Empty Stadium Made It Very Easy to Hear MLB Ump Scream at A’s Manager

Home plate umpire Ron Kulpa’s loud message to A’s manager was heard loud and clear by just about everyone.

Anybody who‘s still showing up to A’s games deserves a ton of credit. It’s been more than a month since the stadium was even half-full (three months if you exclude games against the neighboring Giants) as Oakland limps to what’s likely to be the franchise’s worst record in more than 100 years and in what’s likely to be one of its final seasons in the city. 

Some 6,294 hardy souls did show up for Tuesday night’s game at the Coliseum against the Mariners, an increase over the 4,972 who came out the night before, but still a paltry sum for an MLB game. The plus side, though, is that the small crowd made hardly any noise, so when home plate umpire Ron Kulpa wanted to get a message across to A’s manager Mark Kotsay, broadcast microphones were able to pick it up loud and clear. 

"Hey Kotsay, Kotsay, hey Kotsay, easy...he said he didn't go, he said he didn't go." pic.twitter.com/VHdiRPL98Y

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) September 20, 2023

Oakland pitcher Paul Blackburn spiked a curveball in the dirt, which Mariners star Julio Rodríguez started to swing at. Kulpa asked first base umpire Jansen Visconti to rule whether Rodríguez had offered at the pitch. He said he didn‘t, which sparked an argument from Kotsay. Kulpa didn’t want to hear it. 

“Hey, Kotsay! Kotsay! Hey, Kotsay! Easy,” Kulpa yelled back at him, his side of the exchange being picked up perfectly by the home plate microphone. “He said he didn’t go! He said he didn’t go.”

It requires a bit of lip reading to figure out what Kotsay was saying back. The crux of his argument was, “That’s a full swing, Ron,” which is why Kulpa felt the need to remind Kotsay that it was Visconti who’d actually made the call. 

It’s sad that A’s ownership has purposefully tanked the franchise so severely on its way out of town that only a handful of fans even bother to show up at games, but at least we get funny exchanges like that as a result.