Umpire Exchange Ends Badly Major League Baseball Orders Arbiter To Return Home After Mauling In Japan
It was an experiment that was supposed to bring the United States and Japan closer together. Instead, it ended with punching and shoving, a shower of garbage and the latest cultural disconnect between two countries that can’t quite seem to figure each other out.
Mike Di Muro, the first American umpire to work full time in Japanese professional baseball, is leaving Japan just three months into the season because of an on-field fracas in which several players and coaches shoved and struck him during a game.
Major League Baseball officials called Di Muro home over the incident Monday, bringing a sour end to what started out as a promising exchange between two countries whose dealings in everything from semiconductors to whale meat are often marred by cultural misunderstandings.
Although Japan is one of the world’s least violent societies, manhandling of umpires - absolutely taboo in the United States - is relatively commonplace here and is an accepted way of getting them to change their calls.
Di Muro, who was invited to Japan this season to help improve the quality of Japanese umpiring, said he and American baseball officials he consulted were “shocked” by last Thursday’s dust-up, which involved at least five Japanese players and coaches.
The Americans were incredulous that none of the players or coaches involved was fined or suspended. Only one, a player who struck Di Muro in the chest once with his fist and swung at him a second time, was given a letter of reprimand.
Di Muro said American officials would not allow him to continue working in a league where players can rough up umpires without meaningful punishment.
“What will the next guy be allowed to do if I call a strike - take a bat to my head?” Di Muro, 29, said in an interview. “There’s a great difference in the style of baseball here and in America, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I would hope that when you’re talking about a physical assault, there would be no acceptance of that no matter where you are.”
Officials in Japan’s Central League had asked Di Muro, an umpire in Triple-A minor league baseball, one level below the majors, to work in Japan this season to improve sagging fan and player respect for Japanese umpires. League officials said they wanted him to teach by example with his American-style “fair and strict and lively conduct.”