Should Gerry Davis Umpire the Wildcard?

Bob Melvin has had his share of run-ins with Gerry Davis as well.. Mandatory Credit: Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports.

Gerry Davis is going to umpire tonight’s wildcard game featuring the Oakland Athletics and the Kansas City Royals. If that name doesn’t mean anything to you, it shouldn’t. A good umpire doesn’t get so involved in the game that we need to learn their name (I’m looking at you Angel) but Gerry Davis has a bit of infamy surrounding him this year. On September 1, 2014, Gerry Davis was reprimanded for making “crybaby” faces towards the Athletics’ dugout during a loss at the hands of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim North of San Diego. Scott Kazmir was the first to question the professionalism of Gerry Davis when he found “10-plus pitches that were right there” but the calls didn’t go his way. 

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Kazmir thought that Gerry Davis was giving bad calls because he was upset about the formal reprimand and Davis’ professionalism was called into question. Kazmir has had a rough year with umpires, having been tossed in the second inning by Jerry Layne back in May, but it did appear to be sour grapes.

Gerry Davis is the third most senior umpire in baseball and has umpired more post-season games than any umpire in baseball history. These gigs are not given to lousy umpires but this particular gig should not have gone to him. Had Kazmir simply complained about Gerry Davis in interviews, there would be no problem having him umpire today’s game but this went much deeper than a complaint by a pitcher. Gerry Davis was reprimanded, officially, by MLB because the Oakland Athletics, as a team, filed a complaint. If, in fact, he was so unprofessional to make the faces he was accused of and then, after his reprimand, was taking away any concept of a strike zone from A’s pitchers the next day, he shouldn’t be near the team in the single most important game of their year.

It’s also worth considering that Gerry Davis himself or a member of his umpire crew have ejected Bob Melvin (6/21, 8/31) and Josh Donaldson (6/14).

I assume bygones are now bygones and that Gerry Davis has let the whole thing pass him by but there are no guarantees in life and as long as there is a chance that this game could have an unfair umpire advantage, the umpire should be removed. Why did MLB, or whomever assigns umpire crews, need to put him in this game? Putting him on the national league wildcard game wouldn’t be a problem for anybody.

If Lester walks batters on questionable calls or if, heaven forbid, the A’s lose the game because of questionable calls, the integrity of the game will be called into question. The only thing Oakland can do to protect the sanctity of the game is to go out there and perform in a way that nobody can mess with. If this were a best of three, I may think different but it’s not a best of five. This is a single game that can be made or broken by one bad call at the plate. I can only hope that my assumptions of Gerry Davis’ integrity and professionalism are on display instead of the shameful display we saw last time we saw him.