Emmett Littleton Ashford was born on November 23, 1914 in Los Angeles. His father Littleton, a police officer, soon abandoned the family, and Emmett and brother Wilbur were raised by their mother. His mother Adele was a highly motivated and ambitious woman, who worked as a secretary for the California Eagle, a black newspaper. Ashford himself earned money selling Liberty magazine, building his route up to 300 customers, and later was a cashier in a supermarket.

Ashford excelled at Jefferson High School, rising to co-editor of the school paper, The Jeffersonian, and becoming a teen journalist for the California Eagle. He also played baseball and ran sprints for the track team. When he graduated in 1933 he was the senior class president, the first black student so honored, and a member of the scholarship club. Ashford then attended Los Angeles Junior College and Chapman College, where he played baseball.

About 1936 Ashford scored well on a civil service exam and landed a coveted job as a clerk with the post office, a position he held for 15 years. In the late 1930s he had a brief career as a semipro baseball player before turning to officiating. According to Ashford, he played on a white team called the Mystery Nine, who wore uniforms with question marks on the fronts. One day the umpire didn’t show up, and Emmett (who rarely played) was called into emergency service. He was soon busy officiating recreational baseball and softball in southern California.

In 1937 Ashford married Willa Gene Fort, and the couple had two daughters, Adrienne and Antoinette. It was not his only marriage; like many people his personal family life was complicated and private with much of it unknown. The next several years were taken up with family, post office work, and umpiring. Soon after he finished a three-year stint in the United States Navy during World War II, Emmett and Willa divorced. He continued to umpire, moving up to major college baseball, working regularly. He often officiated with Bill Stewart who had umped in the American League in the 1940s. Ashford credits Stewart for teaching him the major-league strike zone.

In 1951 Ashford took a leave of absence from his post office job for a two-month trial in the Southwestern International League, becoming the first black umpire in organized baseball. Les Powers, the league president, claimed that “Ashford has the making of a big league umpire.” After the season, Ashford was offered a full-season job, so he resigned from the postal service, leaving behind 15 years towards his pension.

The following offseason, the Southwestern International League announced plans to field an “all-Negro” club, to play only road games. Ashford was named general manager and asked to put together a team. Two days later Chet Brewer, former Negro League star, was hired as the club’s manager. Ultimately the team had a series of “homes” during the season, including Ensenada, Mexico; Riverside, California; and Porterville, California. The team did not remain all-black, though many former Negro Leaguers did play for them (including Brewer), as did two future major leaguers (Tom Alston and Dave Roberts).

As for our hero, Ashford relinquished his role with the club before the season began, and returned to umpiring. By mid-summer the league folded and he hooked on with the Arizona-Texas League. In December 1952, The Sporting News first suggested that Ashford might be destined for the major leagues. “I know that the road to the big leagues will be a hard one,” said Ashford, “but most of my biggest obstacles are behind me now.”1 He moved up to the Western International League in 1953, before a promotion to the Pacific Coast League in 1954.

During his 12 years in the PCL, Ashford became the best-known umpire in the minor leagues. “He was a showman, exuberant, strong, alert, loud and expressive,” recalled Paul Wysard of Ashford’s’ days in the PCL. “He was constantly in motion, full of nervous energy and obviously delighted to be out there in front of everybody.”2 Between innings he often sprinted down the right field line to keep his legs loose. He constantly interacted with the crowd, doffing his cap and giving little speeches.

Ashford spent most of his time during the season alone, not hanging out with his fellow umpires. As he later related to Larry Gerlach, “I didn’t come to town and have to go to the ghetto to enjoy myself. I stayed downtown and went to the theater and the opera. I just love some opera–know the librettos of a few. … I made a host of friends; many of them were attorneys and doctors who invited me to their homes and nice functions. I’d meet with the lawyers for lunch in Spokane, and, shoot, in Vancouver, I think I could have run for office.”3 In the offseasons, Ashford refereed Pac-8 basketball and small college football. As early as the fall of 1958 he umpired in the Caribbean winter leagues. He was also a constant after-dinner speaker on the west coast, and ran several umpiring clinics.

In 1963 PCL president Dewey Soriano named Ashford the league’s umpire-in-chief, making him responsible for the organization and training of the crews, and for advising the league on disputed games or rules. In June 1963, the league hired its second black umpire, Osibee Jelks, from the Northwest League. On July 4, a game in San Diego was officiated by Ashford and Jelks (the third crew member was ill), the first all-black umpiring crew in a minor-league game.

By the early 1960s, writers on the west coast began clamoring for Ashford’s promotion to the majors. A.S. Young also took up the cause in the Chicago Defender, suggesting of major-league presidents Joe Cronin and Warren Giles, “Whereas they hire, and approve the hiring of Caucasian umpires solely on the basis of qualifications, they refuse to act on the Ashford case–and probably won’t until the Ashford campaign, which should be unnecessary, becomes embarrassing.”4 In 1965 Cronin was considered the leading contender to replace the retiring Ford Frick as baseball’s commissioner, but Jim Murray supported Bill Veeck for the top job, with Ashford as his umpire-in-chief. Both endorsements were due to Cronin’s foot-dragging on Ashford.5

Ashford’s most famous on-field incident took place during the 1964 playoffs in the Dominican Republic. After a strike call on Julian Javier met with prolonged disapproval, Ashford motioned the pitcher to continue, and rung up strike three. Javier reacted by slugging Ashford in the mouth, cutting the umpire’s lip open and swelling his jaw. Ashford retaliated by hitting the Cardinal infielder with his mask, temporarily forgetting that Javier was a local hero. Ashford finished the game, applying ice packs to his mouth between innings. Javier received a three-game suspension, and Ashford had to be talked out of resigning from the league after the weak penalty.

Despite whatever frustrations he must have felt in the minor leagues for 15 years, he remained a cheerful and optimistic man his entire life, a disposition which stood out in his profession. He charmed his critics and admirers alike, relying on his quick wit and intelligence to get him through a crisis. In one southwest city early in his career Ashford needed to find a place a black man could sleep. He went to the best hotel in town and approached the desk. “Sir,” he explained, “I am that barefoot, and uncultured Negro man you have been reading about. I wish to seek lodging in your handsome establishment.”6 He got the room, and his charm would get him many other rooms, and many meals in restaurants.

In mid-September 1965 he got a long-awaited phone call. The voice on the telephone was Dewey Soriano, telling Ashford that he had sold his contract to the American League. “That was the last thing I remembered for the next several days,” recalled Emmett.7 He always spoke fondly of Soriano’s support throughout his years in the PCL, and for helping him get to the majors.

The nation’s press was thrilled, though not willing to give baseball too much credit for its tardy step. Melvin Durslag figured that Emmett was “bound to raise the game to his refined level.”8 Bill Slocum wondered, “If corporate Baseball has joined the 20th Century, can Mississippi be far behind?”9

After his protégé’s promotion, Soriano claimed, “The only reason he [Emmett] was not brought up to the majors sooner was because he was colored.” Soriano later elaborated: “Emmett was very popular wherever he went, with the players and the fans. I’ve known him since 1953 and it is an all-out total effort–not showboating. With more Emmett Ashfords, baseball games would be better run and a lot more fun for the fans. I didn’t make him umpire-in-chief his last three years out here for comedy.”10

Ashford had a high-pitched voice that he utilized like a megaphone, keeping the fans aware of where he was and what he was doing. During his first spring training in the majors he interrupted an Angels-Indians game in Tucson to explain to the crowd a recent discussion with the Indians’ manager. Removing his cap, he bowed to the throng behind home, loudly intoning, “Ladies and Gentleman… Mr. Tebbetts was merely questioning the strategy of the opposing manager… I thank you.”11 Putting his mask back on, he resumed the game. His fellow umpires soon realized what they were up against. The next day, home-plate umpire Bill Valentine turned to the crowd himself: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to inform you that the eminent Emmett Ashford will be at third base and not behind the plate today…”12

Prior to his first season, Ashford reflected, “I feel proud being an umpire in the big leagues. Not because I am the first Negro, but because umpires in the major leagues are very select people. Right now, I just want to vindicate Mr. Cronin’s faith in me… But first, I’ve got to buy me a pair of eye glasses,” he added, his sense of humor ever present, ready to strike.13

Emmett Ashford’s regular-season debut took place on April 11, 1966, in Washington’s D .C. Stadium, the traditional American League opener. His first major-league hurdle was getting into the ballpark. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey was in attendance to throw out the ceremonial first ball, and the Secret Service needed to be convinced that a black man was there to umpire the game. Humphrey later kidded Ashford, who had worked at third base, that he hadn’t had any plays to call. “No plays, no boots,” responded Ashford, “but it was the greatest day of my life.” Joe Cronin told his new employee, “Emmett, today you made history. I’m proud of you.”14

Ashford was a sensation right away, but not principally because of his race. His style, well-known on the west coast, took the conservative major leagues by a storm. The stocky (5-foot-7, 185 pounds) Ashford sprinted to his position between innings, stepping on the bases or leaping the pitcher’s mound, and raced around the field after foul balls or plays on the bases. The Sporting News was impressed enough to claim, “For the first time in the history of the grand old American game, baseball fans may buy a ticket to watch an umpire perform.”15 The fans did not always need to watch Ashford, they could just listen to his high-pitched cannon of a voice, as he called out a batter or runner.

On a strike call, Ashford jerked his right arm first to the side, then up, then down like a karate chop. That completed, he would then reach either up as if twice yanking a train whistle, or to the right as if opening a car door. Even while dusting the plate he knew every eye in the house was on him, and he behaved accordingly, pirouetting on one foot and hopping back to his position. Emmett would say, “I never went to an umpiring school because they didn’t accept blacks in those days, so I developed my own style of officiating.”16 Ashford was also known for his natty attire on and off the field. While umpiring he wore polished shoes, a freshly pressed uniform, cufflinks, and a handkerchief in his suit pocket.

In his first game behind the plate, Andy Etchebarren, the Orioles’ catcher, recalled diving into the stands after a foul ball: “I knew I couldn’t reach the ball, but I dove into the seats thinking a fan would put the ball in my glove or I could grab it off the floor. But while I was reaching I looked around, and who was in the seats with me but Emmett. I couldn’t believe it.”17 In a later Baltimore game, Frank Robinson quipped, “That Ashford gets a better jump on the ball than Paul Blair [the Orioles’ fleet-footed center fielder].”18

Though he was generally well-liked and admired by the people in the game, the open question was always whether he was a good umpire–whether his style came at the expense of substance. His flamboyance certainly left himself open for abuse, as he was generally the center of attention even when everyone agreed with his calls. Red Sox manager Dick Williams, after a controversial Ashford call in 1969, called the arbiter “a little clown.” Joe Pepitone and Pete Ward, in separate incidents, had to be restrained from going after Ashford. “When he calls you out on a third strike,” complained one player after a typically emotive Ashford punch-out, “you feel like he’s sending you to the electric chair.”19

Ashford toned down some of his mannerisms as his big-league career progressed. “Sure, I was a showboat,” he told the Boston Globe‘s Ray Fitzgerald. “For 12 years, that was my routine in the Coast League. I couldn’t change overnight, but I’m different now. I’ve toned myself way down.” But still, “I’m not exactly without color,” he said, using a favorite double entendre.20

In 1967, Ashford was named to work the All-Star Game in Anaheim, though he saw little action working the left-field foul line. Ashford realized another dream in 1970 when he umpired the World Series. Unfortunately for Ashford, and for baseball fans, he was slated to work the plate in the sixth game, but his turn never came: the Orioles beat the Reds in five. “Maybe it’s just as well it didn’t happen—the World Series would never have been the same.”21

When Ashford turned 55 in December 1969, he had reached the American League’s retirement age of 55 for its umpires, a rule occasionally bent. He was given one additional year, but after the 1970 season Ashford announced his retirement. “I’m afraid that by continuing I would only dilute the thrills of the last five years and especially those I received by umpiring in the 1970 World Series,” Ashford said.22

An unwritten baseball credo suggests that a well-officiated game is one in which the umpire is unnoticed. By that standard, Emmett Ashford was not a good umpire. Not surprisingly, his fellow umpires were the hardest people to win over.

Bill Kinnamon worked on the same crew with Ashford in 1969, and later recalled to Larry Gerlach, “I think he was a good umpire. On the bases and behind the plate he was no better or worse than the rest of us, but it is no secret that his eyes weren’t too good when it came to balls hit into the outfield at night. The man was about fifty years old when he came into the league, and I think Emmett would be the first to say that he came up after the peak of his career. If he had come up ten, fifteen, twenty years earlier, he would have been one hell of an umpire.”23

Speaking of Ashford’s impact on the game, Kinnamon said, “He was good for baseball. I never saw him do anything detrimental to baseball. No one ever found any fault with his deportment off the field. He was a gentleman. And the people absolutely dearly loved him. One night, as we were leaving Yankee Stadium together, some kid all of a sudden yelled, ‘Emmett!’ The next thing I knew, he was standing there talking and signing autographs for a couple of hundred kids. Nobody recognized me; I just sat there on a railing and waited. He signed an autograph for every last kid. That’s the kind of man he was, and that’s the kind of feeling there was for him.”24

As Ashford often said, he did not go through the traditional umpire training, and therefore that particular doctrine was not instilled. Kinnamon further explains some of the tension: “There was resentment toward him among the umpires. Everybody knows there was. Emmett knew it, but he shrugged it off. Many guys simply didn’t accept Emmett. Politics or pull had nothing to do with it. Some questioned his umpiring ability. And Emmett had his idiosyncrasies–the cuff links, jumping over the mound on his way to second base, his showmanship, things like that. But mostly I think it was the publicity Emmett got. … It’s also natural for there to be resentment when there were five reporters around Emmett’s cubicle and none around anybody else’s. Everywhere Emmett went he was news, good copy. Emmett got more ink in one year than the top five umpires in our league got in their whole career.”25

It probably didn’t help when teams would ask the league for Ashford to umpire their games. In 1968, Athletics owner Charlie Finley wanted Ashford to umpire his home opener–the inaugural game at the new Oakland Coliseum. Umpire crews generally rotate their roles from game to game–from third base, to second, first, and home. For this game Ashford was due to ump second base, but at Finley’s urging he got the more visible home plate assignment.

In early 1971 Ashford was hired by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn as a public relations adviser, a role which allowed him to speak and hold clinics on the west coast, and as far away as Korea. He also umpired the occasional minor-league or college game, old-timers games in Dodger Stadium, pleasing the crowd as always. He was umpire-in-chief for the Alaskan summer league for three years. Ashford earned money doing TV commercials (he played a cashier in an ad for the A&P grocery chain), film (as an umpire in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings), and television (episodes of Ironside and The Jacksons). He was also on What’s My Line during his first year in the major leagues.

Ashford died at Marina Mercy Hospital in Marina Del Ray, California, on March 1, 1980, of a heart attack. At his funeral, he was eulogized by Commissioner Kuhn and Rod Dedeaux, longtime USC baseball coach. He was cremated, and his ashes are interred in Cooperstown, New York.

In looking back on his career, the ever-positive Ashford focused on his good fortune: “Think of all the people who live an entire life and do not accomplish one thing they really wanted to do. I have done something I wanted to do. I have that satisfaction.”26 This is only fitting, as Ashford’s class and style provided so much satisfaction to others.

This biography originally appeared in SABR’s 2007 edition of “The National Pastime,” edited by Jim Charlton.

Sources

In researching this article, I made use of Ashford’s extensive clipping file at the National Baseball Library and articles published in The Sporting News throughout his career. Larry Gerlach’s The Men In Blue (Viking, 1980) includes interviews with Ashford and several of his contemporaries. Robert C. Hoie’s article in the 1979 Baseball Research Journal (“Riverside-Ensenada-Porterville, An All-Negro Minor League Team”) outlines Ashford’s affiliation with the 1952 club. Ashford’s daughter, Adrienne Cherie Ashford wrote a short book Strrr-ike!!, which outlines his early life. Bob Sudyk’s article in The Sporting News (“Emmett Ashford: Only His Suit Is Blue,” April 23, 1966) provided the backdrop to Ashford’s debut in the major leagues and his first game. Retrosheet’s essential website includes detailed game logs for umpires.

Notes

Albert Joseph Barlick was born on April 2, 1915, in Springfield, Illinois, the fifth and youngest son of John Barlick (c. 1879-1953) and Louise Gorence (1883-1966). John Barlick, an Austrian immigrant, worked for 50 years at the Peabody No. 59 bituminous mine.

Young Al dropped out of high school after two years to help support his family. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal work program, spending six months in Washington State and six more in Wisconsin. When an older brother died, Al returned home and went to work in the coal mine as his father’s helper.

