I’ve been watching baseball for about 32 years now, and I’ve never seen anything like this: La New Bears SS Lin Zhi-Shen completely losing his mind after a close play at first in this Friday night’s 5-5 tie with the Brother Elephants, charging the first base umpire at full speed from the dugout for about 40 feet and clobbering him with his shoulder and forearm. The Umpire, no small fellow, went down straight away, and Lin had to be restrained by teammates before inflicting and further damage. Later on several more La New players would go on to get ejected from the game. No word yet on what kind of punishment Lin will face, or what got him so riled up to begin with. The video in its entirety can be seen here.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Christy // Apr 5, 2008 at 1:54 am
Wow. I cannot believe I didn’t watch the game tonight. I would’ve loved to have listened to more of the commentary. He made it all the way back to the dugout and then decided that he was mad enough to do that?
2 Baseball » Toro! Toro! La New’s Lin Zhi-Shen Flips Out, Clobbers Umpire // Apr 5, 2008 at 2:03 am
[…] SOX1FAN wrote an interesting post today on Toro! Toro! La Newâs Lin Zhi-Shen Flips Out, Clobbers UmpireHere’s a quick excerptI’ve been watching baseball for about 32 years now, and I’ve never seen anything like this: La New Bears SS Lin Zhi-Shen completely losing his […]
3 bigdaub // Apr 5, 2008 at 3:04 am
it was a different player that charged out of the dugout.
it stemmed from a couple of innings before, where lin was called out at first after failing to return to the base when a line drive was caught resulting in a double play.
4 yoshi // Apr 5, 2008 at 7:00 am
dude…dude….that was crazy. that reminds me of the fights ive seen between taiwanese government officials. one more time…THAT WAS CRAZY!!!
5 yoshi // Apr 5, 2008 at 8:42 am
although there is nothing that can compare to Lin Zhi-Shen’s spectacular performance, there was another crazy thing that happened today. the video is on espn.com and it is of Sprint Cup racer Michael McDowell’s horrific crash. Insane. Another spectacular feat that happened in baseball today was during the Astros game today. I am not sure who was at bat but whomever it was got hit in the knee with a fastball. The batter fell to the ground with his hands holding him up. He then performed a perfect handstand. That was pretty cool.
6 jackson // Apr 5, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Christy –
the runner that got called out wasn’t the runner that charged the umpire. Lin was in the dugout when he lost it and charged.
7 jackson // Apr 5, 2008 at 2:57 pm
big daub
it was definitely Lin on that play. later in the game there was another altercation when C Chen Feng-Ming and another player, Pan Zhong-Wei ran at the umpires again.
8 Shinsano // Apr 5, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I love the still photo at the top. He looks like a ghost.
9 Ironchef // Apr 5, 2008 at 10:14 pm
This was bound to happen eventually with the krap umpiring here.
10 Gary Garland // Apr 16, 2008 at 1:21 pm
This was pretty milquetoast stuff compared to what happened to umpire Atsushi Kittaka a few years ago in NPB. Chunichi outfielder Takayuki Onishi kicked him in the ribs, causing a fracture. Onishi, who was only suspended and fined rather than being banned for life, which he very well should have been, went to Kittaka’s hospital room afterward and did dogeza (bowing on your hands and knees in apology) to make it up to Kittaka.
And even that was nothing compared to other NPB incidents. I have video of some of it on my site. I’m still looking for footage of the crowd at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium tearing the place up after a long argument by its manager with an umpre. The damage was so bad the rest of the series had to be canceled.
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