Commentary: You Can’t Punish Idiocy

Boston’s Carl Everett will get a well-deserved suspension for his outburst towards an umpire over the weekend. If you didn’t see it, Everett was scary. He completely lost control. But, I disagree with those who say Everett should receive a drastic penalty. Everett bumped the umpire, and should be out of commission for a while, but ten games is plenty. The rest of Everett’s show was certainly embarrassing, but hardly worth penalizing. He pointed his finger, jumped around like a four-year old throwing a temper tantrum, and screamed at his own teammates when he reached the dugout. So? Now we all know that Everett can act like an idiot, and has a disturbing temper. But his bump of the ump is the only thing that deserves a suspension. As for the batter’s box issue that caused this whole ruckus, Everett shouldn’t be allowed to wipe out the lines everytime he comes to the plate. But shame on baseball’s umpires for never enforcing the rule, except for one random Saturday in July. In fact, the very next day, the same crew let Everett take his usual stance outside the batter’s box. That’s comical.