Umpbump goes both ways.

Wait. Let me rephrase.

Umpbumpers are givers and takers.

Still sounds wrong. One more time.

A collision between player/manager and umpire does not necessarily have to be instigated by the player/manager. The inverse still holds true.

There. Nothing sexy about that.

Anyhow, it’s true. While most of us think of an umpbump as an act committed by an angry player or manager, Tuesday night’s game between the Mets and Mariners proved that this is not necessarily the case.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Carlos Beltran takes a called strike that he thought was low and verbalizes his opinion to home plate umpire Brian Runge. In turn, Runge takes off his mask, approaches Beltan and says something back. For some reason, Runge then cleans home plate (which already looked whiter than a Kenny Loggins concert) while continuing to have a terse dialogue with Mets centerfielder. The new New York manager, Jerry Manuel, then runs out of the dugout to make sure Beltran doesn’t say something to get himself ejected. And then… that happened:

(NOTE: Crap. Video was removed from the site)

It’s clear from the video that Manuel wasn’t exactly having a friendly exchange with Runge from the get-go. But it’s also clear that Runge lunges forward and bumps Manuel in the chest. Understandably upset, Manuel reacts for one second before Runge decides to throw Manuel out.

Let’s repeat that again. The umpire bumps the manager. Manager reacts to the contact. Umpire throws manager out of the game. Makes total sense, right?

After Manuel’s exit, Beltran now is fuming at the way his manager was treated and again lets Runge know how he felt. And naturally, Beltran is tossed as well.

After the game, here’s what Carlos had to say about the incident:

“After what he did to Jerry I really got mad. Because he really bumped Jerry to get an excuse to throw him out of the game. I just let him know that that was weak. This is the first time that I’ve been so angry in my career and I feel like I have a reason. If I get punished for my actions, he should get punished for his actions, also, because that was horrible.”

And here’s what Brian Runge had to say:

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

Classy guy, that Brian Runge.

Video from SNY.TV via MetsBlog.

We’ve all watched a game in which a player with a peculiar sounding name will hear the boo birds upon coming to the plate. Red Sox 1B Kevin Youkilis? “yooooooouuuuuuu”; White Sox 2B Tadahito “Gooch” Iguchi? “Goooooo”; Aaron Boone? “Booooo” – wait a minute… – at any rate, you get my point.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to baseball, it happens in stadiums across the American landscape. And even though you’d imagine Indian’s Outfielder Shin-Soo Choo getting the boo-as-cheer treatment because of his name; sadly that wasn’t the case last week.

Before being called up on Tuesday, Choo did hear the boos. But what’s disturbing is that he wasn’t rained on with jeers for his performance, or because of a heated rivalry between AAA Buffalo (the Indians’ affiliate) and the Toledo Mud Hens. He heard them for a different, but very wrong reason:

Outfielder Shin-Soo Choo, promoted to the big leagues Monday by the Indians, has heard boos before.

Last week, the boos took on a disturbing tone. When Class AAA Buffalo, the Indians’ top farm club, played in Toledo, fans apparently associated him with […], the Virginia Tech senior who killed 32 of his schoolmates before killing himself April 16.

“Some fans said bad things,” said Choo before Monday’s game. “It’s pretty close to my name. My name is spelled Choo, and his name is […].”

How unfortunate that this kind of situation presents itself; but I’d say it takes something like this to expose where society is most vulnerable. It’s a matter of asking oneself: “why would a minor leaguer have anything to do with the individual that perpetrated the Virginia Tech campus last week?”

Nothing. So why boo him? Why harass him?

For the Indians, though, it wasn’t the only connection to the shootings.

Steven Bumbry, son of former Indians coach Al Bumbry, is a freshman outfielder at Virginia Tech.

“About a half hour after the news about the shootings was televised, I called Steven to see how he was doing,” said Johnny Goryl, advisor to the Indians player development department. “He was in the dorm right next to the one where the first two students were killed. I told him to stay in his room until he heard from school officials.”

At this point, I think, any discussions about the VT shootings should be grounded on what can be done to move on. Booing and harassing a player because he has a Korean sounding name, is not one of them.

Bobby Cox is creeping up on a milestone. According to the AJC, Cox, who was ejected from Sunday’s game for the second time in a week and 127th time in his career, is only four ejections behind all-time leader Jon McGraw.

The Braves manager was thrown out by home-plate umpire Paul Emmel in the sixth inning after Cox came out of the dugout to complain about the strike zone following a walk to Shawn Green.

You’ve got to hand it to Cox. He’s had quite a career. A world Series championship, 15 straight NL East titles, and now this. Also, I think it says something about a guy that he can maintain a reputation as a “players’ manager” while simultaneously getting thrown out of a record number of games. That’s not easy to do. Short tempers and player relations don’t always go hand in hand (see: Larry Bowa).

Breaking the record for most ejections is a pretty big deal, so Umpbump will do its best to chronicle each of Cox’s next four ejections, leading up to the record breaker. Stay tuned.