Growing up in Springfield, Barlick and a friend, Pat Ciotti, had devised a backyard game in which they used a flat board for a bat and pitched kernels of corn from about 35 feet away. The pitcher also called balls and strikes. In 1935 Jack Rossiter, who ran the Springfield Municipal Baseball League, needed umpires. Ciotti recommended the 20-year-old Barlick, who was given a tryout and, eventually, a job.

In August 1936 the Class D Northeast Arkansas League needed a replacement umpire after one of the league’s arbiters fell ill. Barlick was recommended to the league’s president, Joe Bertig, and was hired for the last four weeks of the season. He hitchhiked from Springfield to the league office in Paragould, Arkansas. In 1937 Barlick jumped to the Class B Piedmont League, where he spent two seasons, then to the International League after the 1938 season. That league farmed him out to the Eastern League for the start of the 1939 campaign but recalled him by June.

In September 1940 National League chief umpire Bill Klem was unable to work, so the league needed a fill-in. Barlick made his debut in a doubleheader at Shibe Park in Philadelphia on September 8. His debut game was the first major-league contest he had ever seen. (The complete list of games he umpired can be viewed on the Retrosheet.org website.)

In February 1941 Barlick married Jennie Marie Leffell. They had two daughters, Marlene (born c. 1943) and Kathleen (born c. 1945). At the time of Barlick’s Hall of Fame induction in 1989, two of his grandsons were serving in the US Marine Corps.

The National League offered Barlick a contract for the 1941 season. At 26, he became one of the youngest umpires in major league history.

Barlick was behind the plate for the first game of a doubleheader in Pittsburgh on July 27, 1941. In the first inning, Brooklyn catcher Herman Franks objected to Barlick’s strike zone and Barlick ejected him, the first time he had ejected someone from a major-league game. Bill Klem joined Barlick and his partners for three games in St. Louis starting on September 11, the last three games of Klem’s career.

In just his second season, on July 6, 1942, Barlick was in the umpire crew for the All-Star Game, at the Polo Grounds in New York. It was the first of seven All-Star Games he umpired, and the only one for which he was not the home-plate umpire and crew chief. He worked at second base for the first half of the game and third base for the second half.

Barlick joined the US Coast Guard on November 5, 1943. He spent most of the next two years assigned to an 83-foot cutter based at the training station at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. When he was discharged in 1945, he had attained the rank of seaman 1st class.

He returned to umpiring in 1946, and worked in his first World Series that season. At the time a four-man umpire crew worked in the Series. Barlick umpired at second base in the first game and worked behind the plate twice, including the Series-deciding seventh game, in which Enos Slaughter made his mad dash around the bases. Barlick ruled Slaughter safe at the plate.

Barlick worked at first base on April 15, 1947, Opening Day, as the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Boston Braves, 5-3, in Brooklyn. The historic game marked the big-league debut of the Dodgers first baseman, Jackie Robinson. Thus, Barlick was the closest man on the field to Robinson as he became the first African-American to play in the majors in the 20th century.

Barlick umpired six no-hit games, the first of them as the home-plate umpire on June 18, 1947, as Ewell Blackwell of the Cincinnati Reds shut down the Boston Braves. In the other five no-nos, he umpired on the bases.

Barlick worked at first base in Pittsburgh on June 10, 1948, and, in the second inning, called a balk on Dodgers hurler Harry Taylor with the bases loaded, allowing a run to score. Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher ran out on the field to argue the call with Barlick and was ejected. Before the game the next afternoon, Durocher started yelling at Barlick, renewing the argument from the previous evening. According to news reports on the game, Barlick was overheard saying something along the lines of “this thing is starting all over again” before tossing Durocher.

This was a continuation of a long-standing battle between the young umpire and the fiery Durocher. The arbiter ejected Durocher ten times during Durocher’s career as a manager; in all, Barlick had 81 ejections.

In 1948 Barlick umpired 161 National League contests in a 154-game season. He worked 22 doubleheaders, including a four-day span starting September 19 in which he umpired four consecutive twin bills. He led all National League arbiters in games worked that summer.

On April 30, 1949, Rocky Nelson of the St. Louis Cardinals hit a sinking line drive to left-center in the top of the ninth at Wrigley Field, Chicago. Andy Pafko made a diving attempt at the ball, somersaulted, and came up running into the infield, thinking his catch was the third out. However, Barlick ruled that he had not caught the ball. Pafko argued with the arbiter while holding onto the ball and Nelson ran the circuit for a two-run inside-the-park homer that provided the Redbirds with a 4-3 victory.

Barlick made his second All-Star Game appearance on July 12, 1949, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. This was the first time six umpires worked the midsummer classic, and Barlick was the home-plate umpire. This game was played in an intermittent drizzle and was sloppily played because of the conditions. The tradition at the time was that the umpires rotated positions after 4½ innings. Instead of taking another position, Barlick left the contest and the right-field line was left uncovered, which was not unusual at the time. No reason was disclosed for his departure.

At the end of the 1950 season, Barlick made his second appearance in the World Series as the New York Yankees swept the Philadelphia Phillies in four games. He worked only in the outfield, two games along the left-field line and two along the right-field line. When the World Series umpire crew expanded from four to six arbiters in 1947, it was the practice that two of the umpires, deemed as “alternates,” worked only in the outfield. This practice was changed for the 1964 fall classic, when the current system of rotating all six umpires around the field was instituted.

On May 6, 1951, Barlick and his partners were at the Polo Grounds in New York for a doubleheader between the Giants and the visiting Cincinnati Reds. The first contest lasted ten innings, with the Reds scoring in the top of the tenth on a solo homer by Virgil Stallcup. In the bottom of the frame, Whitey Lockman singled to lead off the inning and advanced to second on Alvin Dark’s sacrifice. However, Reds second baseman Connie Ryan, who had made the putout at first on Dark, walked down to second with the ball hidden in his glove. He asked Lockman to step off the bag so he could straighten it, and the unsuspecting Lockman did so. Ryan tagged Lockman on the hidden-ball trick to complete a double play and negate the sacrifice. When Barlick called Lockman out, the enraged Giants stormed the umpire, led by their manager, Leo Durocher. Eventually, Barlick ejected his old nemesis and the game ended on the next play. Two days later Durocher and Lockman were fined by the league for their actions. The Durocher ejection was the first of 12 by Barlick during the 1951 season. He led all NL umpires in ejections that year, the only time he ejected more than eight people in one campaign.

Barlick was chosen for the World Series in 1951 for the second consecutive year. This year, he was part of the four-man rotating crew in the infield in the six-game, all-New York series. He worked behind the plate in Game Four, which was played at the Polo Grounds.

Barlick was behind the plate at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, for the 1952 All-Star Game. This was his third appearance at an All-Star Game and his second time starting a game behind the plate. In the middle of the fifth inning, the umpires changed positions and he moved to second base. The start of the game had been delayed 20 minutes by rain and, at the end of the fifth inning, there was a 56-minute rain delay before the game was called off, with the National League ahead, 3-2.

Barlick umpired the 1954 World Series, a four-game sweep by the New York Giants over the Cleveland Indians. He was behind the plate for Game One, a ten-inning affair at the Polo Grounds made famous by Willie Mays extraordinary catch of Vic Wertz late in the game.

On July 12, 1955, Barlick was once again behind the plate to start the All-Star Game. After 4½ innings, he swapped places with third-base umpire Bill Summers of the American League. The game, played at County Stadium in Milwaukee, was won by the NL, 6-5, in 12 innings on a game-ending homer by Stan Musial.

On September 25, 1955, Barlick and Lee Ballanfant worked their last game together. They umpired 1,633 games together in the major leagues, starting with Barlick’s debut in 1940. At the time, only Beans Reardon and Larry Goetz had worked more games as partners (1,913) and, at the end of the 2013 season, Barlick and Ballanfant are third on the list of partners. Joe Brinkman and Derryl Cousins top the list with 2,123 games together.

Barlick missed the 1956 and 1957 seasons because of a heart problem, described in various news accounts as either an enlarged heart or a mild heart attack. He spent the time operating a gas station called Barlick & Petrone in Springfield, Illinois. He returned to the National League in 1958 as a crew chief. At the end of the season, Barlick umpired the 1958 World Series, a seven-game set won by the New York Yankees over the Milwaukee Braves.

In 1959 the major leagues held two All-Star Games and Barlick was the plate umpire to start the first game, played on July 7 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. (He swapped with third-base umpire Joe Paparella in the middle of the fifth inning.) 

On September 20, 1959, Barlick was in San Francisco with Jocko Conlan’s crew for the last game played at Seals Stadium. It was an important game in the standings because the hometown Giants, the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Milwaukee Braves (who were in Philadelphia that day) were all fighting for the National League pennant. At the start of the day, the Giants and Dodgers were tied for first place and the Braves were a half-game behind. The Dodgers never trailed in the contest and took a one-game lead over the Giants. At the end of the season, the Dodgers and Braves played a best-of-three series to determine the league champion. The two senior umpires in the league, Barlick and Conlan, were chosen to work the series, along with a veteran group of four other umpires.

On August 15, 1960, Barlick’s crew was in Cincinnati for a doubleheader between the Braves and the Reds. In the first game, Barlick was umpiring at third base when Frank Robinson of the Reds slid hard into third attempting to stretch a double into a triple. Eddie Mathews tagged Robinson out and decided that the latter had come in too hard to the bag, so Mathews started punching the runner. Barlick ejected Mathews for fighting in one of the most memorable brawls in major-league history.

The National League umpire staff expanded in 1961 in anticipation of the addition of two teams in 1962. The league decided to season some arbiters before the league expansion. Barlick’s crew worked with various other umpires for many games as a five-man crew, with the extra umpire stationed down the left-field line. On July 4 the crew was at Wrigley Field in Chicago for a doubleheader between the San Francisco Giants and the Cubs. For those games, the fifth man on the crew was stationed in center field. Barlick’s reasoning, according to The Sporting News, was to give the outfield umpire a better angle to view balls hit near the wall. Many fans would reach over the wall and touch balls in flight, so this angle gave the arbiter a better chance to rule on those situations. This was before netting was installed near the top of the wall.

On July 26, 1961,

The Sporting News published the results of a poll to determine the best umpires. In the opinion of the managers and coaches, Al Barlick was rated as the most respected in the National League and won the top rating in five other categories in the poll: best caller of balls and strikes, best on the bases, best knowledge of rules, best at being in the right position, and most serious-minded. He was tied for the best with Shag Crawford in the category of making the most deliberate decisions. In the opinion of the writers polled, Barlick was at the top of four lists: most respected, best on bases, best knowledge of the rules, and making deliberate decisions.

When asked about the poll, Barlick, the senior National League umpire at the time, called it a disgrace. He criticized what he called the ill-informed opinions of the writers and some of the categories in the poll, including the most sarcastic, the hardest to talk to, the biggest grandstander, and the worst pop-off. His comments drew a lot of negative responses from writers, as might be expected.

Barlick was quoted by Ray Kelly in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as saying: “The very idea of the ratings is unfair in that they place labels on hard-working officials who always try to do a good job. What, for instance, has neatness of appearance to do with sound officiating on the field? What constitutes respect? Does refusal to take abuse from a manager or player signify respect and is that respect forfeited when the player or manager is thrown out of the game?”

At the start of the 1962 season, Barlick’s crew umpired the first game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. At the end of the season, the San Francisco Giants and Dodgers were tied and played a best-of-three series to determine the winner of the NL pennant. Barlick was chosen to work the playoff series, and for the third time in nine years, he was the crew chief for the World Series. This seven-game series started at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park; it was the first time that the Series had been played in the Bay Area and Barlick umpired behind the plate for that initial contest.

In 1963 the National League mandated that the umpires crack down on balks by pitchers. This created a lot of arguments on the field. On May 4 Barlick was behind the plate for a game in Milwaukee between the Chicago Cubs and the Braves. Milwaukee starting pitcher Bob Shaw was called for a balk in the top of the first inning, three times in the third, and again in the fifth. In the third, the Cubs’ Billy Williams had walked and the three balks sent him around to score. In the fifth inning, after setting a record with his fifth balk of the game, Shaw walked Andre Rodgers to load the bases and then Nelson Mathews to force in the go-ahead run for the Cubs. Shaw objected to Barlick’s strike zone and was ejected by the arbiter.

A week later Barlick was quoted by Les Biederman in

The Sporting News: “We umps have to shoulder too much blame, yet all we do is enforce the rules. We don’t write the rules, just make certain none is violated. Now everybody is on us about the balks. Our instructions are to call balks when the pitcher fails to pause in his delivery with men on base, and we’re following orders. What would you do if your boss told you to do something and you didn’t follow through? What happens to a player who fails to follow instructions from a manager? It’s just as simple as that.”

On June 15, 1963, his crew worked a game in Cincinnati between the Reds and the New York Mets. At 3 o’clock the next morning, Barlick called Fred Fleig, the secretary of the National League, and, according to various news accounts, told him: “I am fed up with things and I am going to quit and go home.” League President Warren Giles told reporters later that day that he had tried to contact Barlick without success but hoped that he would change his mind because “he is an excellent umpire and a fine person.” At the time, there was no supervisor of umpires in the league, unlike the American League, which had a supervisor. The NL umpires were dissatisfied with Giles’ administration and felt that he failed to back them up when there was a controversy.

The balk situation was one of those controversial issues. Giles had ordered the arbiters to call the rule the way it was written, and so well over 100 were called in the first few weeks of the season. Commissioner Ford Frick convened an emergency meeting of the rules committee to reword the balk rule and bring it into conformity with standard practice. The umpires felt that Giles caused the problem and then failed to defend them once the trouble started. On June 17 Giles announced that he had spoken with Barlick, who was at his home in Springfield. Giles released a statement saying: “A misunderstanding has been cleared up. I asked Barlick to spend two or three days with his family. He will rejoin his crew in Chicago on June 21.” Giles refused to elaborate on the misunderstanding.

The time at home for the umpire was a rarity. Most years, Barlick would leave for spring training in February or March and not return home until the beginning of October or later. On the last day of the 1963 season, he said he was not sure if he would return the following year. He had umpired 20 seasons in the National League and, at 48 years old, was the senior arbiter in the league in terms of service. When he returned home to Springfield, he took a job at the city’s Water, Light and Power Department as a public-relations representative. By mid-January, however, Barlick had told the league that he would be back for the 1964 season.

In October 1963 the first umpires union was formed. The Association of National Baseball League Umpires included only National League umpires and was no doubt a reflection of the umpires’ opinion of the state of relations between them and Warren Giles. The union’s board of directors comprised Barlick, Jocko Conlan, Henry “Shag” Crawford, Augie Donatelli, and Tom Gorman. Conlan and Barlick were the two most senior umpires in the league at the time, since both joined the staff in 1941.

The purpose of the union as stated in its Illinois incorporation papers was “(t)o improve the general conditions pertaining to the relationship of the National Baseball League Umpires with the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs and to further aid in the constructive improvement of the game of National League Baseball.”

This union was replaced with the Major League Umpires Association, which was recognized by both leagues in 1970 and represented all umpires. This organization was disbanded and replaced with the World Umpires Association in 2000.

In 1965 Barlick and his crew opened the season in Houston, as the Astros hosted the Philadelphia Phillies at their new ballpark, the Astrodome. This was the first indoor stadium in the major leagues and the senior member of the league umpiring staff, Al Barlick, worked behind the plate for the initial contest.

On May 28, 1966, Barlick’s mother, Louise, died at her home in Springfield. Barlick went home after the game of May 25 to be with his ailing mother and returned to work on June 3, missing nine games. On July 12 Barlick was behind the plate for the All-Star Game, played at the newly opened Busch Stadium in St. Louis. As was the practice, the umpires changed positions in the middle of the fifth inning, with Barlick moving to third base.

Six days later, he was behind the plate for a game at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Phillies. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Dick Allen was on second base when a pitch got by Dodgers catcher John Roseboro for a passed ball. Barlick called the pitch a foul ball, so Roseboro did not run after the ball immediately. By the time he retrieved the ball, Allen had scored from second base. However, Barlick called time and placed Allen at third, explaining to the Phillies what he had done and that Allen would only have reached third without the umpire’s gaffe. Allen scored minutes later on a sacrifice fly.

Barlick missed the last two weeks of the 1966 season due to high blood pressure. He worked his last game on September 15 in Chicago and traveled to Houston for the next series. However, on September 17, he went home and was admitted to the hospital for a series of tests, which showed no damage to his heart. Barlick rested during the fall and later decided he was fit enough to go back to work in 1967. The 135 games Barlick umpired in 1966 represented the lowest total of his career for one season, excluding his partial season in 1940 before he joined the National League staff in 1941.

Barlick was chosen to umpire the 1967 World Series, his seventh and final time in the fall classic. In the second inning of the first game, played at Boston’s Fenway Park, Barlick stopped the contest briefly because a teenager was watching the game from atop the left-field wall just to the fair side of the foul pole. This was before the addition of the Monster Seats above the wall, when there was only a net.

