Leadership Quote by Jim Evans

Evans is sketching a quiet culture shift in baseball without letting anyone off the hook. As an umpire, he’s spent a career absorbing managers at their worst: the performative blowups, the strategic chirping, the calculated public pressure. When he says today’s managers have “very good communication skills,” he’s not praising eloquence for its own sake; he’s pointing to a modern managerial job that increasingly runs through diplomacy, media savvy, and relationship management. It’s a post-earpiece, post-HD-replay ecosystem where the old-school tantrum reads less like righteous fire and more like bad brand management.

The key move is his disclaimer: “That doesn’t mean they are better managers.” Evans is separating style from substance, and it’s a subtle jab at how we evaluate leadership. Fans and front offices can confuse calm affect and empathetic language with competence. He’s warning that professionalism can be a costume: you can be fluent in “communication” and still be tactically average, or get outmaneuvered by the game’s deeper demands (bullpen usage, matchup logic, clubhouse chemistry, now even data interpretation).

Then he turns the lens back on himself: “I perceive today’s managers a bit differently.” That admission matters. It acknowledges that umpire-manager conflict is partly theatre and partly psychology, shaped by era, incentives, and the umpire’s own expectations. Evans isn’t claiming the game got nicer. He’s saying the arguments got smarter - and that can change what authority feels like, even when the stakes don’t.