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World Series umpire has Twitter firing jokes like fastballs

Home plate umpire Bill Miller's generous strike zone provided a giant target for social media.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper

Every baseball fan knows the words: For it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game. But during the dramatic, 10-inning Game 5 of the World Series in which the Houston Astros eventually beat the LA Dodgers Sunday night, some fans thought that home plate umpire Bill Miller seemed a little eager to call those strikes.

New York Met Cody Decker tweeted out a screenshot of a called strike to Dodger Enrique Hernández that seemed especially egregious.

One fan pitched a montage that offered specific examples of Miller's interesting definition of a strike zone.

While Miller has been known to have a generous strike zone for years, fans couldn't keep themselves from firing jokes at the ump.

If some of the cracks about Miller's eyesight and judgment seemed familiar, you may have seen them being tossed around last month. That's when boxing judge Adalaide Byrd was one of the few people in the world who felt Canelo Alvarez beat Gennady Golovkin in a much-awaited Las Vegas fight.

Young sports buffs, take note: If you've got thin skin, best to stay out of umping, reffing or any other kind of sports judging in this age of social media.

Game 6 will be played on Tuesday at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. That's Halloween, but it remains to be seen if batters will be tricked or treated.