Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
It's only completely anecdotal, but I thought especially after his 1990 playoff tirade Clemens from that point on had to earn everything he got with the umps.
Certainly true in basketball, in terms of foul calls and not calling traveling.
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I definitely subscribe to this theory. I think it's actually much more significant than people realize, across the board. I actually started including which umpires were behind the plate in my models and always wanted to include interaction variables between umps and pitchers to see who was prejudiced for and against who, but never got around to it. It was too much work and I was retiring from full time gambling anyhow (and sports betting wasn't my primary income source anyhow, poker was. Sports betting was supplementary income). The juice just wasn't worth the squeeze. But it definitely has an effect.