Umpire Joe West isn’t slowing down his talk about the Yankees and Red Sox.
Weeks after saying the teams’ slow rate of play was “pathetic and embarrassing,” West said he would make that call again.
“I don’t second-guess what I said,” West told ESPN.com. “And I don’t believe I’m wrong. A lot of people don’t believe I’m wrong.”
West will umpire one of the teams for the first time since early April when the Red Sox play the Royals starting tonight at Fenway Park.
He did try to use the ol’ “taken out of context” argument to defend his earlier remarks.
“I kind of expected the firestorm I created. But the interview was taken out of context,” he said. “The first thing I said was that these were two of our best teams, but the pace that they play the game was pathetic and embarrassing. But everybody, especially the New York media, blew it out of proportion and said I was calling the teams pathetic.
“Some people said I had no right to single them out. I didn’t single them out. I said they were both bad.”
West umpired the Yankees-Red Sox series the opening week of the season. He criticized the teams for their slow play, drawing angry responses from the Yankees, Mariano Rivera in particular.
The three games in that opening series took 3:46, 3:48 and 3:21.