When you see Joe West is trending on Twitter and the baseball season has yet to begin, you tend to fear the worst.
Fortunately “Country Joe” was alive and well Tuesday, and the only reason America was talking about the game’s most controversial umpire stemmed from an ignorant comment West made about the coronavirus outbreak to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.
In an interview about the 67-year-old West’s decision to work this season in spite of being in the “high-risk” category for contracting COVID-19, the veteran umpire said he told Major League Baseball: “I don’t believe in my heart that all these deaths have been from coronavirus.