Major League Baseball Umpire Angel Hernandez made headlines off the field once again this past week as his attempt to appeal to get his original 2017 lawsuit against the league for racial discrimination was rejected by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
According to Reuters, it was a unanimous 3-0 decision by the court that went against Hernandez’s appeal, thus finally putting the case to rest after being dismissed previously in 2021.
“Hernandez's handful of cherry-picked examples does not reliably establish any systematic effort on MLB's part to artificially deflate Hernandez's evaluations, much less an effort to do so in order to cover up discrimination,” said Judge J. Paul Oetken during the initial dismissal of the case back in 2021. “The evidence shows beyond genuine dispute that an umpire's leadership and situation management carried the day in MLB's promotion decisions.”
The Cuban-born Hernandez originally filed a lawsuit in July of 2017 against MLB that alleged racial discrimination. Among the complaints in the original filing were Hernandez's lack of World Series assignments since 2005, notably under the leadership of MLB chief officer Joe Torre, and not being promoted to Crew Chief despite working in the major leagues since 1991.
Hernandez alleges that Torre still harbored issues with Hernandez stemming from a confrontation in 2001 when the Hall of Fame Manager was still coaching the powerhouse Yankees. Hernandez last worked the World Series in 2005 and has been passed over for a crew chief position five different times.
“The District Court also failed to give appropriate weight to evidence of MLB's disparate treatment of Mr. Hernandez,” said Hernandez’s attorneys after the case was dismissed, “including evidence that MLB was manipulating the performance of Mr. Hernandez and other minority umpires to make their performances look worse.”
The 61-year-old umpire also alleged that since Torre took over as the MLB chief officer in 2011, his end of season evaluations went from positive to negative. Hernandez feels that Torre has slighted him and claims it's because Torre doesn’t like him or the fact that he is of Cuban descent.
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Ángel Hernández seen here making a questionable
call this past weekend. Twitter | @CodifyBaseball
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“(Angel) needs to gain greater mastery of the official playing rules and replay regulations, continue to improve situation management, and display an ability to refocus and move forward after missing calls or receiving constructive feedback from the office,” said Torre when telling Hernandez he would not be selected as a crew chief for the 2017 season.
Hernandez has also been someone who will not own up to his mistakes and is not someone who likes being told he is wrong. This often leads to him being trashed in the media by players, managers, and fans for this attitude.
Back in 2017, then Detroit Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler spoke to the media about Hernandez’s poor performance and the league fined him $10,000 for his comments.
“I'm surprised at how bad an umpire he is,” Kinsler told reporters following a game umpired by Hernandez in 2017. “I don't know how, for as many years he's been in the league, that he can be that bad. He should find a different line of work.”
Hernandez was also a target following a 2018 American League Division Series game between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
During the game, Hernandez had five calls that needed to be reviewed by replay or challenged by both the Yankees or the Red Sox with four of his five calls overturned by replay, leading to then Yankee CC Sabathia to criticize Hernandez during his postgame press availability.
“I don’t understand why he’s doing these games,” said Sabathia. “He’s always bad. He’s a bad umpire.”
Hernandez has also found himself in hot water with the league offices in recent years. In 2019, he was caught eavesdropping on an investigative phone call about a recent game he was involved in that had a 30 minute delay due to Hernandez’s lack of knowledge of certain rules.
After his portion of the call was finished, Hernández did not hang up his phone and instead continued listening to the subsequent questioning of another umpire that he knew was intended to be separate.
“Simply put, we find your asserted justifications for remaining on the line to be implausible, internally inconsistent, premised on facts that are not credible,” Joe Torre wrote to Hernandez after this was found out. “We have concluded that you remained on the line in an effort to intentionally and deceptively eavesdrop on a confidential conversation in order to hear what [umpire] Hickox would say. This is an egregious offense.”
Hernandez was also ridiculed by the media for asking pitcher Homer Bailey for 11 autographed baseballs after Bailey's no-hitter – which he was the plate umpire for – and for angrily throwing his headset during a different game when his call was overturned by replay.