instance, those closer to the play when it happened.

From 1912 to 1951, you might have as few as two umpires for regular season games, one behind the plate and one in the field, but three became more of an unofficial standard as the years went by. The mid-to-late 1950s are, we note, when the second spike in ejections dissipates, right around the time that four-umpire crews became standard.

One easily-explainable trend is the drop in non-ball/strike related ejections after 2014, that being the year when baseball expanded video replay, which stifled a great many potential arguments on the basepaths. Modernists should not get too disappointed however; even though the overall frequency is lower, there have been some incredibly stupid ejections in recent years² and we’ll be sure to cover them!

Meanwhile, ball/strike related ejections have climbed, hastening the development of the robot umpires who will inevitably put researchers like Pappas, Vincent, and Smith and writers like us out of business.

Farce in Fewer Than Six Words

We also have excellent data on the basis for history’s nearly 20,000 ejections (only in 1.3% of cases do we not know why a person was tossed). In the ejections dataset, the stated “reasons” for ejections are another delightful study in factual minimalism, to an extent that makes even the laconic Gary Frownfelter look like a hopeless gab.

To use some examples many of us are fresh on, here is how the ejection record describes Pedro Guerrero’s May 22, 1988 offense:

Throwing bat at pitcher.

That’s correct, of course, but doesn’t give you any context: the incident took place in the midst of a beanball battle in which Guerrero had just become the third casualty—the day before featured two prominent hit-by-pitches, including one which left Guerrero’s teammate, Alfredo Griffin, with a broken hand. Tensions were very high already, and that’s an important part of understanding why Guerrero snapped as he did after getting plunked by an (apparently) misfiring curve ball from David Cone.

Here’s another one, the April 30, 1988 ejection of Pete Rose by umpire Dave Pallone:

Call at 1B (Shoving umpire)

Well…yes, but come on…that summary is like performing Schubert with a kazoo.

Here is one more table prepared by David Smith to give a big-picture look at what gets one thrown out of a ball game:

Credit: David Smith

From the overtaxed “General” aka “Other” category, Smith highlights a few benign examples including yelling, bumping, and the use of colorful language. These examples are poor indicators of the real wonders that lie within. “General/Other” is the first place Project 3.18 digs in to hunt for the good stuff, and once again, Eureka!

If we were writing the paper (which, we suppose, we kind of are!), here are the “General/Other” examples Project 3.18 would highlight:

• Refused to retrieve bullpen ball from field (bullpen catcher ejected)

• Failed to avoid being hit by a pitch

• Whistled

• Praised the strike zone

• Called time out

• Took off equipment (in this case, a catcher removed his mask)

• Made a gesture, in the previous game

When we see gems like these in the “Reason” data, sparkling amidst the slag of thousands of “Balls and strikes” and “Fair/Foul” disputes, we just can’t help thinking: “There’s probably a story behind that one.”

And there are other instances where we don’t have to wonder about a story, because even from what the scant information presented, there can be no doubt:

• Brought a wheelchair to home plate

• Call at 1B (faked fainting)

• Fighting (with a fan to protect his father)

• Showing up umpire (flowers delivered)

• Catcher's interference call (wore mustache)

Yes, writing about ejections is clearly a job for Project 3.18.

A Bevy of Tearful Departures

The history of baseball ejections is a chronicle of individuality and human fallibility, reflecting bad days and childish impulses; puckishness, wrathfulness, and playfulness; overreactions, theatrics, and stunts. One of the reasons baseball continually fascinates us is the way it mostly showcases two individuals at a time in one-on-one contests and interactions that string together into a team sport. This tendency is wonderfully front and center in a hundred different ejection stories.

We also see an opportunity to mix things up and do some shorter-form work. We won’t need to give you three years of backstory to explain why Bill Dahlen had flowers delivered to umpire and Project 3.18 alum Bill Klem; why Rocky Colavito felt compelled to try and defend his dad; or why ejected manager Bobby Valentine snuck back into the dugout wearing such an obvious disguise.

Fair warning though: there will be names, heaps of names, blizzards of wonderful baseball names and nicknames and you won’t know a lot of them and to be honest, neither will we in some cases, but for the most part, the names are just a sensory pleasure. If (when) we happen upon a fascinating character, we’ll be sure to point you in the right direction without sidetracking ourselves too much. 

One thing we don’t plan to highlight in this space are the ejections (over a thousand of them, according to David Smith’s tabulation) of an individual who physically took their unreasonable or disproportionate anger out on an umpire or anyone else. Gossiping about co-worker drama is fun; that’s our Goldilocks-zone here. Joking about one co-worker sending another to the hospital and/or ending up in jail is anything but.

Special Photo Credit:

Our photos today are selections from an open-source photo series by photographer Mark Mauno, who was in the right place with the right skillset in 2008 when he captured a independent-league disagreement between umpire Sergio Padilla and Mike Busch, manager of the Calgary Vipers. Busch, a former major leaguer, is about 6’5’’ and Padilla is, well, not. Click above to see the whole series, and stay for Mauno’s snark-tinged captions.

We particularly love the humanity captured in the final image, as the umpire, alone in the frame for the first time, basically shuffles papers around on his desk, trying to regain his composure after a tough moment. Busch’s day is over, but Padilla has to get right back to work. Any regular baseball-watcher at any level will appreciate how perfectly Mauro’s images capture the emotions and ritualistic behaviors baked into almost any ejection. 

And if you haven’t ever seen a baseball ejection before, this is what they look like, except some look even better and some are much weirder and we’ll give you the only the best that General/Other has to offer in this regard.

1. The class we mentioned earlier was “Comic Books as Literature,” in case you were wondering. Do you know who took that class? Twenty comic book nerds who knew as much about the subject as the professor, who knew a lot. No wonder he was tired by the end.

2. In May 2022, Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Madison Bumgarner was thrown out for objecting to a prolonged and non-consensual hand-massage. We are hardly exaggerating.