There’s the drooling dance after a touchdown in football, the bullying at weigh-ins in boxing, the brawls in hockey, but there’s also another, slightly controversial, sporting tradition that’s sure to make you jump out of your chair: the kicking out of a manager in baseball.
It’s a custom. It’s part of this sport. As soon as it is necessary, whether to send a message, please the crowd or shake up his team, the manager comes out of his lair, yells at the referee and is sent off. That doesn’t happen in other sports.
And these quibbles are not for the meek.
It even takes another referee or another coach to take away the manager like there’s a chance one would beat up the other. If it were on TV, we’d hear a beep to censor a lot of the words exchanged, which aren’t very elegant, let’s put it that way.
It’s been like this forever and audiences love it
When you’re new to baseball, you can be amazed at times. Baseball fans are used to it.
Yves Lamontagne has been a professional referee for 23 years. Patrick Scalabrini has been playing pro for 9 years and has led the Capitals for 13 years. Michel Laplante also played professionally for 9 years and has been managing or presiding over this club for 18 years. So it’s 72 years that these three men have played full-time pro baseball. They are good at explaining this tradition.
Tender for Laplante
For Michel Laplante, who also sits on the board of directors of Baseball Quebec, the situation is delicate. It’s not a very good model for young baseball players and coaches when the Capitals manager yells at an umpire who’s an inch from his face and whose veins are sticking out of his shot.
Michel Laplante when he was manager of the Capitals. QMI agency
“Obviously I don’t like being the Vice President of Baseball Quebec. You don’t want a young minor league baseball coach to see that and think he has to do that. People have to understand that as you drop down to the professional level, you also slide down into spectator sport,” explains Laplante.
“I wouldn’t want to see that in any park in Quebec. There’s never 3000 people there, there’s no show,” he adds.
But as President of the Capitals, he sees things differently.
“Yes, I think that’s right. “As coaches, sometimes we want to show the players that we have our backs, which isn’t necessary at the amateur level,” continues the Capitals president, who also clarifies that sometimes the manager needs to show the thousands of spectators what he’s doing the game doesn’t matter and he has to give the impression that he’s defending his team.
“When an amateur level coach goes to see a referee, the referee turns away and doesn’t want to talk. But it doesn’t work on a professional level. There is a discussion.”
But one thing is for sure: while defending his manager Patrick Scalabrini, he explains that sometimes it’s his job to reassure him. “I have to tell him to relax. Sometimes he’s really angry and I don’t like that. “Patrick’s a lot more intense than me, he comes off angry, solid and confident,” Laplante continues, laughing and explaining that during the 25 times he’s been kicked out in 5 years as the Capital’s manager, he’s played about 40% of the time Cases really angry was the time.
Scalabrini sleeps badly
Scalabrini also stands between tree and bark in this tradition.
“Actually, I’ve grown over the years and do it less and less. I understand young amateur baseball coaches looking at all this and maybe thinking it’s okay to do the same. So I understood that going too far was dangerous. I keep doing this because I’m an emotional guy, but I choose my moments better, let’s say,” he said in an interview.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY Christian Gingras
And when that happens, nothing is trivial for him.
“Of course, I never sleep well afterwards. I’m still angry and miserable. Sometimes I find I give too much […] It often happens that it doesn’t tempt me to do it, especially when I feel like the referee isn’t that wrong. But sometimes I have to support my players and the crowd. I feel I still have a duty to do this.”
But if you see him at the supermarket the day after a clearance, you can say hello.
“Well, I’ll be in a good mood, we play every day, we see the umpire the next day, we have to turn the page, this is baseball. You have to know that there is mutual respect with the referees,” he explains. Especially for Yves Lamontagne, whom he has known for decades.
Is it often theatre? “It’s happened a few times. I walk out and I’m like, “Okay, let’s talk for a few seconds and you kick me out.” It’s hard to stay serious and say something meaningful when something’s happening. In fact, I talk quite a bit of nonsense and repeat the same nonsense theatrically. But 75% of the time I’m really angry,” adds Scalabrini.
opinion of the referee
Yves Lamontagne has been refereeing for 39 years, 23 of them at professional level, while traveling in several leagues in Canada and the USA.
Photo: Marcel Tremblay
For him, it’s rarely a show at first. “It is very rare for a manager to leave for no reason. I would tell you that the show evolves in discussion.
And Lamontagne has mileage. He can give when a manager wants to put on a show.
One of his bosses contacted him the day after he had a fight with Patrick Scalabrini.
“He wanted to know if it was normal for it to move so much. I told him that Quebecers are like Spaniards and that’s why there are so many hands in the air!”
But he wants to tell those who might be concerned. “Me and Pat, we don’t hate each other at all!” he says, laughing. But he admits he can be “hot” at times.
What he is trying to show the younger professional referees is that he will never turn his back on the coaches who visit him. “The manager has the right to speak to the referee as long as it remains respectful it’s normal.”