The concept of A Cop On The Edge was once a disreputable film genre unto itself. This was not really a good thing in terms of what it indicated about where the culture was on the issue of vigilante violence, among other things. But its passing is also unworthy of much mourning because these movies were bad enough that one of the genre’s signature moments was a twitchy and inexplicably be-gloved Sylvester Stallone cutting a slice of pizza with some desk scissors while wearing sunglasses indoors. All of the defects in our popular and political culture naturally flow in the direction of making the archetypal furious American dunce into a hero, and the fantasy of a man Taking Matters Into His Own Hands after being Pushed To The Limit, with maximal punishment exacted against everyone you’d expect, has certainly not gone anywhere. I do not want to give the impression that anything has really improved in this area.
It’s just that, where this particular archetype is concerned, the actual fact of the thing cannot measure up to the impossibly alpha and normal image of Sylvester Stallone wearing leather driving gloves while eating pizza in a way that no one has ever eaten pizza before in 1986’s Cobra. In reality, what we are talking about when we talk about guys like this is a man repeatedly trying and failing to maintain some semblance of emotional control in defiance of their own issues and inadequacies before melting down and lashing out, generally while pulling a bunch of undignified faces in the process. This is not a cool and commanding figure; what we are dealing with, when and where we deal with this type of man, is a beet-red umpire type guy flipping his shit for reasons that he can’t remotely comprehend. This turns out to be a difficult thing to cheer for, both at a moment when people like that are in charge of everything and also just on principle.
The incident of Ump On The Edge behavior that led to a moment of inspiring solidarity between the St. Louis Cardinals and Colorado Rockies during Saturday’s game began on Friday night, when home plate umpire Doug Eddings took it upon himself to enforce some unwritten rules on rookie Cardinals reliever Hancel Rincon as he made his big league debut in the sixth inning.
Eddings has a particular thing with rookies—you may remember him getting upset at Paul Skenes back in 2024—but is also and otherwise an unremarkable redass ump type, which is to say that he goes out there every day on the verge of completely losing it at some perceived act of disrespect. On Friday, his issue was that Rincon’s hat was bumped slightly to the left, in a fashion that would be familiar to anyone who has watched baseball in the last two decades. Eddings issued Rincon a directive that Cardinals Manager Oli Marmol paraphrased as “the kid is ‘not going to wear his hat on my field that way.'” You can judge for yourself how egregious “that way” is in this instance, but this bump is on the merits maybe a quarter of a Fernando Rodney-grade visor disruption. Pedro Strop would scoff at this shit.
It gets a bit more confusing from here, if not in terribly significant ways. “The batter said, ‘Hey, can he wear his hat like that?'” Eddings said after the game. “I really didn’t know. It was really, really crooked. So I asked the catcher to tell him to straighten his hat out and the pitcher did.”
Initial reporting from MLB.com and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested that Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman, the first batter Rincon faced, asked that question; before Saturday’s game, Goodman heatedly denied that he’d done so. “I didn’t like seeing that my name was a part of it today when I didn’t say anything like that,” Goodman said. “You watch baseball growing up. There are a lot of guys who have had their hat crooked or however. Honestly, before today, when I went back and looked, I didn’t even notice the hat was messed up or looked like that when I was hitting. Anyways, I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”
Rincon allowed that he was confused by this, but retired Goodman and straightened his hat as directed. Rincon then proceeded to give up a triple to T.J. Rumfield, who scored on a wild pitch, and then an inside-the-park homer to Cole Carrigg, and then a single to Connor Norby. Marmol pulled Rincon from the game at that point and got into an argument with Eddings while Jordan Bruihl was warming up. Eddings ultimately ejected Marmol and then issued a pitch-clock violation to the Cardinals.
“Some words exchanged there,” Marmol said when asked about what words were exchanged before Eddings ejected him. “Quite honestly, I thought it was pretty embarrassing on his end.” Marmol described the decision to chastise Rincon as “a power-hungry move, in my opinion.
Eddings, unsurprisingly, did not agree. “You’ve got to wear your uniform,” Eddings said by way of explanation for his actions with Rincon. “Your hat is straight. It’s not crooked. They can’t wear it backward like a catcher.” Eddings explained the decision to eject Marmol as a question of respect. “When he asked if I asked him to straighten the hat up, his comment to me was not very well. I said that he wasn’t going to talk to me that way.” It did not help that Eddings blew what appeared to be an obvious call at home plate later in the inning that allowed the Rockies to take a 5-4 lead that they would ultimately give back in a 7-6 loss, but that sort of thing seldom helps in any context. “I’ve been doing this too long to take it personal,” Eddings said.
That’s great news, because the Cardinals dugout was furious with him for the rest of the game. On Saturday, Cardinals players went out of their way to wear their hats bumped to the side, Rincon-style, during batting practice and infield warm-ups. Colorado’s broadcast noted that several Rockies players did the same in their dugout. Before that game, Eddings stopped Rincon on his way out to the bullpen for a brief exchange that Rincon was fairly sure was an apology. “I understood a couple words,” Rincon said; the conversation happened without the team translator present. “And it looked like he apologized to me for what happened last night. He also told me good luck with the rest of my career as a big leaguer. I told him, ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal.'”
Two league sources told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that the league had deemed Eddings to have been out of line. Whether his apology was league-mandated is unclear; whether it was an apology at all is honestly also unclear at this point. But there is no reason to expect that Eddings will act any differently in the future; he is starring in a movie that only he can see, and the character he is playing is not one who will back down after some suit gives him a dressing down. He’s going to stay on the edge, where he believes he needs to be. It’s got to be lonely out there.