Doug Eddings

Douglas Leon Eddings

• Height 6' 0", Weight 200 lb.

• Born September 14, 1968 in Las Cruces, NM USA

Biographical Information

Doug Eddings has been a major league umpire since 1998, when he joined the American League staff, but is probably best known for his controversial call in Game 2 of the 2005 ALCS, when he called A.J. Pierzynski out on strikes to apparently end the bottom of the 9th inning; however, while members of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were leaving the field, Pierzynski ran to first base and was called safe on a dropped third strike and the next batter, Joe Crede, drove in the winning run for the Chicago White Sox with a double.

On April 29, 2015, he was involved in an incident which resulted in one of the longest suspensions in recent major league history. After that day's game, Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach Brook Jacoby confronted him and pinned him against a wall in a dugout tunnel. Jacoby denied the fact, but he was handed a fourteen-game suspension which was upheld after review.

He worked games at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. In 2018, he was involved in some controversy when Brandon Belt of the San Francisco Giants accused him of deliberately calling strikes to quicken the ending of games: "It's tough because you hope an umpire doesn't affect the game like that, but he did, and you're not sure if it was on purpose either. I've heard the guy multiple times say that, or insinuate, that he's trying to get to the game fast, and then he makes calls like that, that I can't imagine he really thought was a strike," Belt told news reporters after being called out on strikes to end a game on May 16th. A few days earlier, on May 12th, he had ejected the usually mild-mannered Steven Souza of the Arizona Diamondbacks for throwing his bat, also after a borderline third strike call late in a game; it was the first ejection of Souza's career. He returned to the World Baseball Classic in 2023.

Related Sites

• Doug Eddings on Retrosheet.org