Blue Jays fans have their last scrap with Joe West

There are many Blue Jays memories that involve long-time umpire Joe West, but there will be no more now that MLB’s record holder for most games umpired has hung up his cleats.

The 69 year old has long been one of the well known faces of officiating in big league baseball, and not always for the right reasons. That’ll happen when you work an MLB record 5,460 games, and let’s face it, even the best officials can’t please most fans on a good day.

West began his big league career with his first assignment in 1976, and was awarded a full-time gig in the National League that began in 1978. This is a guy that worked the game that saw Willie McCovey hit his 500th career home run, so “Cowboy Joe West” has been kicking around for a very long time.

With all due respect to the umpiring legend, I’m not here to write a tribute. Instead, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the most memorable moments of his career that involved the Blue Jays. I’m sure I’ll miss some of the great ones from over the years, especially in the early years in franchise history. I mean, the guy started in the big leagues a year before the Blue Jays were even part of MLB, so that should give you an idea of the kind of sample size we’re talking about here.

They say the best officials are the ones that you don’t even notice, but for better or worse, I can remember my Dad talking about West as far back as the early part of my childhood. Let’s look back at some of those Blue Jays moments.

Blue Jays fans got to witness the last ejection from Joe West

For the sake of not working my brain too hard, I thought I would start with the most recent example I can think of. In fact, it just so happens that Joe West’s ejection of Ryan Borucki was the last player given the “heave ho” in his illustrious career.

For those who may not remember, Borucki was thrown out because he hit Kevin Kiermaier of the Tampa Bay Rays. That’s only significant because this came a few days after Kiermaier had picked up the Blue Jays scouting report card that had fallen out of Alejandro Kirk’s gear at home plate. In fairness, you can’t exactly blame Kiermaier for what he did, even if the Blue Jays were pretty furious about it at the time. I’m also saying that as someone who doesn’t care for the Rays outfielder much at all.

Borucki was tossed from the game, and while manager Charlie Montoyo was pretty calm about the whole thing, the same couldn’t be said for pitching coach Pete Walker. The latter was very heated as he gave West a piece of his mind, and the incident ended up endearing Walker to many Blue Jays fans even more than he already was.

As much as I personally loved seeing the fire from Walker, I’ll also admit that West’s hands were pretty much tied in this case. There was a lot of tension between the two teams due to the incident with the scouting card, and we had been waiting for Kiermaier to get plunked for a few days. Chances are Walker was so upset because Borucki would go on to be suspended for the incident, which was a bit of salt in the wound for the Blue Jays.

Naturally, Joe West found himself in the middle of it.

Former Blue Jays skipper gets tossed in a World Series game

For those of you that are old enough to remember, Joe West was part of the Blue Jays first World Series championship in 1992. It was during that series that a former Blue Jays manager in Bobby Cox was tossed from a game, which doesn’t happen all that often during the Fall Classic. I know I said I was going to talk about West’s scraps with the Blue Jays today, but I figure this is close enough.

The Blue Jays and Atlanta Braves were playing a hard fought series, with the Jays having a 2-1 series lead at the time in Game 4. The Braves were pressing with set-up man Duane Ward on the mound, and Brian Hunter tried to steal second base. With two strikes on the batter, he was thrown out by Jays catcher Pat Borders. Atlanta shortstop Jeff Blauser was the hitter, and he tried to check his swing without success, as the Jays appealed his swing and picked up the strike ’em out-throw ’em out double play to kill the potential rally.

As you can imagine, Cox was anything but pleased about the call, especially because of the pressure of the situation. In frustration he picked up a batting helmet and slammed it down, and whether he intended to or not, the helmet ended up rolling out on to the field. West was none too pleased with the interruption, and when Cox continued to give him a piece of his mind, the plate umpire decided to eject the legendary skipper. The Blue Jays would go on to win the game by a score of 2-1, and finish the series in six games.

Cox is actually the only MLB manager to be thrown out of two World Series games, as he was also tossed from a game during the 1996 Fall Classic between Atlanta and the New York Yankees. I suppose when you’re around as long as Cox and West each were, they were bound to have a confrontation at one point or another.

As I said near the beginning of this, I’m quite sure I’m going to forget a very memorable moment between Joe West and the Blue Jays. That said, as I was sifting through what the internet had readily available, I couldn’t help but laugh at one story that involved the two parties, and naturally we were going to come across the name of Angel Hernandez as well at some point.

Back in 2010 the Jays were playing the Rays in a tight game. After letting Hernandez know what he thought of the strike zone, then closer Kevin Gregg was tossed from the game by the plate umpire, and Gaston quickly followed. That part had nothing to do with Joe West, but I thought you’d all appreciate a little side note anecdote that involved ol’ Angel.

The part that involved West came a little bit later in the game. Carlos Pena, who played for the Rays at the time, struck out on a pitch where he had asked Hernandez to grant him time before the pitcher started his delivery. Because of some fairly new pace of play rules that had been implemented, Hernandez denied Pena’s request and the at-bat ended in a strikeout on that pitch. Rays manager Joe Maddon was understandably upset about how things had played out, and when Hernandez mentioned pace of play in his explanation, that set the Rays’ skipper right off.

The funny part is that Maddon then went down to Joe West at third base and let him have it. Apparently West had been a big supporter of the pace of play rules, and Maddon went as far as to say the situation was West’s fault, even though he’d had nothing to do with the call itself. This recap of the whole thing from Yahoo is definitely worth a read, and I can’t help but chuckle when thinking about the surprise from West at being blamed in that situation.

Please feel free to share your favourite stories that involved Joe West in the comments, and I hope you’ve had a chuckle or two as we’ve taken a stroll down memory lane. All the best to ya, Country Joe.