EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Las Cruces native and Major League Baseball umpire Doug Eddings has been awarded another World Series assignment, the highest honor for a big league umpire.
Major League Baseball announced the field crew who would be working the 2024 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees on Thursday. Joining Eddings, who is a graduate of Mayfield High School, is crew chief Mark Carlson, Chad Fairchild, Andy Fletcher, Mark Ripperger, Todd Tichenor and Carlos Torres.
Placing seven umpires on the World Series crew allows for distinct home plate assignments in a potential seven-game series. One of the seven umpires will be off the field in each game.
This will be Eddings’ second Fall Classic, his first coming in 2019 when the Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros in seven games.
Eddings will be at second base for Game 1 on Friday night in Los Angeles at Dodgers Stadium. He will be behind home plate calling balls and strikes in Game 4 next Tuesday night (Oct. 29) in New York at Yankee Stadium.
In 2018, KTSM chronicled Eddings’ meeting with a 7-year-old boy with heart complications. Trenton Garrison, from Alburquerque, wanted to be an umpire and Eddings and the boy made an instant connection.
Eddings has previously called Cal Ripken Jr.’s final game as well as the game Barry Bonds tied Hank Arron for first place on MLB’s home run list.
The Dodgers-Yankees matchup is the 12th ever in the World Series, marking a renewal of the most frequent in Fall Classic history and the first since 1981. This is the first time since 1956 that the home run leaders of both Leagues will meet in the World Series, as Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani will do so for the first time since Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider in a previous Yankees-Dodgers Fall Classic. It is also the first time ever that two players with 50-homer seasons will play one another in the World Series.
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