Umpire yells at rookie pitcher to fix his hat, a breakdown

This is a big one, a much anticipated, big, deep look into the Hansel Rincon debut, which was marred by an umpire being rude to him and then an ejection. And then a lot of shoddy calls brought to you by booking.com. Booking.com. Yeah. First pitch as a big leaguer, low and away strike. No ball. Next one, foul back. Third big league pitch also fouled back and then put in play and caught his first out as a big leaguer. He's making his debut for the Cardinals, who are up by three in the bottom of the sixth inning. But now he's going to face a lefty and lefties hit right. He's better than right. He's hit right. He's in the first pitch is smoked off the wall over Jordan Walker's head into the grass. He's on his way to third base. He's digging. He's jogging. He's slowing down. He slides safe is the call safe. They say, let's get on the phone. Are you guys going to check? Don't rat on me. Yeah, let's check it out. Let's check it out. Doug Edding is the umpire, puts the earpiece in, gets ready. Ali Marmal, manager of the Cardinals, looks up at the scoreboard, says, show me something good. Show me something good. I'll show you something good. This throw by Jordan Walker, it's unbelievable. Watch this hit a jet stream. Goes straight up in the air. Perfect throw. Did bounce over his head. And here's a look at what we're looking at. Did his does his foot touch the bag? Did the glove touch the leg? What happens first? They're taking a look. I don't care. I just want to show you this throw again. Watch this. You see that little upwards dips like a riser through that so hard that right around here it hits the backspin and just goes up like a plane taking off. Ninety eight miles per hour. Do you see what I'm seeing? Look up in the air. Caught a little drift. Unbelievable throw is on the money. You saw how close the tag was. None of it mattered because he dropped the ball. So it's a quick replay because he dropped the ball. I wonder why he didn't tell his dugout. Hey, don't don't replay it. I dropped the ball. Doug Eddings. He's pumped about this. He is pumped that they reviewed it. And it was such a silly replay call for review. The call is confirmed. He say they look. And you know who loved that? Every broadcaster was like, whoa, Doug Eddings. Take a listen. Attaway Doug Eddings. Dougie with a little stank on that. Confirmed. That was the most emphatic I've heard a crew chief this year. Doug Eddings said there's no doubt about it. Shame on you for challenging. Oh, my goodness. Doug Eddings, the crew chief, is proud of that call. How dare you challenge? Yeah. Shame on you for challenging. How dare you challenge? That's the energy. Everyone was like, whoa, Doug, you're putting off some angry energy. So now the rookie's got a runner on third, one out, and he spikes the next pitch. That runner comes home and scores on the wild pitch. A triple and a wild pitch. That's not fun. He looks disappointed. Doug Eddings got a little scared. Watch this. Oh, jumps, gets nervous. The very next pitch, same thing happens. But this time hits Doug in the foot. But look, he gets scared again. He does a little jump again. Is this rookie throwing the ball at me? He's scaring me. Hey, I don't want to get hit like this. Maybe Doug doesn't like being scared, doesn't like being hit. This rookie pitcher can't throw the ball where he wants to throw it. I'm mad at him. Now I'm going to look at him and maybe I'm going to notice something that I don't like. Huh? Hey, are you wearing that hat, kid? Time. Straighten his hat. Yeah. Tell him to straighten his hat. Straighten his hat on my field. Rincon's like, OK. Doug says, thumbs up. Thanks. Like, it's fun. Catcher's laughing like, what are we doing now? After the game, Doug Eddings said it was the Rockies batter who first asked about Rincon's hat. The batter said, hey, can he wear his hat like that? Eddings said, I really didn't know. It was really, really crooked. So I asked the catcher to tell him to straighten his hat. And the pitcher did. I don't think that happened because I don't see the batter turn and look at the umpire at all before the umpire steps out to say something. If you're wondering, why does that even matter? Well, that does somewhat matter because the batters can say, hey, this is distracting. And then that allows the umpire within his discretion to make the pitcher take something off that is distracting the batter. We see this a lot. We see earrings had to be taken off. We've seen undershirts had to be taken off. We've seen sleeves had to be cut because batters were like, hey, that's distracting. The umpire says, OK, we've seen shiny belts get put in the trash. We've seen R.A. Dickey have to cut off his friendship bracelet his daughter made for him. And recently we've seen Doug Eddings himself remove a glove because it had some white on it, and that's distracting. So it is within normal grounds for umpires to use their discretion. Now, MLB came out and said this was not that situation. And I don't even think the batter complained. I think he just made that up because it saves us bacon a little bit. Well, let's keep going. We've got a two oh pitch now to Kerrig on the Rockies, and it becomes a three oh pitch. Ooh, and he's like, you throw that again. I'm a swing kid. And he does. And he did. And this one's up in the air. And just like the last one, it's going to find some part of the funky wall. It's going to roll. He's off. He's hitting second. He's going to stop at third for a triple. No, he's going home. We've got another solo trip around the bases inside the park home run. Come on. I did that. Rincon's sad. I mean, it's sad. It's a bad debut. The umpires yelling at you to fix your hat. You got a triple, a wild pitch and inside the park home run. That's got to be the first of its kind. Game continues. The next batter is going to bloop one over the short stops head and man, they're like, let's get the bullpen up because this 4-1 game became a 4-3 game in a hurry. Bullpen. We got Bruhl warming up the lefty. They