Event before Colorado Rockies game highlights umpire goodwill, tensions

According to Guccione, the verbal attacks, and events that get out of hand like what happened with Cordova, are part of the reason why there is a shortage of people who are officials, whether be an umpire in baseball or any other sport.

Cordova, while sitting next to Guccione pre-game on Sunday, spoke about the situation that he found himself a part of.

"“It was scary, not only for me but for the 7-year-olds there,” said Cordova. “I don’t want them to have the idea that baseball is like that. I want them to have the idea that baseball is a great game and for them to learn to love the game, just as I have.”"

The invite came a bit out of the blue as Guccione was not originally supposed to be in Denver this weekend. His regular crew assignment for this week was switched, as originally, he was going to be in Queens, New York this weekend for the Braves-Mets series with his regular crewmates of crew chief Mike Everitt, Bill Welke (both of which were hires in the ’99 mass resignation), and Lance Barrett.

However, with his schedule change for the week, he found himself umpiring in Denver this past weekend, as he was filling in for the crew’s regular crew chief, Jeff Nelson, as Nelson, himself (not the former MLB reliever by the same name who pitched in the majors from 1992-2006), was filling in as a crew chief on a crew in San Francisco.

Cordova also said that he didn’t think that the incident “would get this big.” Just the video on Twitter that was tweeted by the Lakewood PD has nearly 3,000 retweets and 6.500 likes as of Sunday night, let alone all of the coverage outside of that tweet.

But with the rise of televised games and technology in baseball, some fans (and some people in the media) have argued that a computer can do the job better.