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The Big Lead
Major League Baseball umpires generally have pretty short fuses and are, on the whole, pretty terrible. They really hate when you argue their strike zones and that was proven again on Tuesday night. Veteran ump Jerry Layne was behind the plate as the Houston Astros faced the Minnesota Twins. he proceeded to embarrass himself.
In the bottom of the third inning, Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña took a pitch from Joe Ryan that was clearly outside, Layne called it a strike. Peña let the ump know he wasn’t happy about the call, and Layne stepped into the batters box and got into Peña’s face. It was a wildly-unprofessional move from Layne and the Astros in the dugout freaked out about it. As a result, Layne ejected Houston hitting coach Alex Cintron.