Jim Joyce, the umpire who made the controversial call two weeks ago that cost Armando Galleraga a game was named the best umpire in baseball by a number of players.  Now that could be because his name seemed so familiar to each when they were asked to rate them. Still, Joyce showed a lot of class when he admitted his error immediately after the game.

The interesting thing is that CB Buckner was rated the worst- and I have seen him in action many times.  His strike zone changes with the breeze.  The question is, with Bud Selig moving Jimmy Lee Solomon out of the umpire supervisors role, what will happen next.  This Michael S. Schmidt piece gives the details of the reassignment and certainly reads like Solomon was punished.  But with the new information from a poll from the players (only 50 from each league were asked), one would think that something must change with Buckner and other questionable umpires like Angel Hernandez.  The problem?  If you take out Buckner and Hernandez there are not that many minority umpires at the big league level.  That won’t work from any kind of PR standpoint.  So, can you teach an old umpire new tricks?

We are going to find out.