Ben Zobrist was ejected for telling umpire baseball needs an electronic strike zone

There was a scene in the movie “Bull Durham” when Kevin Costner’s character gets ejected from a game because he called an umpire a certain bad word that is off limits.

Cubs infielder/outfielder Ben Zobrist was ejected from from Tuesday’s game against the the Brewers for using a group of words.

Zobrist took a called third strike in the sixth inning that appeared to be off the plate. He argued with umpire Phil Cuzzi for quite a while, which is unusual because umpires usually cut that talk off quickly.

Cubs manager Joe Maddon came out and was ejected. In the ninth inning, Zobrist talked again with Cuzzi and said something off limits that earned an ejection:

“That’s why we want an electronic strike zone.”

Unlike Crash Davis, there were no curse words, of course.

Zobrist told reporters after the game: “When you’re trying to have good quality at-bats and you feel like it gets taken away from you, then sometimes your pride gets in the way and you say things that are going to upset them...”

Here is Zobrist talking about the incident:

This is Zobrist’s ejection:

This story was originally published August 15, 2018 at 9:36 AM.