University of Texas economics professor, Daniel Hamermesh, has found that umpires will tend to give favorable calls to pitchers of their own race "in the study of 2,120,166 pitches over three seasons."
The report comes three months after another scholarly study found racial bias among referees in the National Basketball Association in regards to calling fouls.
Hamermesh, author of "Economics Is Everywhere" and a specialist in the economics of labor demand and markets, and fellow researchers saw an opportunity to expand on the idea of bias in sports officiating. Whereas an NBA referee is not obligated to make a call on every play, home-plate umpires must make a judgment call on every pitch that isn't hit.
"Baseball provided us with an opportunity to refine our study and explore other avenues," said study contributor Christopher Parsons, an assistant professor of finance at McGill University in Montreal. "We were able to employ different levels of scrutiny and see if umpires were up to any funny business when making their calls."
For the survey, researchers collected data on every pitch from the 2004-06 seasons. Only pitches for which umpires had to make a judgment call were used in the study.
White umpires, who researchers said accounted for 87 percent of the league's umpires, were more likely to give a called strike to a white pitcher than to a pitcher who is Hispanic, African American or Asian.
White pitchers were granted a strike on 32.06 percent of the called pitches that white umpires viewed, as opposed to 31.47 percent for Hispanic pitchers and 30.61 percent for African American pitchers.
But even umpires are capable of feeling shame.
The study, which might not be published for another two years, concluded that when umpires know that they are being scrutinized, the evidence of racial bias tends to drop.
Or maybe that applies to most of us.
