Joe West is regularly one of my least favorite umpires. He’s like that teacher you had in school who is ridiculously strict about everything you do, but cannot do those same things himself.

West complains about long game times, and then calls the Sox-Yankees game “pathetic and embarrassing,” going on to say that they were “a disgrace to baseball.”

Laugh with me.

Red Sox and Yankees are a disgrace to baseball? OK. So the two best teams in the league are what’s disgracing it?

What many people don’t know is that West is a major contributor in these admittedly lengthy games. He made CC Sabathia change shoes in the second inning because they weren’t the Yankee blue, instead matching the gray of his uniform.

Similarly, Marcus Thames had to change the tape on his wrist for the same reason.

In the past, Joe West has had a history of making small problems become major. At one point in 1995, the Mets third base coach Bobby Wine brought out the lineup card two minutes too late, and West was angry at him.

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