But what did Winters say and, more important, why did he say it? Major League Baseball is investigating whether Winters baited Bradley, as Bradley claims.
"He kept talking to me. He wouldn't stop," Bradley told reporters after the game. "This is the most unprofessional, most ridiculous thing I've ever seen ... He's going to kick me out of the game, for what? Because you called me a piece of shit?"
Whoa, pronoun whiplash there, but Bradley's saying Winters called him a piece of shit.
Winters hasn't commented to the media. Meacham, the first-base coach, told the San Diego Union Tribune, "In my 26 years of baseball, that was the most disconcerting conversation I have heard from an umpire to a player. The way Winters responded was bizarre. It was almost like he wanted to agitate the situation. I was appalled."
Meacham told the paper that Bradley didn't use profanity and that Winters swore and called Bradley a name that would have evoked a similar response from Meacham had it been directed at him. Asked if Winters made racial comments, Meacham said, "It smacked of that tone." Meacham, like Bradley, is black. Winters is white.
The other witness within earshot was Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton, who has been mum except to say that the incident was "interesting and crazy." The Denver Post reports that he chose his words carefully.
Bradley was in the wrong Sunday in that he put himself in a situation that could -- and did -- hurt his team's chances to make the playoffs.
But Winters may have been more wrong. We'll wait for MLB's investigation, but there doesn't seem to be much dispute that Winters was plenty aggressive toward Bradley, that he walked toward him and said something that was at least perceived as inflammatory not just by Bradley but by Meacham too. And in the moment, not in an after-the-fact, protect-my-guy kind of way.
Helton's cryptic comment speaks volumes in its own way. He could have just shrugged out a "That's Milton being Milton," but instead he played it close to the vest, choosing his words carefully. The way a person might do when speaking about a class of people he doesn't want to offend because they hold his fate in their hands. Like, just to pull an example out of the air, the way umpires hold a ballplayer's fate in their hands.
Joey Crawford getting up in Tim Duncan's grill at the end of the last NBA regular season is the most egregious example -- Donaghy's game fixing excepted as a whole different animal -- of the trend of officials overstepping their bounds, trying to take on too big a role. We seem to have an epidemic of umpires and refs initiating shouting matches with players, or needlessly letting them escalate.
Officials should be disinterested and above the fray. Players and managers and coaches are in the heat of competition and should be given some leeway -- not as much as Bradley seems to require, but some -- to be emotional. But officials, as the arbiters and controllers of the game, have to be cool and businesslike.
Winters' response to the question Bradley says he asked, whether Winters told home-plate ump Runge that Bradley had thrown his bat at Runge, should have been a simple "Yes, that's how I saw it." The question and answer had no effect on the outcome of the game, so the matter should have been of no concern to Winters beyond that point.
If Bradley had wanted to argue about it, Winters should have said something like "I'm not going to argue about it, Milton," or even just ignored him. Maybe one warning beyond that, and then toss him if he keeps the argument going in an obviously disruptive way.
Winters certainly had no business calling Bradley a name. Whether the name was racial in nature, though inflammatory, is a red herring. Whatever the name, Winters should get the boot if he did it. If Winters is willing to escalate an argument in that way because he doesn't like Bradley, how do we know he's not willing to call a ball a strike when Bradley's hitting, or to call him out when he's really safe?
Thanks to Tim Donaghy, the customers are even more on edge than usual these days about whether the officials of their various favorite sports are on the square. All fans sort of suspect the boys in blue, or gray, or stripes, have it in for their favorite team, but when an umpire is caught saying, on the field of play, that he thinks the local nine's left fielder is "a piece of shit," it sort of removes all doubt, at least when the left fielder's involved in a play.
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Winters hasn't been caught yet. Only accused. But if he's guilty -- and when was the last time the world waited for the next comment by Mr. Todd Helton? -- MLB should throw the book at him.
By the way, getting tossed and injured wasn't Bradley's only trick Sunday. He also inadvertently stepped on the right hand of diving center fielder Mike Cameron as they both chased what would become Garrett Atkins' inside-the-park home run. Cameron's out for at least the rest of the regular season with a torn ligament in his thumb.
All of a sudden Bradley's not looking quite like the bargain he appeared to be when he became their best hitter -- when he wasn't on the disabled list -- after the Oakland A's left him on the curb and the Padres picked him up in late June.
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com or visit his Facebook page.
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