wait till six seconds on the pitch clock to buy their reliever some more time, and then Ali Marmal is going to come out and he's going to make the pitching change. Tough debut for Rincon. Not what he wants it to be. Hopefully he gets many more chances. He walks off the mound. His head is down and his hat is still a little crooked. After the game, Doug Eddings also said they can't wear it backward like a catcher if it's a distraction like anything on the field, like a glove or anything. And someone makes you aware of it. You address that. But I looked into this rule and I asked Major League Baseball and I didn't get a full answer. But all the players on the field just have to wear their uniform the same way. It doesn't even say you have to wear a hat. So if the entire team is like, let's not wear a hat, as long as they're not wearing a hat, that's within the rules. They could all wear it backwards to per the way the rule is written. Now, we've never seen that. The article goes on to say Rincon did adjust his hat some. And I want to call that into question. On the left is his hat before being told to strain it. On the right is his hat afterwards. These are the four. Now I'm going to jumble them up and you tell me which one was straight and which one was not impossible. He didn't strain his hat. While Ali Marmal was on the mound, his catcher tells him, hey, umpire made him straighten his hat. That's what that was about. He told him to strain his hat. So Ali Marmal points to Doug Eddings and says, hey, let's go to the side and have a chat. Like, let's go talk to the side. And Doug Eddings sees pointing like, can we talk while he warms up? Can we go to the side? And Doug Eddings looks at him and says, no, why don't you come right here and talk to me here? Hey, start the clock. And then they got to talk right here. And again, Marmal is you can see his arm. He's like, let's go talk on the side while they're warming up. Doug Eddings is like, no, you want to talk? We'll talk right here. We'll make this pitcher warm up with us standing right on the edge of the throwing zone. Ridiculous. Another Doug Eddings quote. He said, I've been doing this too long to take it personal. He wanted to defend his guy who had just given up some runs. Nobody said anything until he gave up a couple of runs. Ali Marmal turned and pointed you out as soon as he found out what happened. He didn't know what happened beforehand. So that's dumb. There's no close ups of this conversation, but the broadcast cut to it right afterwards. So we do get the aftermath of that convo, which starts the whole big convo. You can't. You're not ******* the police of that. You're not the ******* police of that. And you know that. So don't **** around with that. Yeah. You a big boy. You a ******* big boy. **** out of here. **** you. And then to stick it to him, Eddings gives him a pitch clock violation. He wasn't even ready. He wasn't even behind the dish. Everyone's supposed to just be ready position. He's John with the coach pitch clock violation just to rub it in. They don't like that over in the Cardinals dugout. He says, you can go **** yourself. Yeah. Jesus, what are we doing? Grow the **** up. Oh, my God. Oh, still yelling at me. Yeah. Get the **** out of here. That's bullshit. Hold on. OK, this is your last warning. No more. Do it. ------- toss me. Go ahead. **** that. OK, you're gone. Oh, ******* toss me. You think I give a ----? Go **** yourself. Doing that over his ******* hat. I like how when he turns his head sideways, he puts on a scary face like, oh, oh, you scared of my hat like that, man, because of his ******* hat. Grow the **** up. You are a ******* little kid. You need to grow the **** up. The kid is a rookie and you're making a problem because of his ******* hat. You need to grow the **** out. That's all you got. What do you have? Explain yourself. Other than being the veteran ******* umpire. I'm going to tell you how to wear your hat. You're going to tell him how to ******* wear his hat. Why don't you give it a go and call the league? Do me a favor. Grow the **** up. Holds eye contact just for a little bit. Let's him know he means business. Grow up, Doug Eddings. That's what I'm telling you to do. Then he walks off feeling good about himself, feeling pretty upset about the whole situation. And Doug Eddings makes Doug Eddings makes this face. I've done a lot of breakdowns about Doug Eddings, and this face comes up a decent amount. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. On my field, on my field. OK, you good? You good? Get your warm ups in. All right. Remember, there's a strike because I did a pitch clock violation on your ass because your manager was yelling at me. Remember that. Now this story, we've got more to discuss. It's a tied game now. The next two batters got hits. It's tied four to four. They lay down a bunt. Great glove flip to the catcher who tests safe, who doesn't tag him out in time. He's safe. They say, let's review that. Hey, let's review that. Pitcher's like, hey, what? Challenge, challenge, challenge, challenge, challenge. Third base is saying, no, no, no. Challenge that. Challenge that. Challenge that. And then he realizes, oh, I dropped the ball and they did the replay when I could have just told him that I dropped the ball and we wouldn't have wasted the challenge. And now we don't have any of those challenges. The ****? Damn. Maybe Doug Eddings didn't get a good look, though. Or maybe he got a perfect look. Seems to me. Oh, no, Doug didn't make this call wrong because he was feeling petty, did he? No, he just must not have had a good look at what he was looking directly at. He's I mean, he didn't know they were out of challenges because he was mad at them for challenging earlier in the game and then mad at everything else. And then, oh, no, I probably not what happened, is it? Thanks to Book.com, making it easy for baseball fans to get where they want to be. Booking.com. Booking. Yeah. An official travel partner of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission, we asked.