Baseball fans, go ahead and give yourselves a pat on the back, Barry Horowitz-style. For you, my friends, helped much-maligned MLB umpire Angel Hernández finally ride off into the sunset.
ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan, speaking on the Rich Eisen Show Tuesday, revealed that baseball fans on social media relentlessly pointing out Hernández missed calls and providing highlight reels of his worst moments, were a deciding factor in his decision to retire.
“A lot of that stuff, frankly, led to him going away. He got tired of it. He got tired of the social media firestorm that exists,” Passan said. “Frankly, I will acknowledge this is understandable because there are parts of his job where he was genuinely bad.”
“Every time he would do something wrong, it would get put out there and then it would almost just compound upon itself, the last time, and it would bring up the Angel Hernández highlight reel,” he added.
“You just had this echo chamber of Angel Hernández awfulness that, I think, in the end, wound up being part of his undoing.”
RELATED: Umpire Angel Hernández Has Called His Last MLB Game
Social Media Users Helped Push Angel Hernández Retirement
Is this possibly true? Quite frankly, I find it deplorable nay, reprehensible for anybody to have made a highlight reel of Angel Hernández’s worst moments.
And for it to lead to his retirement? For shame!
We would certainly never do that here at Bounding Into Sports.
Just kidding, we did!
Besides, it wasn’t just casual baseball fans on social media who liked to point out the many, many mistakes that peppered his career.
Take, for instance, this Texas Rangers announcer who simply could not restrain himself when Hernández missed three straight calls on pitches that were well outside of the strike zone (further off the plate with each one).
THREE IN A ROW ANGEL??? pic.twitter.com/B2ZVhellGR
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) April 13, 2024
Sure the video ended up on social media, but it’s not social media’s fault. If Dave Raymond never uttered the words, “You have got to be kidding me! What in the world?” the world may never have known.
Not to mention, it was another baseball insider, Ken Rosenthal, who called out MLB and said the league has to do something about Angel Hernández.
RELATED: The Most Controversial Calls Ever Made By MLB Umpire Angel Hernandez
Called His Last Game
Angel Hernández called his last Major League Baseball game on May 9th and just last week announced his retirement. Baseball fans gave a collective sigh of relief.
Hernández issued a statement indicating that a desire to spend more time with his family was his reason for leaving, not social media scrutiny.
He has insisted he was not forced out by MLB. But Passan claims they did “offer (him) a handsome retirement package” to go away.
“I think it was just that we expect a certain level of competence from our officials,” Passan said. “And when that level of competence is not reached … as frequently as it seemed to be with Angel Hernández, that’s where the league, frankly, needed to step in and do something.”
People making lists or highlight reels of that incompetence may have helped a little too.
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