Umpire Winters Suspended
September 26, 2007 by Geoff Young
Filed under News
Not that this excuses Milton Bradley for his behavior in Sunday’s contest against the San Francisco Giants, but Mike Winters, the first-base umpire whom the Padres claimed provoked the incident, has been suspended by MLB for the remainder of the 2007 regular season. Bradley, whose tirade ended with his suffering a torn ACL after being tackled by his own manager, clearly has some anger issues; at the same time, it is — or should be — the responsibility of the umpires to keep situations from escalating.
According to San Diego first-base coach Bobby Meacham, hardly a hothead, Winters called Bradley a “bleeping piece of (expletive).” That doesn’t seem like a good strategy for keeping a situation from escalating.
