On the recent lack of restraint from umpires

Red Sox third baseman Adrian Beltre getting ejected I am usually pretty lenient towards the umps and lean their way, but both those incidences [with Phillies slugger Ryan Howard getting ejected in the 14th inning Tuesday and Red Sox third baseman Adrian Beltre getting ejected in the third inning Wednesday night], I think they really messed up. Particularly, I didn’t see the Beltre one, I’ll look at it today when I get in, but I saw the Ryan Howard situation, and I thought that was a little ridiculous. I mean [third base umpire] called a check swing [strike], and it’s not the fact that he threw him out, but the manner in which he threw him out and started yelling at him before he even had a chance to protest.

He was looking for a fight, he was picking a fight, and it’s just not right, particularly at this time of year when you do have so much riding on the games. You got to be a little more lenient, but even taking another step further, this time of year, you can’t have inexperienced umpires calling important games. To me, the biggest problem is the scheduling, how you’re scheduling rookie umpires in critical times of the season right now. You got to go with some veteran guys.

[Those veteran umpires] can go on vacation … but send [the rookies] to Pittsburgh or Milwaukee. I mean, seriously, there are some teams that are out of it right now, so you send the lesser umpire to that game, that’s just the way it is.