As Ángel Hernández retires, comically-bad 2022 Phillies game stands out as career-defining night
There were those who didn’t like Joe West’s schtick. C.B. Bucknor has had a lot of missed calls. But Ángel Hernández is pretty universally seen as the worst umpire that the sport has seen.
His career is now over, as he confirmed to multiple media outlets Monday evening that he is retiring as the 62-year-old wraps up a career that began in 1991 and managed to anger just about everyone involved in the sport over 30+ seasons.
There were no shortage of inexplicable calls made by Hernández across more than three decades in the sport, many of which circulated social media Monday evening when word broke of his decision. Among the most frequently shared clips was the usually mild-mannered Kyle Schwarber losing his mind and getting ejected in the ninth inning of a Milwaukee Brewers-Philadelphia Phillies game two seasons ago.
As Curt Hogg of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pointed out, what made Schwarber’s eruption so great is he was sure to point out that not only had Hernández screwed the Phillies that evening, but also the opposing Brewers.
Schwarber’s ejection understandably is what people remember most from that evening. But only sharing that clip almost does a disservice to how bad Hernández was across the first eight innings of the game.
As someone who covered the game on April 24, 2022, early on you realized you were watching something special. It was like getting a chance to watch Pablo Picasso paint, or Kendrick Lamar write a dis song. You just sat back and took in a legendary performance.
Why was Schwarber so angry? Because of all the missed calls that preceded his ninth-inning explosion.
The various Twitter accounts that track the performance of umpires released scathing reviews of Hernández’s performance during the 1-0 Brewers win on Sunday Night Baseball.
What’s funny is whenever a player slams his helmet or argues with an umpire in a manner as emphatic as Schwarber did, there’s usually a percentage of people who believe the player crossed the line and set a bad example for kids watching. There was none of that on April 24, 2022. Even the sportsmanship pearl clutchers had no choice but to admit that Schwarber kind of had a point that night.
It wasn’t the final time Hernández would turn in an inexplicably bad performance at Citizens Bank Park. Last September, he rung Bryce Harper up upon appeal on a check swing that was so far from being a swing it maybe shouldn’t have even been appealed.
As it turned out, last year’s Harper ejection was the final game that Hernández would ever umpire at Citizens Bank Park. And one last time for old time’s sake, he managed to make it all about himself.
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