Kill him! Kill the umpire! shouted someone on the stand; and it’s likely they’d have killed him, had not Casey raised his hand.

— From Casey at the Bat

The best thing that can be said for umpire Terry Cooney is he was on the right coast when he gave Roger Clemens the heave ho in a playoff game. He wasn’t in his right mind.

Had the Cooney-Clemens heavyweight shout occurred in Fenway Park, the denizens of Boston might have tossed the ump in the harbor. Clemens wouldn’t have stopped them.

That speaks volumes about the current relationship between those who play the game and those who officiate it. The tension level rates a notch below the Middle East.

It is a black eye on baseball. It is detracting from the game.

This was not an isolated incident. That it should mar the culmination of a championship series is somehow appropriate in the season of the uppity ump, during which the men in blue even squared off with a league president.

Not to lay all blame for a distressing number of ugly confrontations on the arbitrators. But what should be alarming to the leadership of baseball is that umpires have become tag-team partners to the problem.

WARNING WAS WARRANTED

No question, Clemens was looking for trouble when he phrased a complaint about Cooney’s view of the strike zone in profanity. Clemens has a reputation for the civility of a longshoreman — on his good days. Quicker than you can say, “I beg your pardon,” Cooney, an ex-marine, dove into the muck with him.

At that point he went from right to wrong.

The prudent umpire would have stepped in front of the plate and succinctly warned the impertinent Mr. Clemens that one more word and he’d be singing his lament in the shower. The line would have been drawn in the sand. Then the onus would have been on the player to step across it at his own peril.

By going off on a short fuse, Cooney comes off as a hot head. His actions become the issue.

Immediately after the incident, umpire Don Denkinger, an American League crew chief, was on camera with CBS defending Cooney. Denkinger said an umpire shouldn’t put up with personal attacks, nor should he stand for more in a playoff game than any other time.

What a coincidence that Denkinger happened to be the one speaking for the fraternity. He was responsible for umpiring’s most notorious moment in postseason history, when his missed call at first base (he later acknowledged it) kept St. Louis from winning the ’85 World Series.

TOO QUICK ON TRIGGER

At least that was an honest mistake. This one is convoluted.

Today’s umpires are quick to react on a personal rather than professional level. They are losing perspective on their role in the game.

“Umpires’ attitudes have changed and their ability has changed,” San Diego’s Jack Clark said after being thrown out for the fourth time this season and suspended for a base-throwing tantrum. “The young guys have their nose in the air; they know it all. If you question them, they throw you out… They don’t understand that people don’t come to the ballpark to see the umpires.”

At his best, an umpire is inconspicuous. Fans don’t pay to see a Dutch Rennert deliver every strike call as a line from Shakespeare. The nation tuned in to see if Clemens and Dave Stewart could salvage some drama from a listless series. They saw an umpire steal the show.

The magnitude of the moment should be weighed along with the offense. Baseball is the only game that affords no intermediate measure. Officials in football can march off 15 yards, in basketball they call a technical, in hockey they have the penalty box.

An umpire has only his thumb. He must use it judiciously.

Increasingly, they are acting as wild-west sheriffs, shooting from the hip to whip the game into shape.

In a game in Los Angeles, Joe West ejected Philadelphia’s Von Hayes for a remark about another umpire’s call. A few weeks earlier, West body-slammed Hayes’ teammate Dennis Cook during a brawl. When NL President Bill White reprimanded West, the umpire’s union cried foul.

Umpires have a tough job. They are underpaid. But it seems they no longer answer to anyone but their union.

Baseball doesn’t need strong-armed cops, it needs cool heads taking charge. Umpires are losing control. They are losing respect.