This, my friends, is a lesson on how to rant, by Professor Ozzie:

“Because he’s a f—ing a–hole, that’s what he is. I just went out to ask him … I wasn’t asking about the balk because you’re not allowed, anytime you go out there to ask about balk or whatever. The thing I went out to ask him about was why he was embarrassing Buehrle. I’m not going out to argue about the balk because the rule, but I went out to ask him why he’s embarrassing Buehrle and he give me one of this [dismissing him with his hands]. When you’re a professional and you have to respect the managers, the way we’re supposed to respect the umpires, they are supposed to respect back. Obviously they have more power than we have and we have to wear it every time that happens. That’s the reason I got tossed. I don’t think he has the right and the power to let people know who is the chief on the field. We know he has to control the game, we know he has to control all the s—, but in the meanwhile, I don’t think it was the right thing to do, like we balked him while we were on the field. Joe has been like that for a lot of years, and he’s always going to be like this. I’m not going to change it, nobody is going to change it, but sometimes he thinks f—ing people pay to watch him f—ing umpire. He’s the type of guy that wants to control the game, it’s good for the game, and to me one of the best umpires in the game, no doubt. But in the meanwhile, those years are on his shoulders and kind of heavy and showing people who he is. I deserve respect and the players here deserve respect here, too. When you tell the manager to get the f— off the field, I don’t think that’s a good way to handle situations. No matter what you say, what you do, how long you talk here, Major League Baseball doesn’t do s— for anything. I’ll be waiting for my fine, get ‘em the next day.”

“I said why are you embarrassing Buehrle? He said, ‘Well Buehrle was doing …’ well, you got two choices, the second choice he has, and he was wrong the first time or the second time, either one was wrong. Because you don’t like what Buehrle did the first time you should toss him. You shouldn’t embarrass him. That’s the way he is.”

Relevance to the Yanks taking two games yesterday? None. Sorry. But my disdain for Joe West runs pretty deep.

(click “view full post” to see the normalized strike zone from this game)