Jomboy catches umpire coaching Craig Stammen into hilarious Padres ejection

Craig Stammen tried. We can at least give him that. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want any of his antics to end up in a Jomboy lip-reading breakdown. He knows how that game works. Any given heated exchange can be slowed down, Jomboy reads the lips, and then baseball social media gets its entertainment. 

So Stammen does what a self-aware manager should do. He makes a conservative effort to cover his mouth. But he should’ve known, was not to publicly challenge Jomboy. 

Jomboy catching him in the act would’ve been funny enough on its own. The guy wanting to avoid becoming Jomboy content, only to become Jomboy content kind of writes itself. 

But the best part of the video wasn’t the eventual lip reading. It was the big reveal at the end. Stammen’s ejection apparently needed a little stage direction. 

In order for Stammen to get tossed after Ron Marinaccio hit Gunnar Henderson, the umpire Chris Conroy basically told him, in real time, that he needed to sell the performance a little harder. And that is tremendous theatre at its finest.

Craig Stammen tried to avoid Jomboy and still got turned into the punchline

It all started in Baltimore, where the Padres and Orioles had already built enough tension for everyone to understand what was happening.

Earlier in the game, Orioles rookie Trey Gibson hit Xander Bogaerts in the head, who had to leave with neck spasms. 

Then, in the bottom of the ninth inning with the Padres up big, Marinaccio came in and drilled Henderson with a first-pitch fastball. Maybe it slipped. Maybe it didn’t…okay, we know it didn’t.

But the umpires didn’t buy it. Especially after Bradgely Rodríguez failed his attempts at hitting Henderson in the 7th. The umpires huddled, decided it was intentional, and ejected Marinaccio. 

They huddled. They decided it was intentional. Marinaccio was ejected. Stammen came flying out of the dugout with what we’d call his version of rage. He got hot, argued the call, and eventually got himself run, too.

That’s the public version. Then Jomboy got the tape.

He picked through enough of it to catch Conroy realizing what Stammen was trying to do. Stammen wanted to be run. Conroy seemed to know it. And after nudging him to bring a little more heat, Conroy tossed him with the most hilarious approval statement imaginable.

According to Jomboy’s read: “That’s good. A little passion. I like it.”

In the politest way possible, that’s just adorable. 

Sometimes everyone pretends baseball is more serious than it actually is. There’s way more theatre and performance than some would like to admit. Managers will go out to get tossed on purpose. The umps know it, players can see it, and fans can too when they take a step back. And that makes this Jomboy content so great. 

Nothing wrong with Stammen getting fired up, even if it was mainly performative. Baseball anger can sometimes be part ritual, part community theater, and sometimes you might need a small nudge to make sure the crowd gets its money’s worth. Kudos to Conroy for getting Stammen to really “sell it.”

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