Violence against umpires was a baseball standard in the 19th Century, but, over the years, we civilized the hell out of ourselves and now limit our umbrage regarding their transgressions to displays of mild disapproval via the internets. In 1989, however, the good people at Blue Ridge/The Item Company thought there needed to be a physical object on which arbiter-related frustrations could be enacted, so they introduced the Revenge on the Umpire tear-apart stress doll for this purpose. Of course, they weren’t all that serious, as the warning on the box suggests: “This is a product for childish adults. Not for little children.” Still, one has to assume they might have made a mint if they had gotten the thing to the market four years earlier and saturated the St. Louis area with them.
Kill the umpire (doll)!
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