Ángel Hernández, baseball’s most infamous umpire, is retiring

<p>Ángel Hernández, the most infamous umpire in Major League Baseball for the past decade or more, is retiring, effective immediately, according to a person familiar with the situation. The 62-year-old, who debuted in 1991, has not worked a game since May 9.</p> <p>“I have decided that I want to spend more time with my family,” Hernández said in a statement in which he called umpiring his “childhood dream” and said he “treasured the camaraderie” with colleagues but did not expound on the factors that led him to step aside midseason.</p> <p>MLB would not comment on the specifics of the timing, either. USA Today, which first reported the news Monday night, reported that Hernández had come to a settlement with MLB by which he would retire sooner than later. A lawyer for Hernández, Kevin Murphy, said in an email that MLB did not force Hernández to retire. “The decision was his and his alone,” Murphy wrote.</p> <p>For many umpires, the circumstances under which they retire are hardly inspiration for much inquiry. And indeed, Hernández worked just 10 games in 2023 because of back trouble. Still, Hernández is not most umpires, so the circumstances of his departure qualify as noteworthy.</p> <p>Over the past few years - and particularly since social media has allowed more constant monitoring of umpire performance and regurgitation of mistakes - Hernández emerged as one of the more criticized and villainized umpires in history. According to Umpire Scorecard, which tracks umpire ball/strike accuracy, and to internal MLB performance assessments, he was not the worst of MLB’s 76 full-time umpires.</p> <p>But reputation meant his missed calls, some so egregious as to inspire disbelief among players, were turned into montages. His willingness to eject frustrated players and unwillingness to go quietly in arguments fostered accusations about a desire to be in the center of attention. And players and managers rarely felt the need to filter when it came to their frustrations with him.</p> <p>Beloved longtime pitcher CC Sabathia once said Hernández “shouldn’t be anywhere near a playoff game.” When Ron Washington was managing the Texas Rangers, he said: “Ángel is bad. That’s all there is to it.” Active career ejections leader Bryce Harper offered reporters more than one rant about Hernández’s tendency to stir the pot over the years.</p> <p>All umpires earn some consternation. Hernández, fairly or not, fostered endless aggravation.</p> <p>“It’s a long career. He’s been criticized a lot, but it’s a tough job,” Boston Red Sox Manager Alex Cora said. “… He had some good days and some bad days. We all know it. He knows it, too. But he was always cool to me.”</p> <p>Hernández never retreated. In fact, in 2017, frustrated by the fact that he had not been assigned to a World Series crew in over a decade, the Cuba-born Hernández sued MLB for racial discrimination, asserting that “he was passed over for ‘crew chief’ positions and World Series assignments due to unlawful discrimination based on his race, ethnicity and/or national origin.” A judge ruled in MLB’s favor in 2021, and a court rejected Hernández’s appeal last year.</p> <p>“Needless to say, there have been many positive changes in the game of baseball since I first entered the profession,” Hernández said in his statement. “This includes the expansion and promotion of minorities. I am proud that I was able to be an active participant in that goal while being a Major League umpire.”</p>