On September 13, 1968, a fifth umpire was added to Barlick’s crew. Just as in 1961, the league decided to give some umpires big-league experience before they were needed on the field the following season. Each member of the crew was to take a day off in rotation and they worked that way until September 24, when all five umpires were on the field. The crew worked together for the last five games of the season.

After the season, Barlick accompanied the St. Louis Cardinals on a five-week tour of Japan. In one game, Lou Brock protested a strike call by the arbiter, so Barlick took Brock’s hat and bat, gave Brock his umpire cap, and stepped into the batter’s box. The crowd loved this prearranged set piece.

During the 1969 season, Barlick umpired 166 games, including 20 doubleheaders. The 166 games were the most in any season of Barlick’s career. With the expansion in 1969, each league was split into two divisions and the division winners played a round of playoff games to determine the World Series participants. The NL version of the League Championship Series started on October 4 with Al Barlick as the crew chief.

After the 1969 season, Barlick announced that he would retire if the pension plan for umpires was set up sufficiently. If not, he told reporters, “I’ll hang around. They’re not going to leave me in the middle of the street.” However, he returned to work in 1970 and, on June 28, he was in Pittsburgh for the final game played at Forbes Field. The Chicago Cubs and the Pirates played a doubleheader that day, with Barlick behind the plate for the first game. Two days later, the crew was in Cincinnati as the Reds opened their new home, Riverfront Stadium.

The 1970 All-Star Game was played at Riverfront Stadium on July 14, and Barlick was the crew chief and home-plate umpire. This was his seventh All-Star Game appearance, which is the most by any umpire, tied with longtime American League arbiter Bill Summers. Summers worked behind the plate for all of his games, while Barlick was the plate umpire six times. The 1970 game ended with the famous play in which Pete Rose crashed into catcher Ray Fosse, scoring the winning run when Fosse dropped the ball.

In February 1971 Barlick accepted the Umpire of the Year Award at the Al Somers Umpire School. The selection was based on a poll of the major-league umpires. As he accepted the award, Barlick said: “I’ve never accepted an award before. This is a true, honorable, sincere award because it is given to an umpire by umpires. That’s why it is very special.” He continued: “Bill Klem told me I’d meet some people in baseball I’d like. I’d meet some I didn’t like. But to help them all, because in doing that you’ll be helping all baseball.”

Barlick returned to the field in 1971 for his 28th and final year, even though he was a year past the retirement age. On May 31 the crew worked a game in Cincinnati between the Houston Astros and the hometown Reds. Barlick, who had been the plate umpire on the previous afternoon, worked at third base this day. During the game, Reds coach Alex Grammas was sarcastically praising Barlick’s strike zone of the previous day, so Barlick ejected Grammas.

The crew was at Wrigley Field for a Sunday afternoon game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs on September 26. Barlick worked behind the plate that day in the final game of his career, as the Phillies won, 5-1. The rest of the crew went to New York for three days, but Barlick did not work that series, having taken the advice of his teammates to go home early.

Al Barlick worked 4,227 games in the major leagues, which at the time was the fourth most of all time. He worked with 49 different umpires, including more than 1,000 games with four different umpires: Lee Ballanfant (1,633), Stan Landes (1,229), Augie Donatelli (1,104), and Ed Vargo (1,009).

On December 9, 1971, National League President Chub Feeney announced that Barlick was retiring from active duty as an umpire. The league hired him to supervise and scout umpires, a job he held for 22 years. During his time as supervisor, he hired many umpires who had long major-league careers. According to Bruce Froemming, who worked on Barlick’s crew in 1971, Barlick was “very proud of the staff he built.”

Froemming also talked about how easy Barlick made the transition from the minors to the majors. He “was a good teacher for the young guys” and “down to earth” with them, helping them get acclimated to life in the big leagues.

During spring training in 1988, Barlick was eating dinner with some umpires. He asked Mike Winters, a minor-league umpire working major-league spring games, to bring the bottom of his strike zone up a quarter-inch the next day. Winters looked at Barlick for a bit and then realized he had been had. Barlick was only joking with him because “no one is that good with their strike zone.”

In 1989 Al Barlick was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. He was the sixth umpire to be so honored, after Bill Klem, Tommy Connolly, Billy Evans, Jocko Conlan, and Cal Hubbard. In 1991 Barlick was made a charter member of the Springfield (Illinois) Sports Hall of Fame.

On September 10, 1995, a ceremony was held at Wrigley Field, Chicago, to retire numbers for three Hall of Fame umpires who worked in the National League: Bill Klem (No. 1), Jocko Conlan (2) and Al Barlick (3). Note that these were not numbers actually worn by those arbiters but done to honor them.

At the end of that month, the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore held a weekend card show as part of its celebration of the centennial of Ruth’s birth. The museum gathered many Hall of Famers for autograph sessions during the three-day event and Barlick was one of them. The Hall of Famers waited in a backstage room before doing their session with the public. Many players who came into the room, upon seeing Barlick sitting quietly at the side of the room, made a detour and stopped to say hello. Most addressed him as “Mr. Barlick” and asked how he was doing. Barlick once said: “I think I earned the players’ respect and that’s the ultimate in life, isn’t it? I didn’t care if they liked me or disliked me, as long as I had their respect.” The reaction of those Hall of Fame players that day in Baltimore certainly proved that respect.

Weeks later, Al Barlick died in Springfield on December 27, 1995, at the age of 80. He had collapsed at home and was pronounced dead at a hospital. Cardiac arrest had stilled his growling, booming voice, one of the loudest in the big leagues. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered by the family.

Barlick was fond of saying: “There are umpires and there are those who hold the title.” No one doubts that Barlick was an umpire. In fact, Bruce Froemming described Barlick as “an umpire’s umpire.”

In addition to the 49 umpires with whom he shared the field, Barlick mentored many umpires who were still working in the major leagues as of 2014. His legacy in the game lives on in those people.

Photo credit

Al Barlick, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Biederman, Les, “Umps Shoulder Too Much Blame,”

The Sporting News, May 11, 1963.

Dolson, Frank, “Barlick a Loveable Tough Guy,”

Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 1989.

Froemming, Bruce N., phone interview with the author, January 27, 2011.

Holtzman, Jerome, “How Al Barlick Entered the ‘Hall,’ ”

Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1989.

“Japan Land of Fun for Gift-Laden Cards,”

The Sporting News, December 14, 1968.

Kelly, Ray, “Rating of Umpires Called Disgrace by Barlick,”

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, July 24, 1961.

Koppett, Leonard, “Al Barlick: An Ump Calls Himself Out,”

New York Times, June 17, 1963.

Miller, Tony, “An Interview with HOF Umpire Al Barlick,”

Sports Collectors Digest, December 25, 1992.

Retrosheet website

retrosheet.org (umpire data and game schedules).

Vincent, David, Lyle Spatz, and David Smith,

The Midsummer Classic: The Complete History of Baseball’s All-Star Game (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, 2001).

Wind, Herbert Warren, “How an Umpire Gets That Way,”

Saturday Evening Post, August 8, 1953.

Winters, Michael J., phone interview with the author, January 25, 2011.

Dan Bellino is another; he is a Doctor of Jurisprudence, a graduate of John Marshall Law School who has served as an aide to a federal judge in Chicago. Umpiring was suggested to him by one of his law school professors.

“So you’re Dr. Barrett?”

“Reverend Doctor — the guys call me Reverend Doctor Crew Chief.”

Indeed, Dr. Barrett is also an ordained minister. In the most recent offseason — 2015/16 — he and fellow umpire Angel Hernandez traveled with others on a mission to Cuba. “This was my third year going. Angel went with me in December, which was really cool because, like he said, it was his first time back. He met his cousin for the first time. It was very emotional. We went and did missionary work.”

“I was ordained in the Southern Baptists, but I’m in a non-denominational church right now. In Arizona. I live in Gilbert. My undergrad was in kinesiology; that was in ’88. Then after a few years I decided it was time to go back to school and get a theological degree and I got my master’s degree in Biblical Studies [in 2007], from Trinity, which is a seminary in Newburgh, Indiana. It’s a four-year college as well as a seminary — Trinity University as well as Trinity Theological Seminary. They were big in the early days of distance learning. They also do regional seminars and I was able to go during the winter. You could go for a four-day thing and meet the professor, which was great then as we talked back and forth.”

There have been umpires who went into the ministry later in life, just as there are former ballplayers (Billy Sunday comes to mind) who later became ministers, but Teddy Barrett is the only one known to be a minister while an active umpire.

Dr. Barrett received his degree in 2013. The title of his dissertation for Trinity is An Investigation of Faith As A Life Principle in the Lives of Major League Umpires. 1 Barrett is also a co-founder of Calling for Christ, an organization created in 2003 to “love, encourage, and disciple umpires in their relationships with Jesus.” The board of directors of Calling for Christ (CFC) is comprised of MLB umpires Rob Drake, Mike Everett, Chris Guccione, Marvin Hudson, Alfonso Marquez, and Dave Rackley.2

Writer Jon Mooallem wrote a piece for ESPN The Magazine in which he gives some of the background to Barrett’s interest. “Barrett broke into the majors full time in 1999 and, having grown up in a religious family in upstate New York, was deeply unsettled by what he saw when he arrived. ‘How can I put this delicately?’ he says. ‘It was a devil’s playground. It was a dark, dark time.'”3

When one stops and thinks about it a bit, umpires do not just come emerge from nowhere and return to anonymity. They are real people with real lives. As Barrett wrote in his dissertation, “When a major league umpire speaks at a fundraiser dinner, classroom, church group, or some other event, he will inevitably receive the usual questions. What team do you ump for? What base do you work? Who is your favorite player? What is your favorite team? It is almost is if people, even the die-hard baseball fan, is under the impression that umpires appear from out of the ground underneath the stadium and work the game. Many people think umpires live in a city with a major league team and only work that game. Perhaps the umpires are so maligned because they are largely misunderstood.”4

To provide grounding for his dissertation, Barrett began with the words “It is said the job of the umpire is to start out perfect and get better.” And yet, under all the stresses of the job, it is not surprising that in their personal lives “some umpires fall into destructive behavior patterns.”

In order to better understand the experiences and concerns of his fellow umpires, rather than simply relying on conversations and anecdotal evidence, he distributed a confidential survey to every one of the 68 serving umpires in Major League Baseball during the annual meeting of World Umpires Association, the union which represents major league umpires, after the 2011 season. Removing himself from the research process, Barrett received completed surveys from 37 of the other 67 umpires. Their written responses were illuminating and exceptionally candid.

The pressures of the job are intense, first to advance up the ladder and then to continue to undergo public and professional scrutiny even when established as a major-league umpire. To make it to the top is, in the words of former minor-league umpire Rick Roder, to progress through “baseball’s narrowest door.”5 By way of some perspective, there are 100 United States Senators and there are 76 major-league umpires (a total of eight more were added in 2014 and 2015.)

There are only 76 major-league umpires and once one makes it, the rewards of the job are substantial — starting pay of $140,000 increasing to $400,000 in 2012, first-class travel, a $400 per diem, and — recently — even vacation time during the season.6 There remains a downside, however. Umpires are rarely home, missing milestone events in the lives of their children, hoping to hold together a relationship with a spouse who must inevitably be exceptionally understanding and capable of running a household. They do not travel with a baseball team, but in a very small group of four who must work together effectively on the field and who typically spend many of their non-working hours together as well. There is not only the strain on family life, but also the need to build productive working relationships while performing that work in an intensely competitive environment which inevitably pits one umpire against another, as it has throughout their entire professional development.

Very few people make it to the top. Every year about 300 people attend one of the two umpire schools recognized by MLB. Twenty-five from each school will go on to an evaluation course, from which some will become minor-league umpires. If hired, they are ranked at the end of every season in the minors and they will either be retained or released. There are 293 minor-league umpires, Barrett writes. In an average year, there might be one or two openings in the ranks of major-league umpiring. That math alone would be discouraging, but there is also the process of getting there for those who have, often a process that takes eight or nine years working for one-tenth the pay and with few of the amenities available at the top. The minor-league umpires do often work in the majors as fill-ins, and receive big-league pay during that time, but without the benefits or protection of the union. Rob Drake worked 1,218 games over 11 seasons as a Triple-A fill-in before being hired as an MLB umpire. Chris Guccione worked 1,250 over nine seasons.

All the while, every call of the umpires in every game is subject to reaction from ballplayers whose very livelihood can be affected by a safe-out call. And their calls are studied minutely by umpire observers, umpire supervisors, and by a general public which doesn’t hesitate to spew out abuse when they (rightly or wrongly) disagree with a call.

Like any employee in any field of work, umpires make mistakes. When a file clerk misplaces a dossier, he/she will never have 35,000 people booing at them for their mistake. They won’t be blasted through social media; their children will not receive abuse back in their hometowns. Barrett reminds us of one of the worst cases, after umpire Jim Joyce missed a very important call at the end of what would have been a perfect game for Armando Galarraga on June 2, 2010. Umpires take their mistakes to heart, and often can lose sleep to a bad call in a routine game. But, Barrett writes, “When Jim Joyce had the missed call in Detroit in 2010, his children received instant death threats on Facebook.” He adds, “One need to only do an engine search by typing in the name of any major league umpire, the vulgarity and hatred the reader would discover is hard to believe.”7

No one in the world felt worse than Joyce. A 20-year veteran umpire at the time, he’d made a mistake, but this was a mistake that deprived Galarraga of baseball immortality.8 The players had just voted Joyce best umpire in the game the year before. And at the time of the call, he was suffering a profound loss. “His father had recently passed away and this would be the first time he stayed in the home he was raised in without his father being there.”9

Umpires Larry Barnett and Don Denkinger are among others who received death threats that were taken seriously enough to result in a degree of mobilization by police and/or the FBI.10

It’s not surprising that umpires overwhelmingly value the implementation of replay—it helps them ensure that the call is right.

This is not to say that most umpires don’t find their work satisfying. Of the 34 umpires who responded to the question in Barrett’s survey, 33 said they were happy in the jobs. “Many used the term ‘very happy’ or ‘extremely happy.’ Some of them went as far to say they ‘love’ their job.”11 They are the elite who made it to the very top, and do have significant job security — though even umpire supervisors are not exempt from termination. Barrett wrote, “Two supervisors were fired following the 2009 postseason in which there were several high-profile umpiring mistakes.”12

Competition between umpires can be intense. Indeed, Barrett writes, “From the first day of umpire school the students are fully aware that they will be in direct competition with each other…The entire process from day one is a competition among umpires for progression.”13 Even after working as a fill-in for years, and being hired as a major-league umpire, there is a four-year probationary period. Perhaps it isn’t a stretch to learn that “Of the thirty-seven umpires who responded, thirty-six of them say there are umpires they do not trust. Many men simply stated that there are those they do not trust and many added that they constantly watch what they say in front of others. Some men pointed out that while it is a problem in the umpiring profession, it is also a problem in society as a whole.”14

Barrett had earlier mentioned finding a “devil’s playground” when he first arrived in the majors. And indeed, there is politicking and back-stabbing in many workplaces. Umpires are susceptible to the same crutches and temptations that others fall victim to. It is unrealistic to think that because baseball is a game with some glamour attached to it, somehow umpires are immune. That is not the case. Barrett talks about the extra responsibility of the crew chief, to keep his men working together effectively: “There are members of the staff, who have manipulative behavior, and they need to be called on it or they will shatter the crew dynamic. There are members of the staff who are in the midst of full blown addiction; their behavior can be detrimental to the crew. There are members of the staff who suffer from severe psychiatric disorders, a crew chief must be able to navigate all of these problems and keeps the crew functioning as a cohesive unit….There have been situations in the major leagues where men have worked side by side with functioning alcoholics.”15 That this is true in many workplaces does not mean it is less challenging to professional umpires and those who care about them. And umpires are indeed subject to random breathalyzer tests and other drug tests during the season, before they walk on the field of play. But such a test cannot pick up other forms of substance abuse, and cannot determine the mental health of the umpire. One of the motivations behind Baseball Chapel and a baseball ministry such as Calling for Christ is to help the crew confront such problems.

There is already a great deal of stress with which umpires must cope, but a crew which harbors someone struggling with serious issues “can add a great deal of stress to an umpire’s life, an umpires’ locker room should be an inner sanctum, a refuge from the bedlam that is a professional baseball game. Instead, it can be a place of bitterness, anger, jealousy, tears, rage, and fistfights. It can also be a place full of despair, despondency, loneliness and depression.”16

Divorce is not uncommon, but is not dramatically different than that in the population at large. And fully half the respondents said they have remained faithful and never engaged in “chasing.” Of those who have entered second marriages, the divorce rate is much, much lower than in the general population.

Nonetheless, among the respondents there were four who admitted to some form of sexual addiction. Pornography is among the problems they face. Three admitted to tobacco addiction and two to alcohol addiction. Several acknowledged problems with food addiction. Some had multiple addictions.

