Who is Calling the Shots?

Research Summary. Using a database of 30 million profiles, Zippia estimates demographics and statistics for Baseball Umpires in the United States. Our estimates are verified against BLS, Census, and current job openings data for accuracy. After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

• There are over 6,088 Baseball Umpires currently employed in the United States.
• The most common ethnicity of Baseball Umpires is White (77.8%), followed by Hispanic or Latino (9.2%) and Black or African American (6.0%).
• 5% of all Baseball Umpires are LGBT.
• Male 91.0%
• Female 5.3%
  
• Unknown 3.7% 

Source: Zippia

In the sport of Baseball, the officials are called Umpires and they have a massive impact on the game.  Unlike other sports, the Umpire in baseball uses a lot of interpretation and even opinion in determining the outcome of the game.   The official strike zone is the area over home plate from the midpoint between a batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants -- when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball -- and a point just below the kneecap.  This sounds like a pretty specific and exact rule, but the reality of it in application is that of a rule that is difficult to enforce universally.  Batters change their stance as the pitch is being delivered and the speed of the pitch and trajectory also add in many wrinkles in picking whether the pitch is a ball or strike.  This all adds up to a situation where each game has a different strike zone, depending on the umpire.  The inconsistency leads to inconsistency even between batters, fielders or pitchers, depending on the umpire and their personal biases, preferences and abilities.

In my years as a player and coach, I have had MANY arguments with umpires.  Sometimes they were justified arguments, and sometimes they were the result of me being frustrated with the lack of a particular result.  However, in the times (as a coach) I was justified to become upset with the umpire, I often got that way due to a perceived racial bias against my players.  The main reason why I felt this way was due to the fact that my teams were always at least 65% minority players while the umpires were overwhelmingly White.  When one or two calls don't go your team's way, you can brush it off.  But when call after call seems to always break towards the team that happens to be all White players, it becomes more apparent that something is amiss.  This is in stark contrast to basketball where referees are often Black and players tend to overwhelmingly be Black as well.  

How do officials impact the game aside from enforcing the rulebook?  Well, if you're a Black kid who joins a Little League with zero Black umpires, you're far more likely to face either conscious or subconscious bias in every single call.  If you're a pitcher, you see balls called more frequently on borderline pitches.  If you're a hitter, you get a larger strike zone and less leeway on check swings.  This makes the Black player perform worse than a White peer with identical talent and skill.  This then causes young Black players to become discouraged and give up on the game. 

The other way having nothing but White officials may impact the game is the inherent bias against authority figures who come from a different racial background than you.   Joining a league where all the officials are of a different race than you can be a daunting task for many people.  Baseball is a sport where you have direct contact with the official every time you're involved in a play.  In basketball and hockey, the officials can step back into the background for extended periods of time if the two teams are playing fair, but every pitch in baseball requires the input of the umpire in determining the result of that pitch (if it's not hit).  An umpire can tip the scales of a game simply by altering his strike zone slightly.  Any pitcher who has angered an umpire can tell you what it's like to be "squeezed".  

So in the end, what can be done to fix this problem?  It's simple, really.  Get more minorities behind the plate.  More Black or Latino or Asian umpires would benefit the game significantly because more players would feel comfortable on the field with officials that look like them.  Inherent biases would not disproportionately impact players of color if the umpires were more reflective of racial demographics.  Recruiting umpires in the inner city would be a great strategy for the game of baseball to grow itself in an organic way.  More umpires from under-represented communities would lead to more players from those same communities.  Baseball needs to evolve, and at the forefront of that evolution should be the appearance of the umpires.