By Dan Ronan
Nearly nine years after retired MLB umpire Tom Hallion and former New York Mets manager Terry Collins engaged in a heated, often profane, argument that is memorialized on YouTube, the two baseball lifers are still being asked to appear on podcasts and discuss how a seemingly routine early season game between the Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers became part of baseball legend.
The game on May 28, 2016, at New York’s Citi Field marked the first meeting since the teams faced off in the 2015 NL Championship series, when L.A.’s Chase Utley fractured the leg of Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada as Utley tried to break up a double play. Collins said his pitchers were planning to send Ultey a message for what they perceived as a dirty play, even though the incident occurred more than six months earlier. During the offseason, the Dodgers hired a new manager, Dave Roberts, and Collins said he seemed eager to defuse the tensions between the two longtime rivals.
Utley received a two-game suspension that carried over to the next season. But during the offseason MLB dropped the suspension, saying Utley did not break any rule with the hard slide. However, before the 2016 season, MLB changed the slide rule to provide more protection to middle infielders turning the double play.
“We met at home plate with Collins and Roberts, and it was a nice, cordial meeting. But (the play) does come up by Roberts and he said, ‘Terry, this is my first year, I’m new at this, and I hope it’s all over and we move on,’” Hallion said. “Terry then said, ‘Gee, it is a shame the league never did anything to take care of this and they said they’d move on.’ Now, as a crew we said, ‘This is the kiss of death’ with both of them kissing and hugging. We knew something was going to happen. But nothing happened Friday and then we came to Saturday.”
Hallion had some instruction for Adam Hamari, a Triple-A call-up umpire, who may have felt he was under added scrutiny because he was not a full-time member of the staff.
“I said, ‘Adam, trust your gut, and if you think something is not right, you do whatever you think you have to do,’” Hallion said. The game was to be broadcast nationally on Fox. Hallion decided he, rather than Hamari, would wear a network microphone.
When Utley came to bat, Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard threw a fastball behind Utley. Hamari immediately ejected Syndergaard. Hallion rushed to the mound and told Syndergaard, “You’re done. You can’t do that in that situation. That’s the wrong time to do it. Our ass is in the jackpot if we don’t do something there.”
“I was not surprised that Syndergaard threw at Utley,” Collins said. “I thought for sure there would be a warning and not an ejection.”
Seconds later the argument would erupt and become the stuff of legends. Collins was in Hamari’s face while Hallion spoke to Syndergaard. Hearing the roar of 42,000 fans, Hallion pivoted from Syndergaard and faced an enraged Collins.
“You take (Syndergaard),” Hallion said to Hamari and the two other crew members, veteran umpires Phil Cuzzi and Dan Bellino. “Terry was going nuts on Adam, and I got Terry away from Adam. I told Terry, ‘You talk to me.’ It was a lot of built-up frustration over the way the league managed the situation with Utley.”
“Tommy, that’s f—ing bull—- and you know it. You gotta give us a shot.”
“I wasn’t mad at Tom,” Collins explained. “I wanted our team to get a shot at Utley.”
Hallion’s response is priceless. “Terry, that makes it f—ing worse,” Hallion explained, trying to convince the enraged manager the umpires were not responsible for what MLB’s executives did, or did not do, when it came to discipline. “Our ass is in the jackpot now.”
So how did Hallion, in the heat of an argument on national television with a furious manager, come up with a phrase that people who talk with him ask him to repeat to this day?
“This brings a smile to my face,” Hallion said. “When I was a kid growing up in upstate New York, I’d play with my friends and my mom would make dinner. My sister would come by the park and say, ‘Mom wants you home for dinner now. You’re late and your ass is in the jackpot,’” Hallion said with a laugh. “That’s where it came from. When a chef makes dinner and you’re not there, your ass is in the jackpot.”
The unvarnished, foul, raw audio gave fans a glimpse into the relationship between managers and umpires. But there is also a mystery that lingers to this day. How did the recording become public, because there are specific contractual rules prohibiting raw audio and video, whether it’s from the replay center or on television, from being made public.
More than a year later, Hallion was umpiring in Seattle when his phone began ringing constantly from MLB, fellow umpires and friends who wanted to know about the argument with Collins. It had been uploaded to YouTube and other social media platforms.
“The recording was supposed to be destroyed,” Hallion said. “It was all over the internet. Hamari was on my crew, so we watched it on his phone in our room after the game. Our union notified the league, and somebody knew they had something pretty interesting, and they hid it and brought it out a year later. To this day, according to MLB, they don’t know who did it. I find that hard to believe. But it showed that when we have a tough situation, we do a pretty damn good job of defusing it. All I said to Terry was I could not do anything about it.”
The release of the recording has had unexpected consequences. Hallion and Collins have become close friends and have participated in podcasts and joint interviews and have discussed the relationship between managers and umpires. And Collins gets questioned about the incident regularly.
“One day, I had a 10-year-old kid come up to me at the ballpark with his mother and he recited the entire recording, word-for-word,” Collins said. “I can’t walk down Fifth Avenue in New York without someone coming up to me to talk about the tape, or to show it to me on YouTube. I’m accountable for what I said, but it is entertaining, but because of the internet, we’re known forever because of this.”
Dan Ronan is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and a retired NCAA baseball umpire and small college and high school basketball referee.
