Torii went nuts because he thought missed strike 3 was intentional

I wasn't at the ballpark on Wednesday night and thus didn't have a chance to talk to Torii Hunter directly after his comedic meltdown toward umpire Mark Ripperger.

There was a postgame quote that tells us what triggered this, and it wasn't some distorted view of leadership by Torii, some futile attempt to fire up his teammates.

It was this:

"I thought it was a ball,'' Hunter said. "The pitch before that, I thought it was a little up. He called it a strike, that's fine. I thought the last pitch he called a strike was revenge because of what I said about the pitch before that … because it [strike three] was definitely a ball.''

So that was the trigger:

It's wasn't that Rippeberger missed a pitch for strike three. It was that in Torii's mind, Rippeberger missed the pitch on purpose, to get back at Hunter for a complaint a moment earlier.

I don't think umpires intentionally put the screws to a player or a manager as often as was the case in former times … meaning the '70s, '80s and '90s. Umpires had such unilateral power then that they basically were allowed to be both vengeful and incompetent, with little risk to their jobs.

The union was broken in the late '90s, a new union took over 2000 and the umpires became subject to more intense monitoring from the Commissioner's Office.

Technology has helped in assessing umpires – and getting away from the idea that every umpire was allowed to have his own strike zone.

They still do, but by an inch in or out, up or down, not by three or four inches as was the case before computer images came along to judge them.

You don't hear nearly as often the cliche, "It's the hitter's job to adjust to the plate umpire's zone,'' because there's a box on the TV screen that allows everyone to judge if the umpire's zone is reasonable.

If a plate umpire has a bad night telling balls from strikes, it's his fault, not the hitter's.

What remains the same with umpires, now or in the previous century, is this:

If a player or a manager feels an umpire put the screws to him on purpose, the player or manager is very likely to go nut-so.

True or not, that's what Hunter felt about Rippeberger on Wednesday, that the missed strike three was intentional, and that's why Torii went nut-so.