“Umpires wear masks when they work home plate,” writes Barrett in his dissertation. “This is something they become very adept at, wearing masks. Many of them know they need to keep a certain persona on the field as they do their jobs. Some of them feel the need to play the role of umpire off of the field as well. Many umpires emulate the veteran arbiters they look up to. They adopt their persona both on and off the field. As their career passes, they never take a good look at their own lives. They get so caught up in trying to emulate their idols they never take the time to discover their own personalities.”17

The situation appears to be improving, unfortunately accelerated by the 1996 death on the field of umpire John McSherry. Major League Baseball hired a full-time medical consultant, and a nutritionist. Several have sought counseling, though often outside baseball’s employee assistance program, in order to avoid unfortunate concerns regarding confidentiality. Barrett is optimistic: “I believe the umpires of the present are more mature, more aware of their surroundings, and make better decisions than umpires of the past.”18

Ted Barrett also found work, earlier in his career, as a sparring partner for professional boxers, and has indeed sparred with seven world champions: George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Greg Page, Razor Ruddick, Obed Sullivan, Tony Tucker, and Mike Tyson. “They put ‘Everlast’ on me and then hung me from the ceiling and punched me.”

More seriously, he elaborated, “I wore head gear and everything. I got punched a lot. I had to have my nose fixed and this tooth. I’ve had a few scars. I kind of was in demand for a while because there aren’t too many heavyweight sparring partners. I’d promise my wife that I’d stop and then I’d get a phone call, and when I was in the minor leagues, I needed the money so I’d go.

“There’s an etiquette to it. You need someone you can trust. When you’ve got a fighter in there that they’ve got a lot of money invested in, they don’t want someone sparring with him who’s trying to hurt him or trying for a cheap shot. The first world champ I sparred with was Greg Page. He was a champ in the mid-1980s. He told me, ‘You could make a lot of money sparring, but you’ve got to do it right. You’ve got to know the business. You’ve got to know what you’re doing.’ He taught me the sparring partners’ creed and everything, and I became in demand.”

The sparring is behind him now. Umpiring pays well enough to take care of his family. A son, Andrew Barrett, has entered the ranks of professional umpiring. “He went to umpire school in January of ’15. He worked the ’15 season in the Arizona League. Arizona rookie league. Then he worked Instruction League in Florida. He worked minor-league spring training this year. He’s in extended spring training now [April 2016], waiting for the season to start. He’ll probably be in the Northwest or Pioneer League.

I wouldn’t let him go to umpire school out of high school. His buddy did, and his buddy is now in Triple A. But I told him he had to get a college degree or join the military. So he did four years in the Air Force. When he got out, that’s when he went to umpire school.

I never encouraged it. I never discouraged it. He always followed in my footsteps a little bit, other than he didn’t play football. He played one year but it wasn’t his cup of tea. He played baseball. He boxed a little. He kind of grew up in the gym, so it was kind of natural. That I did try to discourage, but….

“He was nuclear weapons maintenance. The sad thing is, he really wanted to travel. He joined the Air Force and he did four years in Albuquerque. It was 45 minutes for him to go through security and then go underground. I said, ‘Man, it sounds awesome.’ He goes, ‘It sounds awesome, but it’s not. It’s pretty boring.’ He and his wife have got a young baby and they’ve got another one on the way. It’s going to be a challenge, like I had, with young kids.

“I’ve got a daughter. She’s going to college. My youngest son’s in the Army. He just got back from Kuwait. He’s in Colorado Springs now. He’s on a tank crew. He’s only 20. They’re talking about Eastern Europe right now, in February. I saw on Fox News they’re sending 240 tanks to Poland in February.”

For all the varied life Ted Barrett has enjoyed, it comes as no surprise that his work in the ministry is what he feels gives his life the most meaning.

Last revised: February 8, 2016

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

  
Sources

This article began with a conversation in the umpires room at Fenway Park on July 11, 2015 and another on April 18, 2016. It was furthered by a reading of Dr. Barrett’s dissertation, and subsequent communications.

Notes

1 A copy of Edward G. Barrett’s dissertation was supplied by Trinity, courtesy of Sheryle Knight of Trinity Theological Seminary.

2 The Calling for Christ website may be found at: www.callingforchrist.com

3 Jon Mooallem, “Lest Ye Be Judged,” ESPN The Magazine, June 20, 2014. Available online at: http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11107264/mlb-umpires-flock-pastor-dean-baptized-espn-magazine

4 Edward G. Barrett, An Investigation of Faith As A Life Principle in the Lives of Major League Umpires (Newburgh: Indiana: Trinity Theological Seminary, 2013), 45, 46.

5 Rick Roder, Baseball’s Narrowest Door, How to Become a Professional Umpire, 3rd ed. (Remsen, Iowa: by the author, 2003).

6 In the environment where they work, even the highest-paid umpire makes less than the minimum wage of the lowest-paid player, which in 2015 was $507,500. The highest-paid players earn more in a year than do all 76 major-league umpires together. Nonetheless, at one point, Barrett writes, “Umpiring at the big league level is a Peter Pan existence. You never have to make your bed because the hotel maid will do that for you. You never have to do your laundry because your clubbie will do it. You never have to do dishes because you are eating in a restaurant.” (p. 82) And it falls on the wives to do most of the work in the household.

7 Barrett, 65, 66.

8 See the book which pitcher and umpire wrote together. Armando Galarraga, Jim Joyce, and Daniel Paisner. Nobody’s Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and A Game for Baseball History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011).

9 Barrett, 55.

10 See, for instance, Durwood Merrill and Jim Dent, You’re Out and You’re Ugly Too! Confessions of an Umpire with Attitude (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 96, 97.

11 Barrett, 47.

12 Ibid., 38.

13 Ibid., 70-71.

14 Ibid., 72.

15 Ibid., 75-76. “Of the thirty-seven umpires in the survey, only three claim they have never abused alcohol and have never been drunk since they were members of the major league staff.” (p. 79)

16 Ibid., 75.

17 Ibid., 112.

18 Ibid., 85. Calling for Christ holds an annual retreat for umpires and their families each winter, and Barrett reports that 11 major-league umpires have attended, while several others have participated in the other activities the ministry offers.

The Berry family story in America starts with Thomas Berry, Charlie’s grandfather, who was born in Ireland about 1820. Thomas married and emigrated to the United States sometime before 1855, working as a laborer, teamster, and lineman. He and his wife, Catherine, settled in Camden County, New Jersey, before moving to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where they raised five children.1

The third child, Charles Joseph Berry, was born in 1860. He grew up to be a machinist. He and his wife, Ada “Addie” (née Bartch), lived for a time in Pennsylvania before moving to Phillipsburg, New Jersey.2 As a young man, Charles played baseball well enough to play one professional season, 1884, for three teams in the Union Association. Playing second base for Altoona and Pittsburgh and second base and outfield for Kansas City, he batted .224 in 43 games. In the field he was less than stellar, committing 27 errors.

Berry and his wife had three children, Addie C., Lucy E., and Charles Francis. Charles F. was born on October 18, 1902, in Phillipsburg. His father put a baseball glove on his son’s hand “when I could just about hold one,” he said.3

Charlie inherited his father’s love for sports and his athletic skills. At Phillipsburg High School he made the varsity team in football, basketball, and baseball. He received 11 varsity letters in his four years there. As a sophomore, Berry helped lead the football team to the New Jersey championship. When he was a senior, he was elected captain of the football, basketball, and baseball teams.4 A local newspaper article declared Berry “the greatest athlete that ever wore a Garnet and Grey uniform.”5 In the summers he worked at a local foundry, and after hours played catcher and outfield for the company baseball team in the Ingersoll-Rand League, an industrial league.6

Berry was courted by several Eastern colleges. and ultimately entered Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, after high school.7 As a freshman he was the starting left end on the football team and proved to be an excellent receiver. He also played defensive end. The 1921 team was undefeated, outscoring its eight opponents 239-26, and won a consensus national championship.8 In the spring of 1922, Berry joined the baseball team, earning the starting catcher job and helping the team to a 14-8 record.

The 1922 football team went 7-2. In the spring of 1923 the baseball team went 17-6. Berry hit over.300 and had a game-winning three-run homer against the University of Pennsylvania.9

In his senior year, Berry was elected class president and named captain of both the football and baseball teams. In January 1925 Walter Camp named Berry to his 1924 All-American football team as first-string left end.10

After graduating in June 1925 with a degree in economics, Berry signed a contract with Philadelphia A’s scout Mike Drennan.11 He reported immediately to Connie Mack’s Athletics, his major-league debut coming against the Cleveland Indians on June 15, 1925. Berry entered the game in the top of the sixth inning at catcher with the A’s losing, 12-2. He had an inauspicious beginning as he made an error with an errant throw that allowed Freddy Spurgeon, who had stolen second, to continue to third. In the seventh inning Berry got his first hit, singling off Indians pitcher Jake Miller. Down 15-4 in the eighth, the A’s scored 13 runs to win the game. During the rally Berry got his second hit of the day and his first RBI, and scored his first run. At the end of his first major-league game, he was batting 1.000.

Berry played in only 10 games for the Athletics in 1925, but was soon to find glory with the Pottsville (Pennsylvania) Maroons of the fledgling National Football League.12 The Maroons were a collection of all-stars. Berry, despite never having played a down of professional football and being the youngest member of the squad, was named the team captain.13 He more than proved himself as a leader and a player. Against the Green Bay Packers Berry scored three touchdowns and four extra points, and kicked a field goal. He led the NFL in scoring. Pottstown won the 1925 league championship, but the NFL stripped the Maroons of the title for playing an unauthorized game against the University of Notre Dame featuring the Four Horsemen.

In February 1926 the Athletics optioned Berry to the Portland (Oregon) Beavers of the Pacific Coast League. Two momentous events happened that summer. On June 30 in Portland Charlie married his high-school sweetheart, Helen S. Smith. During the season he suffered the first serious injury of his fledgling career, a broken wrist. He recovered before the end of the season, in all playing in 99 games.

After the season Berry resumed his football career with the Maroons, who won 10 games, lost 2, and had 2 ties, finishing in third place in the NFL. It was Berry’s last stint as a professional football player.

Apparently the Athletics had doubts about Berry’s wrist, for in the spring of 1927 they sent him outright to the Dallas Steers of the Texas League.14 There he was the number-one catcher, and hit.330.15

When the baseball season ended, Berry took a job as head football coach at Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. He returned to the Wolverines each year through the 1931 season, compiling a five-year record of 27 wins, 7 losses, and 8 ties. The Wolverines won the Tri-Conference title in three of those years.16

After the 1927 football season, Berry was sold to the Boston Red Sox. The 1928 Red Sox (53-96) were a last-place team. Berry played in 80 games as a catcher and a pinch-hitter, batting.260 and recording his first major-league home run, off Jack Ogden of the St. Louis Browns. He showed a bit of temper, as he received his first two of three ejections as a player, one for arguing balls and strikes and the other for arguing a close play at the plate.

Over the next two seasons, the Red Sox remained mired in last place. Berry’s batting average dipped in 1929, but bounced back in 1930 when he hit .289 in 88 games. He was proving himself to be a dependable man behind the plate.

Berry enjoyed a banner year in 1931. He appeared in the most games (111), batted .283, and had the most at-bats (357), most hits (101), and most runs scored (41) of his career. The season was memorable for a play involving Berry on April 22. When Babe Ruth tried to score after a fly out to center field, catcher Berry, the former football player, put a shoulder into the Yankees star and threw him skyward. Ruth came down in a heap safe at home plate.”17 Ruth took his position in left field in the bottom of the inning, but his left leg gave way and he collapsed. Ruth was carried from the field by his teammates and was taken to a hospital where he was diagnosed with a severe Charley horse in his left thigh.18 Ruth, unable to return to action for two weeks, did not blame Berry, saying, “It’s all part of the game and that was what he was paid to do. I’d have done the same thing in his place. Baseball isn’t ladies ping-pong. It’s a game played by men who want to win.”19

In 1932 Berry got off to a dismal start. In the first month he played in only 10 games and batted a paltry .188. On April 29 the Red Sox traded him to the Chicago White Sox. The trade apparently motivated Berry, as for the rest of the year he batted .305. His slugging percentage for the White Sox was the highest of his career at .478 (.453 when combined with Boston for the season).

On Memorial Day, May 30, Berry was involved in a bizarre incident. The White Sox were in Cleveland for a doubleheader. The first game, which the Indians won, 12-6, was contentious, with near fisticuffs between opposing players and between the White Sox and umpire George Moriarty.

The tension poured over into the second game, and bickering between the White Sox and Moriarty intensified as the game went along.

After the game, which the Indians won, 12-11, the White Sox accused Moriarty of challenging the entire team to a fight. Berry said Moriarty challenged him in the players’ tunnel. No matter the reason, the fracas started, with Moriarty punching pitcher Milt Gaston. Berry, Lew Fonseca, and catcher Frank Grube (Berry’s friend from Lafayette College days) all jumped on Moriarty and gave him a good pummeling. Indians players and coaches arrived and rescued Moriarty, who went to the hospital to be treated for bruises, spike wounds, and a broken right hand. American League President Will Harridge issued fines and suspensions to the White Sox who had participated. Berry got off relatively easily with a $250 fine. Moriarty was only reprimanded.20

Berry continued with the White Sox in 1933, then was traded back to the Athletics after the season. Installed as the first-string catcher, he got off to an unfortunate start when on Opening Day, April 17, he was hit by a foul ball; the injury to the little finger on his throwing hand kept him out for two weeks.21 Berry played in 99 games, batting .268. On July 21 in Detroit, his line drive to first base resulted in a triple play.

After the season Connie Mack invited Berry to join a barnstorming team for a trip to Japan.22 However, Berry missed the trip as he was stricken by appendicitis in Valley City, North Dakota, and was hospitalized.23

In 1935 Berry played in 62 games and hit the last of his 23 major-league home runs. On May 22 he was involved in a bizarre incident involving an umpire. In the first inning of a game against Detroit, the A’s Bob Johnson attempted to steal but was called out by umpire Charles Donnelly. Berry was one of several A’s who left the bench to protest to the umpire. Berry returned to the bench, where he remained until he pinch-hit in the ninth inning. After Tigers pitcher Elden Auker threw a pitch to Berry, Donnelly came forward to say he had ejected Berry during the first-inning argument. Berry said he did not remember being ejected and his manager, Connie Mack, said he had never been informed. Even Donnelly’s partner umpires did not know Berry had been banished. In the end, Berry was removed from the game. League President William Harridge investigated and determined that Donnelly was at fault and declined to reprimand Berry.24

On June 9, 1936, Berry was released by the Athletics as a player and hired as a coach. He remained in that position through the first half of the 1940 season. Berry not only helped the catchers, but he also instructed the pitchers. During spring training he would hold regular classes with the pitching staff.25 Berry had one last hurrah as a player. On September 8, 1938, he replaced Hal Wagner at catcher and made two plate appearances, going 0-for-2. In 1939 Berry was ejected from games twice, his only ejections as a coach. On July 15, Bill Summers tossed Berry for arguing a call at third base and on August 6, Harry Geisel gave him the thumb for protesting a home-run call.

At the midpoint of the 1940 season, Connie Mack asked Berry to take over as manager of an A’s farm team, the Wilmington (Delaware) Blue Rocks of the Interstate League. Berry took over a 28-29 team and piloted it to an overall 68-52 record, good enough for second place in the league.

Berry had continued to be involved with football, first as a scout and then as an official. He spent several years refereeing high-school and college games. In January 1941 he was hired by the National Football League as a head linesman for the coming season.26 At about the same time, Berry resigned as manager at Wilmington and became an umpire in the Eastern League.27 He had worked only a few spring-training games when the International League president, Frank Shaughnessy, saw Berry’s work and purchased his contract.28 Explaining his switch to officiating, Berry quipped, “I found out that the umpires win every argument so I decided to go over to their side.”29

Berry’s rise through the ranks was meteoric. In football, he was the head linesman for the 1942 NFL championship game in only his second season on the field. He was the head linesman in 11 more NFL championship games before his career was over.

In baseball, Berry spent less than two seasons in the International League before being hired to umpire in the American League. He made his major-league umpiring debut on September 10, 1942, in Chicago in a doubleheader between the Senators and White Sox. Working in a three-man crew with Bill Summers and Art Passarella, Berry covered third base, then moved to first base in the nightcap. Although he umpired in only seven games that September, he had proven himself. For the next 20 years, he was a full-time umpire.

In his second full year as a major-league umpire, Berry umpired in the 1944 All-Star Game. He worked the bases starting at first base and moving to second in the fifth inning. It was the first of five All-Star Games Berry umpired. (The others were in 1948, 1952, 1956, and the second All-Star Game of 1959.)

