Eric Zorn of the Trib does a nice job of showing that home plate umpire Mark Carlson initiated the contact with Carlos Zambrano yesterday, using a frame by frame breakdown of the video from centerfield.

While it would certainly be easier if they just used the video, which clearly showed Carlson leaned in to Z, it pretty much does the job. The photos show the ump inexplicably leaned in during the, ahem, conversation.

Nevertheless, Bruce Weber of the New York Times (are all men named Bruce Weber simpering twits, by the way?) doesn't quite see it that way:

Oh, for pete's sake. Still pictures, like statistics, can prove anything you want them to, but if you actually watch the videotape, it's pretty apparent that at the very least, after the initial and entirely inconsequential contact, Zambrano gave the umpire, Mark Carlson a little shove.

But that isn't even the point. Because of a close call at the plate, because the umpire simply did his job, the pitcher completely lost his cool the way a child does when he doesn't get his way, exposing the umpire to humiliation just the way a child does to his mother when he explodes in a supermarket aisle.

Was it entertaining? Yes.

Is this kind of behavior part of the game, at least by tradition?

Absolutely. I don't object to it. I even like it. But Zambrano deserved to get tossed.  Carlson handled the situation entirely properly.

So, Carlson engaged in "initial and entirely inconsequential contact"? I wonder what Weber - the PR man for umpires everywhere - would say about the "initial and entirely inconsequential contact" with an umpire that got Milton Bradley ejected and suspended for a game last month?

Surely, if he were intellectually honest, he would say that Carlson, too, deserves to be suspended even thought he "handed the situation entirely properly."