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Rays' Zach Eflin forced to remove wedding ring during game

jordan mendoza, usa today
·2 min read
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A wedding ring could mean cheating − at least to some MLB umpires.

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Zach Eflin had an unusual encounter with the umpiring crew during Thursday's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates when umpires went to check his hand and glove for a foreign substance after the first inning. Eflin was in a lengthy discussion with crew chief Adrian Johnson and eventually could be seen taking off his rubber wedding ring.

When the right-hander took the mound in the second inning, the wedding ring was no longer on his left hand. Eflin went on to pitch seven scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts and earned the victory in a 3-2 win.

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Zach Eflin: Umpires were going to 'toss me out of the game' for ring

Eflin confirmed postgame the umpires told him to take his wedding ring off. The 29-year-old, who got married in 2020 and began wearing the ring during games at the start of the 2021 season, said he's never had a problem with umpires before regarding his ring. Whenever umpires have brought it up before Thursday, he said he tells them "I'm gonna keep it on, it's very important to me" and "most umpires are cool with it."

"They seemed a little on edge," Eflin said of the umpires. "I said, 'If you're going to eject me out of the game, then I'll take it off,' and that's what they ended up coming out and telling me on the mound, was that they're going to toss me out of the game if I didn't take off my rubber ring. So I took it off."

After he was told to take the ring off, Elfin put it on his necklace for the remainder of the game. He noted that the ring was in his glove hand and the umpires could have felt the ring if they wanted to, but it's "part of the game that we play now."

"I've seen other pitchers wear it," he said. "Position players can call timeout, get pine tar whenever they want. They can wear all these bracelets and stuff, but I can't wear a ring on my gloved hand so."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rays' Zach Eflin told to take off wedding ring or get ejected