Overview
An ejection is a disciplinary action in which an umpire strips a player, manager or coach of eligibility for the rest of the game. Rule 8.01 (d) of the Official Baseball Rules gives umpires the power to disqualify and remove anyone who objects to a decision or behaves in an unsportsmanlike way; when the call is made with the ball in play, it takes effect only once that play is over. The usual causes are excessive arguing over a call, abusive or insulting language toward umpires, deliberate physical contact with an umpire, taking part in a brawl, and a pitch judged to have been aimed at the batter. Rule 6.04 sets out those prohibitions explicitly, from taunting opponents and umpires to touching an umpire on purpose. Anyone ejected must leave the field at once: he stays inside the clubhouse, changes out of uniform and leaves the ballpark, or, if he sits in the stands, takes a seat away from his own bench and bullpen.
The dangerous-pitch ejection is a league rule, not a rulebook rule
The best-known ejection in Japanese baseball is the kikenkyu, or dangerous pitch, ejection that follows a pitch around the batter's head, yet the Official Baseball Rules contain neither the term nor any provision for an automatic ejection. It is an internal rule written into the agreement between the Central and Pacific Leagues, and neither MLB nor amateur baseball has an equivalent. What the rulebook does have is 6.02 (c)(9): when an umpire judges that a pitcher has thrown at a batter, the umpire may choose either to remove that pitcher (and his manager) from the game or to warn both managers that another such pitch will bring an ejection. A pitch that strikes the head does not always mean an ejection; a slow breaking ball that slips out of the hand may draw only a warning. A former umpire has described the working standard as a pitch the umpires judge could affect the batter's career, which makes the deciding factor how the umpires read that one pitch rather than whether it was intentional.
How the internal rule took shape
The handling of pitches to the head grew stricter alongside a history of brawls. Ejections for dangerous pitches are said to date back to 1982, but retaliation for hit batsmen, and the fights that followed, kept recurring. After an exchange of hit batsmen and a large brawl in May 1994, the Central League called an emergency board meeting in mid-season and adopted an unusual addition: any pitch that struck a batter in the head, intentional or not, would be treated as a dangerous pitch and the pitcher ejected. Because that produced ejections even for breaking balls that simply got away, from 1995 the standard was narrowed to pitches thrown with a certain amount of speed, leaving the call to the umpiring crew. The Pacific League at first went no further than stating it would enforce the existing rules more strictly than before, and the two leagues did not share a common internal rule until 2002.
What follows an ejection
An ejection does not end with the game. Rule 8.04 requires the umpire to report to the league president, with reasons attached, on any game in which a manager or player was ejected, and to file the details when the cause was gross insult or violence. On receiving the report the president imposes whatever penalty he judges appropriate and notifies both the individual and his club. Anyone fined is barred from playing or sitting on the bench until the payment is complete. The time limits the rule once set for those reports and payments were struck out in the 2024 revision. In NPB, suspensions and fines are announced in the days after an ejection. A manager who is ejected can take no further part in directing the game, so a head coach runs the remainder. Managers arguing themselves out of a game have long been part of Japanese baseball, as with Senichi Hoshino, known for his fierce protests to umpires.