Regardless of what team or players you root for in Major League Baseball, you have seen them have a run-in with umpire Angel Hernandez. Even the most casual of fans know the name as he has become infamous for some calls he has made on the field.
Well, baseball fans will never have to worry about how he could mess things up on the field again. On Monday, it was announced that Angel Hernandez was retiring from umpiring in the MLB after reaching a settlement with the league.
As shared by Jeff Passan of ESPN, the retirement will be effective immediately. He was an umpire for more than three decades, and his tenure will be remembered most for controversial calls.
A proverbial punching bag for fans, players and managers alike, Angel Hernandez was constantly trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. There is nothing that an umpire or referee can do to garner attention than for making incorrect calls, and he had more than his fair share of them.
On a nearly nightly basis, you could log on to your favorite social media and see clips of Hernandez making poor calls. With challenges becoming more prevalent in the game and umpires under a lot of pressure with automated strike zones not being far away, it was easy to pick apart his performances on the field.
As a home plate umpire, Angel Hernandez left a lot to be desired. A quick search on X, since news of his retirement went public, will provide several clips of him missing calls badly or players calling him out in press conferences.
Angel Hernandez also garnered a lot of attention when he sued MLB in 2017. He alleged that the league engaged in racial discrimination, not giving him assignments in the postseason or promoting him to crew chief.
That lawsuit was originally thrown out and upheld last year in an appeals court. Despite working thousands of games and being an umpire since 1991, Angel Hernandez will mostly be remembered for the failed lawsuit and head-scratchingly poor umpiring in recent years.
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