Baseball: nats win, byrd knocks down ump

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Angered by a strikeout and an ejection, Washington Nationals outfielder Marlon Byrd began running toward the umpire responsible for both calls. Another umpire, Joe Brinkman, stepped in the way and put out an arm, and Byrd knocked him to the ground

``I thought I could get in front of him. He was running pretty hard,'' Brinkman said. ``Once I couldn't get in front of him, I put my arm out. He hit my arm and just spun me around and flipped me and I ended up on the ground. That's all that happened.''

it will be interesting to see how the league handles this one, even brinkman says he stepped in front of byrd and so it was accidental but the league has a duty to protect the umps from contact with players....

sports.yahoo.com...

I read this earlier, was it an accident or did he mean to do it?

it sounds like it was an accident, the ump stepped in front of him and put his arm out to stop him from running up to the other ump who had ejected byrd...the two collided and the ump went down, i haven't had a chance to see the video on this yet, but any contact with an ump is heavily frowned upon by the leagues....

Heavy fines are in the forcast for the Capital region.