In 1945 Berry joined the US Army special services and made a goodwill trip to Greenland and Iceland to entertain the troops stationed there and to give clinics on officiating.30 After the war he continued to make trips at the behest of the US military. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he made four trips to Germany and three trips to Japan.31

Berry umpired four no-hitters and was at a different base for each one. He was at first base for Bo Belinsky’s no-hitter in 1962, second base for Allie Reynolds’ second no-hitter in 1951, third base for Jack Kralick’s gem in 1962, and home plate for Bob Feller’s third and last no-hitter in 1951. Berry was almost part of a perfect game. On July 27, 1958, Billy Pierce of the White Sox had one going with two outs in the ninth inning before the Senators’ Ed Fitz Gerald lined a ball down the first-base line. Berry, umpiring at first, called it fair and the perfect game was gone.

Berry took time off from umpiring to serve as head linesman at the 1949 College All-Star Game, at Chicago’s Soldier Field, which featured the best college football players against the previous year’s NFL champion. That left a three-man umpiring crew for the White Sox-Indians game and when Cleveland lost on a disputed play, Bill Veeck, owner of the Indians, protested the game on the grounds that Berry should have been at the game. AL President Will Harridge disallowed the protest.32 Berry also worked the 1951 College All-Star Game, after working both games of a doubleheader between Cleveland and Chicago.

During his 21 years as a major-league umpire, Berry ejected 55 players.33 His ejections ranged from eight in 1956 to none in 1945 and 1959. Berry sent four future Hall of Famers packing: Casey Stengel, Lou Boudreau (three times), Minnie Miñoso, his old White Sox batterymate Ted Lyons, and Al Lopez. (Lopez was Berry’s last career ejection.) Manager Paul Richards was thumbed by Berry the most times, four. The most men Berry ejected during one game was three and he did that twice, in 1952 and 1962.

Berry umpired in five World Series: 1946, 1950, 1954, 1958, and 1962. In 1958 Berry was the head linesman for the NFL title game, becoming the only man to officiate both major championships in the same year.

The 1962 World Series was Berry’s swan song. In December 1962, after 21 years of wearing the blue suit, he called it quits. He had appeared in 3,079 regular-season games, 29 World Series games, and five All-Star Games as well as countless spring-training and exhibition games. He retired as one of the most respected umpires in the game. In 1960 and 1961 The Sporting News conducted a poll of writers, managers, and coaches to evaluate the major-league umpires. In both polls, Berry was named the number-one American League umpire.34

Berry went to work for the American League as an assistant to the supervisor of umpires. He did some scouting of umpires and inspected field conditions at major-league ballparks. He also worked for the National Football League observing and evaluating officials. Twice he traveled to Mexico to give clinics on umpiring at the behest of major-league baseball. He also gave officiating clinics in the Pennsylvania area. Berry also kept busy on the banquet circuit. His gift of gab and storytelling ability made him a much sought-after guest speaker. He also participated as an umpire in a few Old-Timer’s games. Berry kept his hand in umpiring by twice calling the plays at the NCAA College World Series.

In the fall of 1970, just before the League Championship Series, major-league umpires went on strike, demanding more pay for postseason assignments. For the American League Championship Series between the Orioles and Twins, the league office put together a replacement umpiring crew consisting of two minor-league umpires and two retired umpires, John Stevens and Berry. On October 3 Berry traveled to Minnesota and, in his last major-league umpiring assignment, took his position at third base. At the age of 67 years and 350 days, he was the second oldest umpire ever to appear in a box score. (The record lasted until 2007 when Bruce Froemming moved into the second spot and Berry moved to third oldest.) The strike ended the next day and Berry returned to his retired life.

Through the years, Berry received many honors. He received one vote in 1955 and three votes in 1958 for induction to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1966, the Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Athletic Association recognized him for his contribution to football officiating. Also in 1966, he was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. His alma mater honored him in 1977, inducting him into the Lafayette College Maroon Club Athletic Hall of Fame and in 2000 named him as one of Lafayette College’s 15 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century. In 1980 Berry was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

In interviews Berry would often explain what makes a good official and the keys to his success on the field. Berry wrote, “With me, studying and reading the rules is a daily routine. I would feel I wasn’t doing my job if I didn’t look at the rulebook every day. Once you get the wording you get the feeling you’re never in doubt. I feel that an umpire should know the rules so well that he could recite every rule in the whole book word for word.”35 Talking about on-the-field necessities he explained, “The main things to remember are these: you must know the rules; you must know where you should be on the field, and you must be there to call the play.”36 He added, “One qualification for a good sports official is that he does not call plays too quickly. Instead of anticipating the play, let it happen, follow it intently to its completion and THEN make the call quickly. I think that’s a rule which can be followed in all ways of life.”37

Summarizing his career, Berry said, “I got just as much kick out of officiating as I did out of playing. It was never an effort, never a burden.”38 He also said, “I think I am a lucky guy. I like my jobs. The pay is good. I wouldn’t change places with any man.”39

In June 1972, Berry suffered a stroke at his home in Phillipsburg. In late July he was transferred to a hospital in Evanston, Illinois to be nearer his oldest daughter. After an operation, and subsequent physical therapy, Berry suffered a massive heart attack and died on September 6, 1972. He was buried in Belvidere Cemetery, Belvidere, New Jersey. He was survived by his wife, Helen, and his three daughters, Helen, Charlé, and Lynn.40

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts met in the NFL championship game. It has been called the “Greatest Game Ever Played.” Late in the fourth quarter, the Giants had the ball. If they could get a first down, they could run out the clock and win the game. They gave the ball to Frank Gifford who charged into the line. After the play, Berry, the head linesman, spotted the ball short of the first down and the Giants had to turn the ball over. The Colts ended up tying the game and went on to win in overtime. Berry’s call drew protests from the Giants and was second-guessed for years afterward. In 2008, on the 50th anniversary of that momentous game, the ESPN television network produced a two-hour documentary about it. They examined the disputed play and through forensic analysis of photographs and film determined that Berry’s decision was, indeed, correct. But of course Charlie knew that the moment he made the call.

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Last revised: September 20, 2022 (zp)

Notes

Chylak was born on May 11, 1922, in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, near Scranton in the northeastern part of the state. His parents, of Ukrainian descent, were Nestor George Chylak Sr. and Nellie (Shipskie) Chylak, both first-generation Americans.3 His father operated a bar.4

Nestor was the oldest of five children. He had two sisters, Mae and Julie, and two brothers, Gene and Joseph, who died at the age of 2.5

Chylak attended Rutgers University briefly in 1939-1940, but his studies were interrupted by military service in World War II.6 A sergeant in an Army Ranger battalion, Chylak served in the Army in the European theater and was wounded on January 3, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge, when fragments of a tree hit by shrapnel smashed into his face.7 For 10 days, he could not see, but eventually recovered his eyesight. Chylak was awarded a Purple Heart for his wound and a Silver Star for gallantry in action.8

Chylak almost never talked about the horrors of the battlefield. His son Bill thought Nestor’s generosity and kindness to people grew out of his loneliness on the road, but another son, Bob, said the friends their father lost in battle had something to do with it.9

Returning to the United States after the war, Chylak briefly resumed his college studies at the University of Scranton, but did not finish his degree.10  He wanted to play baseball, but a shoulder injury prevented him from doing so. He decided to try umpiring.11  In 1946 Chylak began umpiring amateur baseball games in the Northeastern Pennsylvania League. He decided to pursue umpiring as a career, beginning in the minor leagues in 1947. On April 13, 1954, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, Chylak made his debut in the American League. He worked third base in the 10-inning game, the Senators prevailing over the Yankees, 5-3.12

Thus began a major-league career that spanned 25 years and 3,857 regular-season games. Chylak was a home-plate umpire for 974 games.13  He was a crew chief for 14 years, mentoring rookie and younger umpires.14

Chylak’s son Bob cited his father’s on-field demeanor as a key to his success. He was decisive, consistent, authoritative, and unflappable. He let players have their say and then moved on. Once a manager or player stopped arguing, he let the dispute drop.15

Chylak had the baseball rulebook memorized by paragraph and by section, ensuring that he knew the rules cold. His preparation meant he never lost an argument, even to well-informed managers like Earl Weaver.16  Chylak was proud of the fact that he never threw Weaver out of a game.17  In his 25 years as a major-league umpire, Chylak ejected only 24 players, managers, and coaches, and ejection rate among the lowest in major-league history.18

Chylak’s sense of humor served him well as an umpire. He had a ready wit. He once said, “The way I see it, an umpire must be perfect on the first day of the season and then get better every day.”19  At the Umpire Exhibit at the Hall of Fame, a plaque gives this Chylak quip: “This must be the only job in America that everybody knows how to do better than the guy who’s doing it.”20

When Chylak died in 1982, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn said, “Few have ever been more respected in his field. Everyone looked up to him, and I developed more respect every time I saw him in a World Series or All-Star Game.”21  When Chylak was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Harmon Killebrew called him “one of the best umpires in the American League for years and years,” and added, “I think he had a great rapport with the players.”22  Jim Palmer said, “I think anybody who ever played while Nestor umpired understood how much he loved the game and how much he loved people.”23  Brooks Robinson called him “my favorite umpire.”24

Yogi Berra called Chylak “an umpire’s umpire,” saying, “He kept the game under control, but he would also listen to you when you had a beef.”25  But fellow umpire Don Denkinger said he was “a pitcher’s umpire.” Chylak’s philosophy was to never call a strike a ball. Former player and coach Dick Tracewski opined that Chylak thought it was acceptable to call a ball a strike once in a while, but never the opposite because it slowed the game down.

 In a time when selection for postseason and All-Star Games was based on merit, Chylak was chosen to umpire in five World Series, three League Championship Series, and six All-Star Games. His first World Series was in 1957, when he worked the left- and right-field lines for all seven games of the Yankees-Braves Series. Chylak also umpired in the 1960, 1966, 1971, and 1977 World Series, serving as crew chief in 1971 and 1977.26

Chylak umpired in the American League for his whole major-league career; he retired long before the umpiring staffs were consolidated. He was behind the plate for the first major-league game in Toronto, in Exhibition Stadium in 1977, a contest made memorable by a snowstorm during the game. He called balls and strikes in Sandy Koufax’s last major-league contest, Game Two of the 1966 World Series.27  Chylak was the plate umpire when Bert Campaneris threw his bat at pitcher Lerrin LaGrow during a 1972 playoff game. Nestor ejected both players.

He was the third-base umpire for the 1974 “Ten Cent Beer Night” game between Cleveland and the Texas Rangers on June 4, 1974.28  The players were doused by beer by midgame. Hundreds of inebriated fans stormed the field in the ninth inning. Both teams fled the field for their own safety. The fans stole the bases and threw objects including bottles, rocks, cups, radio batteries and folding chairs. Chylak was struck in the head and cut by part of a stadium chair and also hit in the hand by a rock. The crew chief, he realized that order could not be restored and forfeited the game (tied at the time) to Texas.29  

Chylak’s career ended in Toronto in July 1978 when he became ill working a night game after a spell of difficult travel. His umpire colleagues asserted that he suffered a mild stroke, but family members said he was suffering from exhaustion.30

After retiring from the field, Chylak became an assistant supervisor of umpires for the American League. He was present in Chicago on Disco Demolition night, July 12, 1979. Between games disco records were blown up on the field. Then thousands of spectators stormed the field and a riot was on. Chylak informed Bill Veeck, the owner of the White Sox, that the second game could not be played. Despite Veeck’s protest, the American League president Lee MacPhail upheld Chylak’s decision. The next day MacPhail ordered the second game forfeited to Detroit rather than rescheduled.

In retirement, Chylak became a member of the Sports Illustrated Speakers’ Bureau,31  speaking about the intangible lessons he had learned from his years umpiring baseball. His son Bill said that his father was the biggest politician on behalf of baseball there ever was.

Chylak gave baseballs, bats, and other memorabilia to friends, family, and sometimes even total strangers. Chylak visited patients in the Veterans Hospital in Plains, Pennsylvania, each week. During the offseason he spoke to Little Leaguers, Boy Scouts, and others without charge.32  As evidenced by baseballs and cards signed by Chylak on auction on eBay, Chylak signed his autograph with the words “Play Hard and Fair.”

Chylak died at home in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, of an apparent heart attack on February 17, 1982, three months before his 60th birthday. He is buried in SS. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Cemetery in Peckville, Pennsylvania. Chylak was survived by his wife, the former Sophie Shemet, and his two sons.33

Chylak was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in July 1999 after election by the Veterans Committee. (A committee in his home area had begun lobbying the Veterans Committee on behalf of Chylak, collecting signatures and letters of endorsement.)34  Chylak’s son Bob spoke at the induction ceremony.35

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 William C. Kashatus, Diamonds in the Coalfields: 21 Remarkable Baseball Players, Managers, and Umpires From Northeast Pennsylvania (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2001), 88.

2 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak,” chylak.maslar-online.com. Accessed October 3, 2014.

3 Borys Krawczeniuk, “The Right Call,” Scranton Sunday Times, July 25, 1999.

4 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”

5 Ibid.

6 Gary Bedingfield, “Nestor Chylak,” http://www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/chylak_nestor.htm.   Accessed October 5, 2016

7 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”

8 Kashatus, 64.

9 “The Right Call.”

10 Kashatus, 40.

11 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”  

12 Kashatus, 56-57. See Retrosheet.org for details on each game of Chylak’s major-league career.

13 Sean Lahman, The Baseball Archive, seanlahman.com/baseball-archive/statistics/. Accessed October 4, 2014. Chylak’s first assignment working the plate was in the first game of a doubleheader at Fenway Park on April 18, 1954.

14 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”

15 Kashatus, 88.

16 Krawczeniuk, “Brooks Says Nestor Was the Best,” Scranton Sunday Times, July 25, 1999.

17 Bob Chylak, text of Hall of Fame induction speech, July 25, 1999, chylak.maslar-online.com/.

18 retrosheet.org/boxesetc/index.html#Umpires.

19 Chylak obituary, Ellensburg (Washington) Daily Record, February 18, 1982.

20 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”

21 Ibid.

22 Mike Crist, “Nestor Was the Ump the Players Wanted,” Scranton Sunday Times, July 26, 1999.

23 Ibid.

24 Krawczeniuk, “Brooks Says Nestor Was the Best.”

25 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Kashatus, Diamonds in the Coalfields, 89.

29 Randy Galloway, “Unruly Fans Cause Forfeit,” Dallas Morning News, June 5, 1974: 5: 1.

30 Ibid.

31 Kashatus, Diamonds in the Coalfields, 126.

32 “The Right Call.”

33 “A Tribute to Nestor Chylak.”

34 Mike Crist, “A Day in the Sun,” Scranton Tribune, July 26, 1999.

35 Bob Chylak, Hall of Fame induction speech, Scranton Sunday Times, July 26, 1999.

Amanda Clement was born on March 20, 1888, in Hudson, Dakota Territory, a year before South Dakota became a state. Growing up with her brother Allen (better known as Hank) gave Clement the chance to play sports and learn the rules. Her mother, Harriett, raised the two alone after Amanda’s father died when she was a little girl. The family lived near the local ballpark and so Amanda and her brother spent a great deal of time there. Accompanying her brother to his games, Amanda often found herself umpiring the sandlot games, since girls did not play baseball with any regularity. However, when the boys asked her to fill in, she occasionally played a little first base, which helped her learn the game.

One day, after Amanda traveled with her mother to Harden, Iowa, to watch Hank’s Renville team play a semipro game against Hawarden, history was made. The umpire did not show up for the preliminary game and her brother volunteered his sister. And when the umpire did not arrive for the scheduled contest, the teams accepted her after having seen her umpire. And so in 1904 Amanda Clement became the first woman paid to umpire a game. The teams actually had to persuade her mother to let her umpire since this was not something young ladies did. Clement put any doubts to rest immediately and began a successful career as an umpire for six years, traveling across the upper Midwest, umpiring about 50 games a summer. Earning between $15 and $25 a game, Clement earned enough money each summer to put herself through college. Baseball was hugely popular at the time; there was little else to draw away people’s attention. Every small town had a ballclub and games were a constant with town pride at stake. Umpires were in demand and Clement benefited from that need. At this time umpires generally worked alone, calling balls and strikes from behind the pitching mound. This gave the umpire a better view of all the action on the bases as well. For Clement this also meant she was not as close to the fans as she would have been behind the plate.

