I’m watching the A’s play the Rangers on the tube, and an ump-heckler can clearly be heard on the broadcast. He has just tried out “Hey ump, why don’t you put your helmet on your other end? There’s more sense there!” which I will charitably rate two stars (on a typical four-star scale), it being opening day and all. He’s got the start of something here, but it’s a bit clumsy, and I don’t think we can let pass the classification of the ump’s headgear as a helmet.

The ump slam that made me laugh the hardest when I first heard it was the four-star “For chrissakes, ump! If you had another eye you’d be a cyclops!”