"We're very appreciative of their support," said AMLU lawyer Robert Weaver, from the firm of Nakamura, Quinn & Walls in Birmingham, Ala.
Weaver remains optimistic that a resolution to the strike remains.
“The lines of communication are open and I wouldn't say we're approaching an impasse. But the union questions whether Minor League Baseball is willing to continue working with replacements in light of recent events.
Events that Weaver referred to include the following:
- In an April 26 game at Pawtucket, Durham's Delmon Young was called out on a third strike and eventually threw his bat at and hit the plate ump. Young was suspended for 50 games by IL president Randy Mobley. Young had expressed his frustration with the calls prior to the incident.
- On May 6, Birmingham manager Chris Cron pulled his team off the field during the eighth inning of a Southern League home game against Jacksonville after the benches on each side emptied three times. Minor League Baseball doesn’t track records of a team withdrawing from a game, but no one can recall such a thing happening either at the MiLB offices or at any of the league offices in recent memory.
- After Ottawa manager Dave Trembley was ejected from a home game on May 1, he said in a release by the AMLU that "this was the worst officiating I've ever seen in 20 years of professional baseball. It's an embarrassment to the International League and an embarrassment to me."
- New Orleans manager Tim Foli was quoted by The Hardball Times as charging a crew of umpires with "home town bias" and saying "we're better off in a lot of situations just having one of the coaches stand behind the mound or letting the catchers call (balls and strikes.")
- An International League player who requested that his name not be mentioned was more specific. "It's definitely not professional baseball the way they're calling balls and strikes," he said. "I've been called out twice on balls that bounced in the dirt. Definitely hitters are taking a beating and so are pitchers. I know guys on our team are throwing pitches sometimes down the middle and (they're) getting called balls. And sometimes they're 10 inches outside and they're called strikes.
"It's definitely inconsistent and it's affecting careers. Players' numbers are down. I think the league ERA is an earned run lower than it was last year."
In this month’s article “Marte Marches on the Majors” a National League scout noted that the Buffalo Bisons’ Andy Marte “[has] had some bad calls [go] against him. Having sat behind home plate I've seen more bad called strikes on him than on other players…What's happened to him is these bad calls have put him in a hole a little bit."
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