HOUSTON — Joe West, a longtime umpire for Major League Baseball, has sued the former catcher Paul Lo Duca, accusing him of defamation for comments on a podcast that described West trading an expanded strike zone for the right to drive a pitcher’s classic car.
The complaint, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York on Tuesday, also names the Action Network, a sports website that focuses on betting and that carried the podcast, as a defendant. The lawsuit rebuts the comments made by Lo Duca on the podcast, which was posted this spring.
“When Joe heard about it, he was outraged,” said West’s lawyer, Kevin Murphy. “He was shocked. Not only did Lo Duca say it on the podcast, but several other media outlets picked it up. We know for a fact that none of it happened, so for Lo Duca to say this is pretty vicious.”
West has been a full-time baseball umpire since 1978 and is the head of the Major League Baseball Umpires Association.
Murphy said that Lo Duca and his representatives had not responded to the complaint, but that he planned to depose Lo Duca.
Lo Duca did not respond to a phone message requesting comment. Patrick Keane, the chief executive of the Action Network, said in a statement by email, “Whether or not Paul Lo Duca’s anecdotes about his baseball experiences were fully accurate, we expect the Action Network to be dismissed promptly from this case.”
On the podcast, Lo Duca said that when he was with the Mets in 2006 and 2007, Billy Wagner, the team’s closer at the time, told him after a game against the Philadelphia Phillies that West expanded the strike zone for Wagner in return for a loan of Wagner’s classic 1957 Chevrolet.
“I’m like, ‘really?’” Lo Duca is quoted in the lawsuit as saying. “He goes, ‘Yeah, so every time he comes in town, I lend him my ’57 Chevy so he can drive it around.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, so then he opens up the strike zone for me.’ I’m like, ‘This guy’s been throwing me out for the last 10 years of my life, and all I needed to do was rent him a ’57 Chevy?’”
But based on statistical information from box scores, the lawsuit says that West did not umpire a Mets-Phillies game in which Wagner pitched during those years..
The lawsuit also claims that Lo Duca said on the podcast that of the 15 games he was ejected from (an unusually high number for a player) West had thrown him out of eight or nine.
Murphy said that their researchers found that Lo Duca had been ejected from eight games in his career, and only once by West.
The lawsuit states: “At the time the subject statements were made, Lo Duca knew the statements were false, or at a minimum, made with a reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.”
Umpires are expected to maintain neutrality and never to accept favors from anyone involved in the game.
This season, West umpired his 5,164th major league game to move past Bruce Froemming and into second place on the career list. Only Bill Klem, with 5,369 from 1905 to 1941, has umpired more games.
“If you know Joe, you know his integrity means everything to him,” Murphy said. “More than anything else, Joe loves the game and would never do anything to damage its reputation in any way.”