Left unsaid amid Brett Lawrie's idiocy and Bill Miller's incompetence was the thing so fundamental to the blowup that saw Lawrie go all Rob Gronkowski on his helmet and earn every bit of a four-game suspension: Ballplayers think umpires are jokes, umpires think ballplayers are prima donnas and Major League Baseball expects the two to coexist.

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Player-umpire relations have turned increasingly ugly, and if Yadier Molina's did-he-or-didn't-he-spit incident last season couldn't inspire the sides to hold their way-overdue come-to-Jesus sitdown sessions, Lawrie's must. The umpires were left dumbfounded Wednesday by how Lawrie could play caveman and draw only four games – and four games that, thanks to his appeal, he may not serve for a while. The players snickered at Miller's strike zone that extended practically to the opposite batter's box and won't draw him so much as a censure from the league.

And on beats the mistrust.

Both sides have their points. Players are too short with umpires. Baseball is not just the only sport that allows players to talk back to its impartial arbiters without recourse; its history practically encourages them to embrace belligerence. It is well within a player's right to inch himself up to within a whisker of an umpire so long as they don't bump. That millimeter is the difference between a suspendable offense and just another argument, and it invites a culture in which the millionaires can belittle the plebeians.

Plenty of umpires, on the other hand, are arrogant, beyond reproach or just downright not good. Miller was the latter Tuesday night. A 3-1 pitch from Fernando Rodney was a good half-foot off the outside corner. It was bad enough that Lawrie went full diva: dramatic stop on his way to first, pirouette back toward the plate, peacock into the batter's box. The next pitch looked borderline, probably a bit high, and Miller's strike-three call sent Lawrie into a conniption that made his tattoos look 3D from the preponderance of veins that bulged.

Little did Lawrie know he'd been Molina'd – just the latest victim of Jose Molina, the Catching Copperfield, who makes balls disappear into the strike zone. Miller was far from the first victim; he will not be the last, either.

Because umpiring a baseball game, from Little League to the major leagues, is an eminently difficult endeavor. A man must stand at an angle toward home plate – look at the umps; none stands directly over the catcher – and judge whether a projectile hurled upward of 100 mph crossed at any point horizontally over a 17-inch-wide plate and vertically in between the knees and letters. Or whatever he wants his strike zone to be so long as it's consistent. Players want competence, sure. In lieu of that, they accept consistency.

[Big League Stew: Lawrie suspended, fined for 'aggressive actions' toward umpire]

And while Miller's strike zone was mildly consistent – he had called pitches outside to right-handers strikes and balls – it was nevertheless wrong, and Lawrie had every reason to be mad. Not Bamm-Bamm Rubble mad. Go-back-to-the-bench-meathead mad.

Instead, Lawrie exorcised his peers' frustration with some Godzilla stomps and a one-handed wing of his helmet, which catapulted off the ground, glanced off Miller's hip and prompted him to yelp what an amateur lip-reading interpreted as: "What'd he [expletive]ing do that for?" And, yeah, pretty much every rational person thought: What did he [expletive]ing do that for?

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