Since this was a time when women were not encouraged in such public pursuits, Clement became a novelty during the six years she umpired. The woman’s place was still at home, taking care of the household. Clement was so good at her job, however, that she got calls from all over the Midwest to umpire. One paper described her as “possessor of an eagle eye, seldom makes a mistake.”3 Promoters quickly came to realize that a young female umpire who was good at what she did would attract more fans and so Clement was in demand. One newspaper reporter claimed she even received more than 60 marriage proposals from across the country as her reputation grew. In response to one young man’s overtures, Clement told him, “I’m wedded to baseball.”4

Clement’s reputation grew with each game she umpired. She was in such demand during the summers that she often had to make choices about which games she would umpire. Many communities invited her back after seeing her work. As one reporter said, “But see her once, mask on, behind the catcher and hear her call the balls and strikes, and at once you reach the conclusion that a young woman of skill, judgment and determination is performing with marked ability.”5 Clement did miss a few weeks in the summer of 1910 after she injured her left knee while playing catch. She had to wear a plaster cast and then walked with a cane for a few weeks.

On one occasion in South Dakota, Clement was introduced to President Teddy Roosevelt, who told her he had heard of her already. A local writer, Will Chamberlain, wrote a poem about the lady in blue in 1905. After a game between Gayville and Garretson, the local paper reported, “She umpired the game as quietly and easily as other young women would sweep a floor or make a cake.”6 Clement’s umpiring took her all over the Midwest. One week might find her umpiring a game in Sioux City and the next in Elk Point, South Dakota, or Brookings, or Minneapolis. One of the most interesting games recorded that Clement umpired was one in Tekamah, Nebraska, between the White Sox and a colored team from Omaha called the Midway.7

Clement had few problems on the diamond or on the road as she traveled across the Midwest. A Congregationalist, she often stayed with local ministers’ families and would not umpire on Sundays. Further supporting the idea that Clement did not compromise her femininity or her morals by working as an umpire, she was invited to speak from the pulpit at a local church in Rock Rapids, Iowa. Afterward she spoke at the high school on “The Value of Athletics.” She even walked off the field once when one of the players, Toots Thompson, used profanity. She refused to umpire any games Thompson played in after that. She remained convinced that having female umpires would truly clean up the game since at that time it was unacceptable for a gentleman to publicly insult a lady. “Now if women were umpiring, none of this would happen,” she said. “Do you suppose any ball player, in the country would step up to a good-looking girl and say to her, ‘(Y)ou color-blind, pickle-brained, cross-eyed idiot, if you don’t stop throwing the soup into me, I will distribute your features all over this ground until the janitor will be compelled to soak you up with gasoline?’ Of course, he wouldn’t. Ball players aren’t a bad lot. In fact, my experience is that they have more than the usual allowance of chivalry. And I don’t believe there’s anybody in the country that would speak rudely to a woman umpire, even if he thought his drive was ‘safe by a mile’ instead of a foul.”8 In fact, a friend said players were likely to say, “Beg your pardon, Miss Umpire, but wasn’t that one a bit high”9 She was also not afraid to eject a player in order to maintain control of the game. Clement believed she ejected about six players over the years.10

Clement also believed the fear that a female umpire was more likely to be assaulted or mistreated than a man was overplayed. “Then there’s the crowd,” she said. “There’s a good deal of cowardice about the roasting of umpires by crowds, because hardly any of the fans that shout all sorts of insults from the bleachers would have the nerve to say anything of the kind to the umpire’s face.”11

Not all the teams or reporters were kind to Clement. Some of them clearly followed the attitude of the time, believing that women belonged at home and not out in public. One reporter made his feelings quite clear, stating, “The female umpire, the bloomer girl ballplayer and the dodo bird can be spared very nicely. A woman in bloomers isn’t an inspiring sight, anyway.”12 Another individual, Brother Sturges of the Bereford Republic, chastised Clement for her athletic endeavors and claimed that the only thing anyone one cared about was her ability to make a proper meal or sew her own clothes. In other words, tasks accepted at the time as womanly. The people of Clement’s hometown responded to this attack with great support, saying, “Miss Clement is not a paragon. She is simply a young woman who loves athletics and who is paying her way through college with what she earns during the summer working as an umpire, for she is not only perfecting herself in physical culture …but she is also desirous to perfect herself in the study of medicine, as it has ever been her ambition to become a doctor, and it costs money to go to college.”13

From 1904 to 1911 Clement regularly umpired about 50 games a season in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa. Billed as “The World Champion Woman Umpire,” she appeared on the diamond wearing “a full-length blue skirt, black necktie, white blouse with UMPS stenciled across the front of a peaked cap.”14

Clement saved a portion of her umpiring earnings, $15 to $25 a game, to finance her education. She studied at Yankton Academy for two years, then Yankton College for two years and finally finished at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1909. While in college Clement played basketball and tennis, ran track, and worked for the local newspaper. One game reported in the paper had Clement’s Yankton Academy basketball team winning 15-1 while listing her as the star player. The college hired her to umpire the club team, hoping her presence would stop some of the “rowdyism” through her “good judgment and fine mind.”15 She also refereed local high-school basketball games. This has raised speculation that in addition to being the first paid female umpire, Clement might have also been the first female referee. There were also many stories published about records she set in different sports, most of which were more rumor and legend than fact. She did, however, set a national record for females throwing a baseball, 275 feet. She broke the existing record, set by a young woman from Chicago, by five feet. She also won a vase in a “Carrie Nation Hatchet Throwing Contest.”16

Clement’s college degree in physical education let her work as a teacher and professor throughout her professional career. She taught for a time at the University of Wyoming as well as for four years at Jamestown, North Dakota, High School. In addition she also worked at the YWCA in La Crosse, Wisconsin. While in La Crosse one of Clement’s projects was to show how the footwear forced on young ladies deformed their feet. Clement took photos of the feet of 75 young women with and without their shoes and put the pictures on display, hoping this might force some changes. She also gave swimming lessons and helped save a man’s life after he nearly drowned in the local river. After he was pulled out of the river, Clement administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.17 From her experience playing college basketball, she later coached an independent basketball team in Hudson and even refereed high-school basketball –perhaps the first woman to do so.18 

Clement, who never married, moved home in 1929 to take care of her ill mother. She then moved to Sioux Falls in 1934 after her mother died and she worked as a social worker for 25 years, overseeing both the city and county welfare divisions, until her retirement in 1966. Until her death in Sioux Falls on July 20, 1971, she remained an ardent fan of the game that got her started in life, rooting for the Minnesota Twins.

In recognition of her many athletic accomplishments, Clement was elected to the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame in 1964. In 2014 she was inducted into the Yankton College Alumni Hall of Fame. A children’s book, Umpire in a Skirt: The Amanda Clement Story (2010), by Marilyn Kratz, tells her incredible story for the generations to come.19 Clement loved the game and never saw umpiring as something ladies should not do. “There is no reason why a young woman cannot make a business of umpiring and be a perfect lady,” she said. “I maintain that it is just as womanly as it is to play tennis.”20

This biography is included in “The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 “One Who Made a Big Success Tells of the Work,” Pittsburgh Press, September 17, 1906.

2 Amanda Clement Hall of Fame File, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York. See also Sharon L. Roan, “No One Yelled “Kill The Ump” When Amanda Clement Was a Man in Blue, Sports Illustrated, April 5, 1982, and Colin Kapitan, “Nobody Yelled ‘Kill the Umpire!’” South Dakota Magazine, July 1985.

3 “Woman as Umpire,” Meriden Daily Journal, June 20, 1906.

4 “Players All in Love With Girl Umpire,” Reading Eagle, August 26, 1906.

5 “Girl Baseball Ump,” Reading Eagle, June 29, 1906.

6 Clement Scrapbook, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

7 Hall of Fame file.

8 Pittsburgh Press, September 17, 1906.

9 Kapitan, “Nobody Yelled ‘Kill the Umpire!’”

10 “A Girl Umpire,” Sporting Life (Vol. 46, No. 4), October 7, 1905: 8.

11 Pittsburgh Press, September 17, 1906.

12 Pittsburgh Press, January 22, 1906.

13 Sioux City Journal, n.d., Hall of Fame file.

14  Kapitan, “Nobody Yelled ‘Kill the Umpire!’”

15 “Would Wed Ump,” Sporting Life, Vol. 47, No. 20, 1906.

16 Will Talsey, “The Umpire Was a Lady,” Baseball Magazine, October 1952: 31.

17 Clement Scrapbook, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

18 “South Dakota Woman Is Jack of All Trades,” Ludington (Michigan) Daily News, April 7, 1929; “150 Feet to the Bad,” The Gazette Times, June 10, 1913.

19 “Sioux Falls Woman Recognized in Yankton as Baseball’s First Female Umpire,” Associated Press, July 21, 2014.

20 Amanda Clement File, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

 Born on December 6, 1899, John Bertrand Conlan was the son of a Chicago policeman. The youngest of nine children, he was named after his uncle John. Sister Mary Bertrand, a nun who was a good friend of his mother, inspired his middle name. When John was 3 his father died at 49, leaving his mother to raise nine children. “My mother was a wonderful woman,” recalled Conlan. “My mother did all our washing and sewing and baking and she kept us all together.”2 The family matriarch lived to be 88 years old.

Conlan grew up playing ball with All Saints Parochial School. He pitched and played first base. Fred Lindstrom, who later played with the Giants, was the team’s third baseman. When he was 13, Johnny spent his summer at White Sox Park picking up bats and shagging balls at morning practices. His lucky day came when coach Kid Gleason forgot a glove on the ground. “Oh[,] it was nice and shiny and oily,” remembered Conlan. “I had never had a big-league glove on my hand or even seen one up close. … I shoved the glove under my overalls and walked out of the park.”3

The glove was right-handed so Conlan traded it for $2 and a lefty glove. Fifteen years later, when he was playing for Newark and Gleason was coaching for the Athletics, the two crossed paths at an exhibition game in Miami. After confessing the theft, Conlan received absolution of sorts. “That was the greatest glove I ever had,” lamented Gleason. “Let me tell you something, kid. If that glove helped make a ballplayer out of you, I’m glad you swiped it.”4

Johnny went on to play outfield at De La Salle High School and for semipro teams around Chicago. Johnny’s brother Joe was a good amateur pitcher and played in the semipro Midwest League with Jocko. In 1920 Joe had a tryout with the Brooklyn Dodgers and pitched in a spring-training game in Florida against the New York Yankees. Joe claimed that the longest home run Babe Ruth ever hit came against him in that game. But Joe had just got married and soon moved back to Chicago, where he, like his father, became a policeman. Johnny also tried his hand in the ring as an amateur boxer.

Matty Fitzpatrick, an umpire in the Midwest League, recommended Johnny to Tulsa of the Class-A Western League, where he was signed to play in 1920 but never did. Conlan was actually traded at a train station. Both Tulsa and Wichita were passing through Union Station in Kansas City when it was discovered that the Wichita Jobbers’ roster was a man short and Tulsa’s was a man over, so Conlan just switched teams. Johnny spent most of the season with the Jobbers and hit .247 in 117 games. The naïve 20-year-old made a big mistake late in the season. His brother was on his way back to Chicago to get married and stopped by to pick up Johnny. The youngster jumped the team and went home with Joe. The team suspended him, which meant that he had to sit out a year. Johnny couldn’t afford not to play so he went back to the semipro Midwest League in 1921. This was a mistake by the still naïve youngster. After returning to Wichita for the 1922 season, he was once again suspended for violating his original suspension. He played in just 10 games. His case was heard at the minor-league winter meetings in December and he was reinstated for the 1923 season. Johnny rapped out 204 hits and batted .311, the first of seven minor-league seasons in which he hit over .300. 

In 1924 Conlan’s contract was sold to Rochester of the International League, where he played for George Stallings, whom he called “the smartest, the most intelligent, greatest baseball man I ever met in my life.”5

Conlan played three seasons for Stallings. The first year, 1924, he led the IL in hits, runs, and stolen bases. For his efforts he was paid $2,500. After holding out, he got a raise to $5,200 for the next season. By all accounts, Conlan was a speedy, strong-armed center fielder. At 5-feet-7 and 165 pounds, his diminutive stature seemed to be all that kept him out of the big leagues for 14 seasons. In 1925 it looked as though Conlan would get his chance with Cincinnati. A deal was set to send him to the Reds but when he was injured on a play at the plate, the Reds canceled the deal. Conlan’s Rochester years also yielded a nickname that would become iconic: Jocko. “There was a sportswriter on the Democrat and Chronicle named Corri,” explained Conlan. “He was the fellow who hung the name ‘Jocko’ on me.” Another Jocko, Arthur Joseph “Jocko” Conlon, went to Harvard and played second base for the Boston Braves in 1923. Like Johnny, he was small in stature at 5-feet-7 and 145 pounds. The sportswriter Corri, who was from Maine, likely picked up on the similarities of size and name. The “original” Jocko spelled his name slightly differently, with o-n rather than a-n. “It seemed to fit. I wouldn’t know what to do now if I didn’t have Jocko as part of my name,” wrote Conlan in his autobiography.6

On January 12, 1926, Jocko wed Ruth Anderson. The couple would have two children, John Jr. and Nona. John Bertrand Conlan Jr. went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and become a US congressman from Arizona. Jocko and Ruth’s children gave them seven grandchildren.

After Rochester, Jocko spent three years playing for Newark. He hit over .300 all three seasons, reaching a career high .321 in 1927. In 1930 Conlan was traded to Toledo of the American Association, where he played for one season under manager Casey Stengel. His season was cut short by an injury he suffered while sliding into third on a triple. Conlan stayed in the game and scored on a sacrifice fly. It was only then that it was discovered that he had a broken ankle. Jocko finished his minor-league playing career in 1931 and ’32 with Montreal of the IL.

In 1934 Jocko finally got his chance in the big leagues. He sat out the 1933 season (he worked as a Chicago playground instructor), but got back in the game when the injury-depleted White Sox signed him as a reserve outfielder in midseason. While growing up just blocks from what became Comiskey Park, it was always his dream to play for the Sox. On July 6, 1934, the 34-year-old rookie made his major-league debut, against the Cleveland Indians at League Park. The last-place White Sox (25-49) toppled the Indians (37-35), 7-5. Jocko led off and played right field, going 1-for-5 with an RBI against Ralph Winegarner. In all, Conlan played in 63 games, 53 of them as a starter. Although his first start was as a right fielder, he worked only three games in right and started 49 games in center. Among his teammates were Luke Appling, Al Simmons, and Jimmy Dykes, who was also the manager. On September 16 in the second game of a doubleheader, Jocko had four hits in a 12-10 win against the Red Sox at Comiskey Park. Lefty Grove pitched the final 3⅔ innings in relief and took the loss. He also had three other games in which he stroked three hits. For the season, Jocko batted .249 in 225 at-bats.

Conlan was back for the 1935 season and although he played in more games, he came to the plate nearly 100 times fewer. He was deployed as a pinch-hitter 28 times and twice as a pinch-runner. He started 30 games in the outfield and batted .286 in 140 at-bats. His greatest day as a player came on August 20, 1935, at Comiskey Park against the Philadelphia Athletics. In the first game of a doubleheader, Conlan played right field and batted seventh. He went 4-for-4 with a double and two stolen bases (including a steal of home) in a 13-4 White Sox win. For an encore he went 3-for-4 with three RBIs and a double in the nightcap to lead the White Sox to a sweep. He had one more shining moment near the end of the season. On August 26 he had three hits off Lefty Gomez of the Yankees in the first game of a doubleheader. Jocko threw and batted left-handed and was very much a platoon player. In his 82 career starts, only five came against left-handed starting pitchers.

Perhaps Conlan’s most significant on-field performance came when he wasn’t in the lineup. On July 28 in St. Louis, the White Sox were playing a doubleheader against the Browns. The heat was stifling – 114 degrees by some accounts. Jocko was on the bench nursing a thumb injury he had suffered while wrestling with his best friend on the team, Ted Lyons. Of course, manager Jimmy Dykes thought that Jocko hurt his thumb diving for a ball in practice. The sore thumb may have been the start to a Hall of Fame career.

Red Ormsby was the home-plate umpire and Harry Geisel was on the bases in a two-man crew. Ormsby was overcome by the heat and had to be carried from the field. He was unable to answer the bell for the second game, and Conlan volunteered to take Ormsby’s place on the bases. “I’ll umpire,” said Conlan. “I can’t play anyway.”7 By custom and rule, players could be enlisted to umpire when one of the crew had to leave the game. Both Dykes and Browns skipper Rogers Hornsby agreed to let Conlan take a spot on the bases. Geisel went behind the plate, Ollie Bejma, a reserve infielder for the Browns, was at first base and Jocko was stationed at third. (It might be added that Jocko umpired in his White Sox uniform that game.) While the Browns were hopelessly mired in last place, the Chisox were in third place just 5½ games out of the lead, so it was an important game. The Browns beat the White Sox, 4-3. The next day, while Ormsby recovered, Jocko once again umpired at third base with Harry Geisel behind the plate and Grover Hartley, a Browns coach, at first. The White Sox won 7-2 in spite of a triple play pulled off by the Browns. The league paid Conlan $50 for his first foray into the umpiring profession.

