If you haven't seen the highlights from yesterday's Boston-Minnesota game, you may be missing some of baseball's most entertaining video this side of Carlos Zambrano.

In what seemed like a scene from "Major League"tThe seventh inning turned into the Todd Tichenor show as the rookie umpire used his thumb four times ejecting two catchers and both managers.

It started out with a bang bang play at home plate.  Twins catcher Mike Redmond appeared (on replay) to put the tag on a sliding Jeff Bailey, but Tichenor, up from Triple A missed the call and called Bailey safe.   That led to an appropriate protest from Redmond who rose from the ground and quickly confronted the umpire.  Tichenor waited about two seconds before he ran Redmond  (for the first time in Redmond's 11 year career.)  Moments later, his second victim was Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, who had gone out to defend his player (which is why Gardy is one of the best in the game at what he does.)

The ejection had a domino effect on the Twins.  Joe Mauer, the Twins other catcher was being used as the DH.  Without another catcher, Mauer had to enter the game at catcher, thereby losing the Twins their DH for the remainder of the game.

Undaunted, we move to the bottom of the seventh where Tichenor's ball and strike calling ability was being called into question by an increasingly agitated Josh Beckett.  When  catcher Jason Varitek told Tichenor his feelings on the subject, Tichenor ran him and moments later, Red Sox manager, in a similar situation to Gardenhire, got booted defending his catcher.

Four ejections in one inning may be a major league record for an incident not involving a fight.

From what I could tell, Redmond certainly didn't do anything that warranted an ejection.  According to is account, he didn't swear at the umpire and he was very aware that if he got booted Mauer would be forced into the game.  Gardenhire, Varitek and Francona, probably earned theirs, but lost their collective cool with actions directly related to the quality of Tichenor's calls.

It raises the annual question of when is Major League baseball going to do something about umpires like Tichenor and Phil Cuzzi, who continue to believe that fans come to the games to watch the umpires.  Many of the umpires are confrontational, follow players back to the dugout and extend arguments rather than defuse them.  Yet, the game is allowed to suffer at the hands of these guys who apparently take great joy in watching themselves on Sportscenter.

And this guy has just come from the minors.  He must have brass ones the size of beach balls.  I sure hope his crew isn't going to Kansas City next or it could be an expensive weekend for Ozzie Guillen.