TORONTO – Brook Jacoby insists he is being "wrongly accused of contacting an umpire." The umpire’s incident report claims the Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach pinned Doug Eddings against the wall, and put his arm around his throat, something Edwin Encarnacion, among others, refutes.
The varying accounts of the "Trouble in the Fenway Tunnel" to have emerged publicly thus far are impossibly divergent. Yet Major League Baseball dropped the hammer on Jacoby on Monday with a 14-game unpaid suspension, and upheld the punishment after an appeal heard by commissioner Rob Manfred on Friday.
Beyond a news release announcing the ban for the vaguely described "post-game conduct toward the umpire crew," baseball officials have made no comment on the incident. There’s been no rationale offered for the unusually harsh punishment, the reasoning behind denying the appeal, or an explanation of the process at all.
Given that Cincinnati Reds star Joey Votto received only a one-game suspension and undisclosed fine for making contact with umpire Chris Conroy during a game Wednesday, it’s difficult to reconcile the disparity in discipline.
Are Jacoby’s actions 14 times worse than those of Votto? What evidence did baseball officials see to make them disregard the vehement denials from the Blue Jays? And if the incident is serious enough to warrant such an aggressive punishment – Jacoby is losing nearly nine percent of his 2015 salary – isn’t what he did a matter of public interest?
"Unfortunately, there was a verbal altercation with the umpiring crew following a tough loss in Boston. Frustrations escalated, leading to an altercation in which I was wrongly accused of contacting an umpire in the runway following our game," Jacoby said in a statement released by the Blue Jays on Friday evening. "I’m in no way going to apologize for what happened and feel that the penalties were very biased, harsh, and unfair. I feel vindicated by the fact that everyone very near to the incident corroborated my actions when interviewed."
Adam Hamari, part of the umpire crew in Boston but not believed to have been involved in the incident, was in Toronto on Friday to help work the series with the Boston Red Sox. Approached by two reporters after the game, Hamari said, "I can’t comment, I’m sorry," referring the matter to MLB’s public relations.
Multiple requests for comment from an MLB spokesman have been declined.
A key factor in the situation may be the report issued to baseball officials by the Resident Security Agent, or RSA, on duty at Fenway Park on April 29. RSA’s are in place at every stadium in the big-leagues and their duties include escorting the umpires off the field.
Given the chaotic scene and the logistics of the narrow tunnel that umpires and visiting teams share from the visitors’ dugout to their respective locker-rooms, it’s highly doubtful the RSA would have been able to see exactly what happened.
His report, however, is likely to have carried significant weight in the decision of baseball officials.
The word of Blue Jays like Encarnacion, who was in the hallway and says he witnessed everything, didn’t carry much sway. "They had contact, but not like the way they say," he said in an interview earlier this week. "What I heard is (the umpires) said Brook got the umpire against the wall. That never happened."
Based on multiple interviews, here is one version of how the events played out.
As the umpires passed through the visitors’ dugout following a 4-1 Red Sox win, some Blue Jays coaches complained about the home plate umpire Adrian Johnson’s strike zone that night. Russell Martin’s called strike three for the final out of the game was among several disputed calls.
Crew chief Bill Miller hung back to engage with the coaches while the rest of the umpires filed down stairs into the runway, and protocol would be for the RSA to follow behind the crew chief. Amid the delay, some Blue Jays filtered into the tunnel to exit the field and the chirping continued.
At some point Eddings, who had been walking up the stairway that leads out of the tunnel, heard something that caused him to turn back down and engage Jacoby.
"The umpire came back and talked loud, in front of his face," said Encarnacion, who added that bench coach DeMarlo Hale got in between Jacoby and Eddings before matters escalated, an account corroborated by other sources who preferred to speak anonymously.
Hale shoved the men apart, scattering clipboards and binders Jacoby had been carrying, according to one account, and eventually the tunnel cleared, the Blue Jays and umpires heading to their respective rooms.
"Nothing happened," said Encarnacion. "It could have been worse, but nothing happened like what they said."
The umpires’ side of things, and the view of MLB officials, remains shrouded in mystery.
Perhaps Jacoby is being made an example of to prevent others from interacting with umpires as they exit the field. Maybe baseball officials have some compelling evidence they’re not sharing. Or maybe they’re simply trying to placate umpires by showing that they’re protected.
Since the incident new procedures have been implemented at Fenway that stipulate that visiting teams can’t enter the tunnel until umpires have cleared the walkway. A better idea is to have umpires use an access point in the left-field corner which connects to the service corridor that leads to their room.
For Jacoby and the Blue Jays, the changes come too late to avoid trouble, or to resolve the many important questions that remain.