As a player, Jocko earned $3,000 in 1934 and $3,600 in 1935. In November he drew his release from the White Sox but along with it came a surprise offer. Perhaps inspired by Conlan’s two-day umpiring stint, White Sox general manager Harry Grabiner suggested to him that since his career was winding down, maybe he should think about becoming an umpire. Jocko had never really considered being an umpire. He thought he would always be a player and then a manager. Grabiner explained that umpires, unlike players at the time, could earn a pension if they stuck with the job for a number of years. Major-league umpires at the time earned a pension of $100 a year for each year of service. “That means if you stay 18 seasons, you’d retire on $1,800 a year,” explained Grabiner.8 That meant an income of $150 a month. That sounded good to Jocko and he decided to give it a try.

Grabiner helped set up a meeting with American League President Will Harridge to talk about the job. Conlan thought he was going to get an umpiring job in the American League so he was surprised when Harridge explained that he would have to get some experience in the minors first. Taking on former big-league pitcher Firpo Marberry, who had no umpiring experience, had burned the league before. “[H]e looked great – on the bases. But when he went behind the plate he was nothing,” said Conlan.9  “We won’t take an umpire on again unless he has experience,” Harridge told Conlan. “You’ll have to go to the minor leagues for that, Jocko.”10 

After a couple of days Conlan accepted the offer and in 1936 he started the season as an umpire in the New York-Penn League at a salary of $300 per month – $225 paid by the minor league and $75 paid by the American League. Jocko was married with two children and making $1,500 a season.

Conlan’s minor-league journey lasted five years. He umpired in the New York-Pennsylvania League in 1936-37 and the American Association in 1938 through ’40. Along the journey he thought that he would become an American League umpire, but it didn’t work out that way.

After just one year as an umpire, Jocko got an offer from the Chicago Cubs to manage in the minor leagues. Clarence “Pants” Rowland, then a Cubs scout, encouraged him to give up umpiring and take a job with the Cubs managing their Southern Association team in Birmingham. Jocko turned down the offer to continue umpiring.

Tommy Connolly, the supervisor of umpires for the American League, came to Columbus, Ohio, to watch Jocko and his partner, Ernie Stewart, work. As Conlan and his supervisor walked to the train station after the game, Connolly told Jocko that he was a “finished performer.”11  It wasn’t long after that Conlan found out what Connolly had meant by “finished.” That winter Stewart and Texas League umpire Art Passarella received American League assignments for the 1941 season. Jocko was disappointed that he had been passed over.

On December 5, 1940, the day before his birthday, Jocko’s fortunes changed. At about midnight a phone call from an old connection changed everything. Pants Rowland was on the phone with an unexpected invitation. “Ford Frick (National League president) wants to see you in the Palmer House at one o’clock tomorrow,” Rowland told him.12  At their meeting, Frick offered Conlan a job as a National League umpire. The next day at the hotel where the winter meetings were going on, Conlan ran into Connolly. Without breathing a word of his job offer from the National League, Jocko asked why he didn’t get promoted to the American League. “I’m sorry, Jocko,” Connolly said. “The American League thinks you’re just a bit too short for an umpire.”13  Of course this seemed hypocritical to Conlan, who at 5-feet-7½-inches was a half-inch taller than Connolly. Jocko never forgave Connolly. Conlan considered Bill Klem, the National League umpire supervisor, to be his mentor.

So it was that Jocko became a National League umpire in 1941. It was the beginning of a 25-year big-league umpiring career. During this time he umpired in five World Series: 1945, 1950, 1954, 1957, and 1961; six All-Star Games: 1943, 1947, 1950, 1953, 1958, and 1962 (second game); and four National League playoffs: 1946, 1951, 1959, and 1962.

Unlike Klem, who claimed to never have made a wrong decision, Conlan said that he just never “admitted” making one. “If you know in your heart that you called one wrong, you just try to call the next one right. Never ‘even up.’ That just makes two wrong decisions,” said Conlan.14

Conlan soon became one of the most recognizable figures on the diamond. In addition to the diminutive figure he cut on the diamond, his polka-dot bow tie was instantly recognizable. Later in his career you could always tell when Jocko was behind the plate because he was the last National League umpire who was permitted to use the big balloon chest protector after all others had switched to the smaller, under-the-shirt model. This was more due to need rather than style. He twice suffered from broken collarbones and was granted permission to continue using the larger chest protector.

In addition to his appearance, Conlan’s mechanics set him apart from other umpires. Wrote Oscar Ruhl in The Sporting News: “Jocko Conlan has what is perhaps the most picturesque and distinctive gesture in calling a strike, clenching his fist and throwing it up and back like an engineer pulling the throttle.”15  Southpaw Conlan was also noted for making his strike calls with his left hand.  

Many fans may remember Conlan for his career-long feud with Dodgers and Giants manager Leo Durocher. The conflict reached a boiling point in April of 1961 when Durocher, by this time a Dodgers coach, got into a shin-kicking match with Conlan. Durocher had been out of baseball for five years and claimed that he had been blackballed. When Leo returned, he and Conlan picked up right where they had left off. The Pittsburgh Pirates were visiting Los Angeles. In the fourth inning, Norm Larker hit a popup and Pirates catcher Hal Smith couldn’t quite get to the ball as it dropped in fair territory about three yards down the first base line. The ball then bounced foul without being touched. Larker ran all the way to second base and Conlan correctly called a foul ball. The Dodgers argued that Smith had touched the ball before it went foul. The field was cleared, order restored and Dodgers manager Walter Alston returned to the dugout. Conlan then walked over and threw Durocher out of the game, claiming he had thrown a towel onto the field, which Leo denied. Leo came out onto the field and a kicking match ensued. Conlan described the incident by saying, “I got kicked twice, and so did he.”16  Jocko was wearing shin guards, so Leo took the worst of the exchange.

In a 1954 interview, Conlan said, “You’ve got to have a thick skin and a strong heart. You’ve got to have and command respect. Without them, you’re nothing.”17

Their well-known dislike for each other went back many years. Durocher was fond of bringing celebrities to games and allowing them in the dugouts during pregame activates. Jocko was a by-the-book umpire and would not allow these celebs to stay once the game was to begin. One day in Brooklyn, Durocher had invited entertainer Danny Kaye to the game and asked Jocko if he could stay there for the game. Conlan, of course told him no. In 1962, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, Kaye recorded the song “D-O-D-G-E-R-S (Oh Really? No, O’Malley).” The song described a fictional game between the Giants and Dodgers. Jocko and Leo were both prominently featured. Of course the Dodgers won the game but not without some controversy involving Jocko and Leo.18

Conlan called Durocher “king of the complainers, troublemakers, arguers, and moaners.”19  In spite of their personal dislike for one another, there was respect. “As little as I think of Durocher, there is no question in my mind but that he always was a first-class manager,” said Conlan. “If only he had behaved better, he would have gone down in baseball history as one of the great managers of all time.”20

After Conlan’s death, Durocher was generous in his remarks: “We had our battles on the field but we were good friends off the field. That’s where it counts. He was a fine umpire and a fine man.”21

Conlan traveled the world giving umpiring clinics in Europe and working exhibition games in Japan. Perhaps the trip he enjoyed the most was the one he took with the Dodgers in 1956. Games were played on Wake Island and in Hawaii and Tokyo. He enjoyed many of his relationships with the Dodgers including Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, and Duke Snider. One Dodger whom he never got along with well was Jackie Robinson. “I had a couple of run-ins with Jackie Robinson on that Japan trip, which is nothing new for Robinson and me,” explained Conlan. “He was the most difficult ballplayer I ever had to deal with as an umpire. … Jackie was one of those players who could never accept a decision.”22

By 1963 Jocko had developed a painful bone spur on his heel. He announced that 1964 would be his last season. After the season, Conlan began a restless retirement at his Scottsdale, Arizona, home. “You think you’ve been an important figure in the game over the years, and all of a sudden you’re out of it. You’re not important. You’re not even a part of it any more,” lamented Conlan.23  So it came as a welcome call when National League President Warren Giles reached out to offer Jocko an encore of sorts in 1965. Giles let Jocko know that umpire Tom Gorman was sick and would be out for a couple of weeks. He asked if Jocko would be interested in filling in. Conlan jumped at the chance and those extra two weeks let Jocko leave on his own terms.

In retirement Conlan enjoyed playing golf, attending Cactus League spring training and observing umpires in the Arizona Instructional League. In 1974 he became the fourth umpire elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. One of the hallmarks of Conlan’s career was to show respect and never curse. He described his philosophy to sportswriter Ed Prell. “I never cursed a ballplayer,” said Conlan. “If a player cursed me, he was out. I never retaliated with profanity because that would make me equally guilty. When an umpire walks onto the field, he must have respect and it must be continued throughout the game.”24

Just three months after his induction into the Hall of Fame, Conlan was in Los Angeles for the World Series. During the first game, he suffered a coronary occlusion and was taken to the hospital. As soon as he was well enough to travel, he was transferred to a hospital in Scottsdale, where he underwent open-heart surgery. Although he made a near full recovery, his activity slowed over the rest of his life. Jocko died on April 16, 1989, and is interred not far from Scottsdale Stadium at Green Acres Cemetery. Conlan served briefly in the US Navy during World War I. Though he doesn’t even mention his service in his autobiography, it was deemed important enough that it was engraved on his gravestone. It reads “John Jocko Conlan,” provides his birth and death dates, has a cross, and the inscription, “US Navy World War I.” He is the only baseball Hall of Famer buried in Arizona. His wife, Ruth, died five years later.

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Paul MacFarlane, Daguerrotypes of Great Stars of Baseball (St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1971.) 

2 Jocko Conlan and Robert W. Creamer, Jocko (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967, 1997), 26.

3 Jocko, 25.

4 Jocko, 27.

5 Jocko, 32.

6 Jocko, 45.

7 Jocko, 17.

8 Jocko, 19.

9 Jocko, 20.

10 Ibid.

11 Jocko, 98.

12 Jocko, 100.

13 Jocko, 101.

14 Robert Cromie, “The Umpire Is Not Always Right,” Chicago Tribune, February 27, 1955: 23.

15 Oscar Ruhl, “Scoreboard Magician Beats Umps to Punch,” The Sporting News, March 3, 1948: 8.

16 Charles Maher, Associated Press, “Leo and Umpire Get Kick Out of Baseball,” Washington Evening Star, April 17, 1961: A17.

17 Saul Pett, Associated Press, “Tale of Man Behind Mask – an Umpire,” Boston American, September 19, 1954: 43.

18 baseball-almanac.com/poetry/dodgers.shtml.

19 The Sporting News Baseball Guide 1990, 300.

20 Jocko, 234.

21 Associated Press, “Famed Umpire Conlan Is Dead,” Mobile Register, April 17, 1989: 3D.

22 Jocko, 151.

23 Jocko, 232.

24 Ed Prell, “Jocko, in Finest Hours, Lauds Giles and Klem,” The Sporting News, February 16, 1974: 46.

Born in Manchester, England, on December 31, 1870, Thomas Henry Connolly immigrated to the United States in 1885. His father was a stonemason and the entire family, except one son who preceded them, came to the US aboard the Canard Liner Servia.1 They settled in Natick, Massachusetts, where his father became a salesman for Catholic church supplies and provided the family with a comfortable living.

Like most young Englishmen, including the famous sportswriter Henry Chadwick, Connolly played cricket while in Great Britain, but had never seen a baseball game before coming to America. In Natick he became batboy for a local team and developed an interest in studying the rules of baseball, reportedly from reading editions of Sporting Life. Unlike many early umpires who took up the profession once their playing days were over, Connolly never played any organized baseball. He turned his interest in baseball and fascination with the rules into a career. His interest in the rules and the knowledge he developed naturally, leading him to a successful umpiring career, both on and off the field. During the early 1890s Connolly umpired for the YMCA Club of Natick. His professional career began in 1894 in the New England League. Umpiring ability aside, ethnic solidarity was a crucial consideration and it was National League umpire Tim Hurst, also of Irish Catholic heritage, who recommended Connolly for his first professional assignment.

Connolly remained in the New England League until 1898, when he joined Hurst in the National League. Umpiring in the major leagues as much an ordeal as it was a job, because of player behavior and the lack of authority. Connolly resigned midway through the 1900 season after multiple disagreements with National League President Nicholas Young, who failed to support some of his on-field rulings. By the end of the year Connolly was officiating in the New York State League.

Fortunately for Connolly’s umpiring career and for Organized Baseball itself, the new American League claimed major-league status. League President Ban Johnson promised umpires he hired that they would receive full support from the league office, and he opposed “rowdyism,” a policy that suited Connolly. Though he had never seen Connolly umpire, Connie Mack, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics and himself an Irish Catholic, recommended that Johnson hire Connolly for the inaugural 1901 season. That began a half-century-plus of service with the junior circuit. Simply put, Tommy Connolly was one of the greatest umpires to ever take the field.

His hiring by Harridge came at a time when nearly every team in the league was unhappy with the quality of umpiring. To address the issue, Connolly instituted many reforms, including scouting the minor leagues for umpiring talent. When a prospect was identified, Connolly would often do the evaluation personally. His career was intertwined with Bill Klem’s; the two men deserve credit for much of the changed status of umpires and umpiring in the major leagues. Most importantly, Connolly created an American League style of umpiring, which resulted in a heated rivalry with his National League counterpart Klem. Most notably, Connolly favored persuasive diplomacy in dealing with controversies and used the outside, “balloon” chest protector, while Klem was an authoritarian presence who insisted on the inside protector.

Because he worked in the league’s first season, it is easy to note Connolly’s career as one of firsts. It is an impressive list, especially when it is understood that his on-field performance justified many of the firsts. Connolly umpired the first American League game when Chicago hosted Cleveland. He later umpired inaugural games at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Fenway Park in Boston, and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. He and Hank O’Day were selected to officiate in the first modern World Series, in 1903. Connolly subsequently umpired in seven other fall classics. He umpired in the American League until June 1931, when he retired as a field umpire and was named American League umpire in chief by league President Will Harridge. He served in that post until he retired in January 1954.

He was behind the plate for four no-hitters, including the perfect game pitched by Cleveland’s Addie Joss on October 2, 1908, in which Joss outpitched the Chicago White Sox’ Big Ed Walsh in a 1-0 victory.

Connolly’s baseball career spanned the time from when umpires worked games alone all the way to the modern four-man crews. It also spanned the time from when the profession was not highly regarded to the one that requires formal training and years of on-the-job experience.

Connolly described working alone as not being fun. He was mobbed many times. “Some umpires in those days didn’t dare put the home boys out and I noticed they weren’t around very long,” he said. “They were what we called ‘homers’ and they had short careers.”2

A smallish, slim man (he is reported as 5-feet-7, 170 pounds), Connolly always dressed formally with stiff collars with a tie split by a jeweled stickpin. When asked about his preference for formal dress, Connolly said he dressed carefully because he was representing an important phase of American life. Though not physically imposing, Connolly was able to garner the respect of players by his knowledge of the rules, fairness, and a firm manner. Devoutly religious, he attended Catholic Mass every morning, even during the baseball season.

During the Deadball Era, many umpires made their mark by ejecting players, coaches, managers, and sometimes fans. The primary reason for this was that they were working alone and had to do anything to keep control. In his first year, Connolly tossed 10 players but as he gained experience and respect he seldom had to resort to the thumb. Many accounts of his career note that he umpired 10 years without resorting to an ejection. Ty Cobb respected Connolly and once said, “You can go just so far with Tommy. Once you see his neck get red it’s time to lay off.”3

From 1901 to 1907, Connolly primarily worked games alone and preferred to do so until the time came when the league hired enough umpires to allow for two-man, and later three-man crews. As an umpire supervisor, Connolly was skeptical over the need for a fourth ump, saying three were enough; “…(J)ust perfect…” is how he put it. But the league office won that one.

Despite his preference, Connolly admitted later in his life that solo umpires had their hands full and often could not be in position to make a call. In describing play during the early Deadball days, Connolly said players took advantage of the single-umpire system by leaving base early on fly balls, cutting the second- or third-base corner to gain an edge, tripping base runners, and doing whatever else was required to gain an advantage.

Connolly noted that these tactics almost always caused altercations. He summed up: “An umpire just couldn’t cover every base and everything that happened no matter how alert he was or how hard he tried. But we did the best we could. I have no regrets.”4

Another view of Connolly came from the authors of Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia: “(H)e … believed in the quiet, dignified approach to umpiring, consciously forgoing grandstanding and controversy.”5 Another way of putting it was in Connolly’s off-putting way of describing the umpire. “It may surprise you, but no one ever paid in to a ball park just to watch an umpire.”6

Connolly always stood against rowdyism, and received strong backing from Ban Johnson. In Baltimore in 1901, Joe McGinnity spat tobacco juice in Connolly’s face. Johnson, coming to the umpire’s defense, suspended McGinnity for 12 games.7 Baltimore manager John McGraw, who had long been unhappy with Johnson’s unwavering support of his umpires, eventually left the American League and became manager of the New York Giants the next season.

