Not sure why this is coming out today (really, last night) when the deed was done back on January 12th, but it’s still a shame in the way it was handled, it seems:

Major League Baseball, angry over the abundance of blown umpiring calls in the 2009 postseason, has fired three of its seven ump supervisors.

Marty Springstead, Rich Garcia and Jim McKean, each involved in umpiring for 40 or more years, were fired on Jan. 12. They received the news by telephone.

“I was totally shocked,” said Springstead, who began his umpiring career in 1960. “Fifty years, and I get a four-minute phone call to say good-bye? They didn’t give us a lot of reasons.“

Randy Marsh and Charlie Reliford, two umpires who retired after last season, have been hired as replacements. Ed Montague, who retired after 34 years, also is in negotiations about a supervisor’s job.

Imagine working at your company for fifty years, doing a good enough job to last that long, then tossed unceremoniously via a phone call? We blast the umps at will, sometimes rightfully so, but most of us recognize that these guys are human and doing the best job they can at the time. They don’t (yet) have the benefit of instant replay on every close call that we, the viewers, do.

I’m not saying that the underperforming don’t deserve to be replaced, but to do so in that manner is just bad form.