Aug 20, 2008 - 09:59 AM

By Brian McNair

OSHAWA -- Dan Bleiwas has said several times this season he has issues with the way the Intercounty Baseball League is run.

On Monday, three days after the Oshawa Dodgers team he manages was eliminated from the playoffs by the London Majors, he boiled over.

Bleiwas put the blame squarely on the umpiring crew after his team suffered a 6-5 extra-inning defeat in London Friday. That loss eliminated the Dodgers in five games of the semifinals.

“The bad part is we put forth a tremendous effort throughout and the same cannot be said about the umpires in this league,” he said. “I’ve bit my tongue all season and it finally caught us. It cost us the game on Friday, absolutely, unequivocally, without a doubt the umpiring cost us that game. It was blatant, it was obvious, it was a shame.”

Bleiwas was particularly critical of three of the four umpires that night: Bill Tunny at home plate, Murray Mugford at first and Bob Parliament at second, who’s son Adam plays for the Brantford Red Sox.

“The plate umpire was terrible, the first base umpire was worse, and the second base umpire had an actual bias against us because his son plays for Brantford, which is an absolute atrocity that he’s umpiring in the playoffs while his son’s team is still alive,” said Bleiwas.

Asked to be more specific, Bleiwas pointed to what he perceived to be an “absurd” call at second base in the first inning, which he believed prevented the Dodgers from scoring more than the three runs they plated.

He also questioned the balls and strikes at home plate and said he felt there were two missed calls at first base, both going against Oshawa.

“In a one-run game, it was a joke to have this many calls and all of them go against the Oshawa Dodgers,” he said. “I’m still fired up three, four days later.”

Roop Chanderdat, the co-owner, general manager and field manager of the Majors, said on Tuesday he had no issues with the umpiring and was more concerned with preparing for the final against Brantford.

“I really have no comment,” he said. “I thought they were OK. I didn’t notice anything different.”

The only umpiring controversy Chanderdat could recall from the series came in Game 4 in Oshawa, when a ball hit by the Dodgers became tangled in the vine on the outfield wall and was ruled a double rather than a home run. The Dodgers, who would have tied the game 5-5 with a homer there, lost 5-4.

But while Bleiwas played the remainder of that game under protest, he said he had no complaints about the ruling.

“I’ve got no problem with that,” he said. “I am not a sore loser even though it may come off that way. I’m not. It was just a situation where it was too much on Friday night.”

Asked why an umpire with a bias toward Brantford would favour London, the regular season champs, over Oshawa, which finished sixth, Bleiwas cited ill-will between the Red Sox and Dodgers all season.

IBL commissioner Jim Rooney said the league has no policy in place regarding relationships between umpires and players, but defended Parliament’s professionalism and denied such a bias existed. He added the league does not assign Parliament to games involving Brantford.

“Our fellows go on the field and they’re professional,” Rooney said. “They’re experienced. I believe in their own hearts and their own minds, they try to be objective. There’s no question every game you play where an umpire makes a judgement, one team thinks it’s the right judgement and the other team thinks it’s not. That comes with being an umpire.”

Rooney admitted there have been times this season where Bleiwas has expressed concerns about the umpiring and other issues, but this was the first he had heard about the Game 5 complaints.

“I think Dan probably is expressing his opinions out of frustration,” he said. “Sure, I wish he would have dealt with it internally first, but that’s Dan... He obviously felt that was the best way to get his message across.”