When he worked alone, Connolly would stay behind the plate when first base was open. With a runner on first, he would move to the back of the pitcher’s mound. But unlike other Deadball Era umpires, Connolly would move back to the plate with a runner on second. Connolly reasoned he would be in better position to see a play at third and of course would then have the plate covered.

On the field Connolly was methodical and far from colorful. He would tell anyone who listened that no one ever bought a ticket to see an umpire. He once tossed Babe Ruth during the Bambino’s early days with Boston. During those days Ruth would often visit with Connolly during the offseason. Anyone familiar with Ruth knows he could not or would not remember a person’s name and almost always referred to people as ‘Kid.’ But that did not apply to Connolly. The Babe would often greet him with “Hi yah, Tommy, you old son of a gun. Remember that day you tossed me?”8

While having a reputation as an excellent mentor for younger umpires, Connolly would also attempt to nurture young players as well. During the debut of a promising rookie who went on to a Hall of Fame career, Tommy called time to talk to the young hurler, who was catching grief from the opposing dugout for the crime of not toeing the mound properly. Going out to the mound, Connolly told the pitcher, “Son, there are right ways and wrong ways to pitch in this league. Let me show you the right way. I’ll take care of that wrecking crew in the dugout and from what you’ve shown me today you’ll be up here a long time.” The rookie pitcher was Gettysburg Eddie Plank, who won over 300 big-league games.9

Another player Connolly encountered was Tris Speaker. In a close play, Speaker blew his top, accusing Connolly of being prejudiced against him and the Indians. Connolly, never raising his voice said, “Tris, you’re out of the game, of course. And if you don’t change your thinking, you’ll be out of baseball.”10

Connolly and the great center fielder did not speak for months, even though Speaker tried to apologize. Later in the season, Speaker wanted Connolly to umpire behind the plate. Connolly agreed. Tris knew that Connolly was the best.11

As an umpire supervisor, Connolly often had to judge talent. Though he was a small man, he preferred umps to have some size. He said a large umpire often makes a good impression on the field and that shorter umpires often have trouble working behind large catchers. He was a stickler on the rules but when asked to list what made a good umpire, he said, “If they’re otherwise all right, what you have to teach them is poise. And another thing I tell ’em is not to have rabbit ears. Never mind that wrecking crew in the dugout. Just go about your job of calling ’em on the field.”12

Former National League President and Commissioner Ford Frick described Connolly this way: “Tommy was a slight quiet little man in an era when most umpires were big, brawny, and boisterous. … He was a religious man too, in an age of violent argument and colorful profanity. … But he had a ready wit and a quiet sense of humor that usually quelled the most serious distractions.”13

Connolly also was a fair judge of playing talent as well. Until his dying day, he would mention two players on his list of all-time greats. He called Walter Johnson the greatest pitcher he had ever seen, and Ty Cobb the best position player because Cobb could “beat you in so many ways.”14

In 1953 Connolly and Klem, the most influential umpires in baseball history, the fathers of their respective league’s umpiring traditions, both of whom were the only ones to have worked in five decades, were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first arbiters enshrined among the game’s immortals. He was unable to attend the induction due to illness.

Connolly married Margaret Gavin in 1902 and they had seven children, four daughters and three sons. After Margaret died in 1943, he lived with two of his daughters. Upon his retirement in 1953, Connolly was awarded a gold pass to major-league games and when his schedule and health permitted was often seen at Fenway Park. He died at the age of 90 on April 28, 1961, in Natick of natural causes.

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

In some ways Augie Donatelli was a typical umpire of the post-World War II era. He was a second-generation, working-class American who successfully used sport as a vehicle for socioeconomic mobility, part of a group of Italian-Americans – Babe Pinelli, Art Passarella, Joe Paparella, Frank Dascoli, Augie Guglielmo, Joe Linsalata, and Alex Salerno – whose presence was conspicuous for the first time in ranks of umpires in the 1940s and 1950s. He was an ex-player who turned to officiating as a way of continuing his involvement with the game. And he was among the numerous war-hardened veterans who dominated college and professional sport after 1945. 

In other ways, Donatelli was atypical. The peculiar circumstances of his family life and experiences as a prisoner of war forged a distinctive personality – forceful, determined, and tough-minded with a strong sense of fairness and camaraderie. As a rapid ascent through the minor leagues suggested, he was a “born” umpire, possessing that unusual combination of skill, judgment, and demeanor that marks the truly exemplary umpire.  Most important, as the “founder” of the Major League Umpires Association, Augie Donatelli is one of the few men in blue to make historically important contributions to the umpiring profession as well as major-league baseball. 

The following “oral autobiography” is a composite excerpt of an extended personal interview with Donatelli. It originally was to be included in the book The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires (1980), but was withheld because of his consternation that a contemporary National League arbiter would be included in the book. The interview is offered at this time for two reasons: l) Donatelli’s “story” should be a matter of record because of his demonstrable importance in baseball and umpiring history, and 2) it is an unusually comprehensive personal exegesis from an intensely private man who, like most umpires, had not sought the “limelight” and thus had not had his views widely recorded.

Although the material has been reorganized to present a coherent “life story” and the repetitious and incomplete statements characteristic of oral communication have been eliminated, I have tried scrupulously to preserve Donatelli’s language and modes of expression in order to convey accurately a sense of the man as well as his remembrances. Excluded are his comments about memorable players, managers, and games, as they conform in all essentials to what has been said ad nauseam on those subjects. We have ample testimony, for example, that Jackie Robinson was “a terrific basestealer and a great hitter.” What is emphasized here is unique information pertaining to Donatelli’s personal life, his umpiring career, his thoughts on the art of umpiring, and his role in organizing the umpires union.

Augie Donatelli:

I spent most of my life in coal mining towns of Cambria County in western Pennsylvania. I was born in the small town of Heilwood on August 22, l914. When I was about two months old, my family moved over to Bakerton, where I grew up, went to high school, and joined the service during World War II. After I got married, my wife, Mary Lou, and I moved to Ebensburg, the county seat, where we raised our four children, two girls and two boys. I lived in Ebensburg even after I got to the majors, and for 16 years worked during the offseason as a good-will representative for National Distilleries (even though I never drank whiskey). We moved to Florida a few years before I retired in 1973.

My parents were from Italy. They immigrated over here around l900, and my father, Tony, went to work in the coal mines. There were eight children in our family; I was number five. The oldest and youngest were girls; the rest boys. All the boys worked in the mines. It was dangerous and hard work, but what else were you going to do? I started even before graduating from high school. Times were tough then because of the Depression. Jobs were scarce, so I was glad to have the work. I did everything – worked outside as a coal dumper and inside as a loader and a spragger.¹

Sports was our main recreation. Two of my brothers were pretty good boxers, one was a Golden Gloves champ and the other had about 50 professional fights. I played football and basketball and ran track in high school. There was no baseball team, but we played pickup games and after graduation I played in an industrial league while working in the mines. I was a decent, scrappy shortstop, so decided to give pro baseball a try. My father was very encouraging as a way of getting out of the mines. Tom Monaghan, the famous scout, signed me with the St. Louis Browns. I started out in the local Penn State League [Class D Pennsylvania Association], but it folded financially. Then I played in the Kitty League [Class D Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee], and was sent back to the Penn State League with Beaver Falls. I only played l4 games [batting .266] when the league folded again in l938, so I went back to the mines.

I was loading coal when World War II broke out. Being single, I figured I was near to being drafted, so I enlisted in the Air Force. Like a lot of young guys, I felt it was something I had to do, not to escape the mines but because you just felt it was up to you to get into it. My basic training was at Lowry Field near Denver, Colorado. When they found out I was a ballplayer, they offered me the rank of staff sergeant if I would play for the base team. So I played ball while going to armor and gunnery school. I went into combat in October 1943 and flew l8 missions as a tail gunner on a B-l7 before getting shot down. I’ll never forget it. We were shot down before the [June 6, 1944, D-Day] invasion, on the first daylight bomber raid on Berlin [March 6, 1944]. It was a rough mission – fighters diving at us, 20-millimeter shells exploding all around. We flew into the clouds to hide. What action! That day 68 bombers were shot down. We got hit, so the crew bailed out. I got captured and taken to Frankfurt. I spent about 15 months in prison camps. We changed camps three times; the Germans kept moving us around so the Russians couldn’t liberate us.

Early in the winter we marched from Frankfurt to the first camp, Heydekrug, about 40 miles south of Memel, Lithuania. It was no picnic. Sixty men to a barracks, 10 men to a table. No food, no clothes, cold in the winter, and wait, wait, wait. Being a noncom[missioned officer], I didn’t have to work. You just sat around and waited for the next meal – if you got it. We were supposed to get a slice of bread a day; sometimes we would, sometimes we wouldn’t. There was no coffee, just something black like coffee made of boiled weeds of some kind. Occasionally we would get some soup with wheat and whatever vegetables the Germans could find. Turnips mostly; lots of diced turnips.  Potatoes occasionally. Horsemeat if they had it. We’d fill a bucket with water, toss in the vegetables, cook it for a while, and had a water bucket of soup. It was pretty bad, but, what the hell, you ate it to keep from starving. The Germans couldn’t give us much because they didn’t have anything themselves. After about six months, we started getting Red Cross parcels once a week. There was supposed to be one parcel per man, but there was never enough so we shared – one package for four men. We got cigarettes, but that’s when I quit smoking. I’d trade my cigarettes for food. Cliff Barker, who was later an All-American basketball player at the University of Kentucky, was in our group. He smoked, and would trade me bread for my cigarettes. He still owes me about half a loaf.

Believe it or not, I started umpiring in the prison camp at Heydekrug. When I bailed out, I broke a bone in my ankle and couldn’t do anything for a time. The guys played softball for recreation. There were lots of English POWs in the camp; some of them had been there for three years. They had a few softballs and bats, but almost no other equipment.  Each of the barracks had a team, so there were games going on all the time. I would sit on the sidelines and watch the games – good gosh, what unbelievable rhubarbs they had over rules and judgment calls. They couldn’t find any good umpires. Some of the guys found out that I had played ball and asked me if I had ever umpired. I had never umpired before and it didn’t strike me that I should umpire. But I wanted to see that the games were run right and by the rules, so I started umpiring and was put on the rules committee. When you are behind the plate, they find out if you could really umpire. I must have done okay, because pretty soon the whole compound was coming after me. There was no way I could get out of it, so I umpired one game after another.

Toward late summer my leg started healing, and I wanted to get out there and play. The guys in my barracks wanted to win the championship, so they decided we needed a manager. I took over as manager, held tryouts, and let the best guys play. There was some dissension over that, but I told them that’s what we had to do to win. Barker pitched and played first base, and we won the championship. About two days after we won the championship, the Russians started a major offensive [September 1944] and the Germans started marching us again. Those who couldn’t walk, the sick and wounded, were loaded into boxcars.

They took us to Stettin, a port on the North Sea, and crammed us into the hold of a ship for two days. There must have been 2,500 of us in there – hot as hell, no water, no toilet. You had to go on deck to take a leak, but no way you could have a bowel movement. When they took us off the ship, they chained two guys together at the wrists, and ran us about three miles to a place called Griefenhagen. As we went through this little town, the guards were hitting us with bayonets, the people were chasing us, the dogs were barking and chasing us – what a mess that was. After a few months, they started walking us again, this time to Neubrandenburg, north of Berlin.

On the march to Neubrandenburg, another prisoner and I escaped. It was his idea. He said it would be easy to sneak away, and it was. On the march we were herded into barns every night. The guards couldn’t take a count of prisoners because we were all split up, and guys were always going in and out of the barns because there was so much dysentery. It got dark real early, so about 6:30 one night we knocked on the barn door, went outside acting like we were going to the latrine, and took off into the woods. We were so afraid of being caught, we kept running almost all night. The next morning we were tired and cold, so we dug about 6-8 feet into a frozen haystack and tried to sleep. We slept for a while, but it was so cold in there that we had to crawl out and start walking again. We headed east, hoping to run into the Russians. They had started an offensive all right, but had been stopped by the Germans.

We survived for about l0 days before being recaptured. Most of the farms in the area were worked by Polish or Russian labor and my partner, who was Polish, could speak both languages. We would approach people working on the outskirts of the farm and find out if they were being guarded or not. At one farm, two of the Polish laborers were ex-soldiers, so they let us sleep in the barn and fed us. One day we went down to where the people were working in the field, we ran into the overseer. No one told us that he would be there; it was an unpleasant surprise. He immediately recognized us as air corpsmen because of our clothes, so he pulled a gun, and took us to his home. He put us into the cellar, which was made into a jail, and called the Germans. Three or four hours later two guards picked us up and started hiking us toward Neubrandenburg.

Neubrandenburg was a huge camp with maybe 15,000 prisoners of all the nationalities in the war. The war was coming to an end, and the Germans were rounding up prisoners from all over. Only privates, not officers, were supposed to work, but my penalty for escaping was to work for a week cutting timber for fortifications, digging trenches and burial pits, and stuff like that. The burial pits were for the Russians, who didn’t get a military burial like the Allies under the Geneva Convention; they were just dumped into the pit. After about three months, the Russians liberated us [April 1945].

When I got back home, I thought about umpiring. I was 29 years old and knew the chance of making it as a player was gone. I didn’t want to go back to the mines, so I thought maybe if I was lucky I could make it to the Big Time as an umpire. I talked with Elmer Daily, the president of the Penn State League about it, and he recommended that I go to the Bill McGowan Umpire School in Cocoa Beach, Florida. My family encouraged me. You had to do something to get out of the mines, so away I went.

I went down to McGowan’s that winter on the GI Bill.  It was the only umpire school at that time, and there were maybe l00 guys at the school – big guys and small guys, young guys and old guys.² Most of them were umpires and four or five already had professional contracts. During the day we umpired games to learn proper mechanics and apply the rules.  At night we had “skull” classes where McGowan would give us some pointers and tell us about umpiring in the majors. You worshipped a guy like that who was in the majors.

I never thought I would get a job, but I got a lucky break. After about four weeks, during one of the camp games, I handled the call on a steal at second base. Al Somers, a professional umpire who was the only instructor at the school, happened to see the play and immediately went to McGowan and said, “I think the little Italian kid is a prospect. Keep your eye on him.” (I found this out later.) 

The next day McGowan came out to watch to students, and it was my turn on the field again. That night during class McGowan called Al over and said, “Hey, what’s that guy’s name?”  Al didn’t know my name, so he points and says, “That’s him back there.” We were all looking around because we didn’t know who in the hell he’s pointing to. So McGowan says: “I have something I have to tell you. We have a fellow in here that is going to be in the major leagues in four years.” We were all wondering, “Who in the hell is this?”  McGowan kept on with his little speech: “I watched him out there and he’s doing a hell of a job. He is the most outstanding student we have.” And then he points at me. I thought, “Jesus, he doesn’t mean me.” I looked around behind me. He said, “No, no. You. You!” I couldn’t believe it: “Me?” “That’s right, you. You’ve got it kid. We feel that you will be in the majors in four years.” I couldn’t sleep that night. Here I was, just out of the service, at loose ends, going to umpire school on the GI Bill just hoping to get a job, and the man says I can be a major leaguer someday. It was one of my biggest thrills in baseball, I’ll tell you!

So I came out of the school pretty highly rated. My first contract, 1946, was with the Pioneer League [Class C] for $150 a month and no expenses. A fellow from Pittsburgh, Pete Donett, and myself were teamed up as partners. We didn’t have a car, so we rode the buses on those long trips through Idaho and Utah – Boise, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, Ogden, Salt Lake City. It was pretty rough in the low minors – all kinds of rhubarbs, guys coming down to the edge of the screen and yelling and challenging you to fight them, police escorts to get you out of the ballpark, things like that. When I got back home, the family didn’t know what kind of a year I had. I told them, “When you’re umpiring, you’re lucky if you last a season. They fire you.”

In January I went back to the school. I couldn’t believe it, but McGowan made me an instructor. The minor leagues were booming after the war, and lots of veterans on the GI Bill started showing up at the school. McGowan had to form two classes of about five weeks each; there must have been 300 men in both classes. After a few years it started to slack off. The boys thought it would be easy to get to the majors, but a lot of them got fired and a lot of them quit because it was hard work and no money in the minors.

In 1947, my second year, I was promoted to the Sally League [the South Atlantic League, Class A], with a raise to $300 a month plus $6 or $7 a day for expenses. In midseason the National League bought my contract for $2,000 and farmed me [August 15, 1947] to the International League [Triple A]. Now I’m getting $600 a month – $350 salary and $250 expenses. There was better organization and more police protection in (Triple A), and the rhubarbs weren’t as bad as in the low minors. But you didn’t have any smooth sailing, that’s for sure. It is very difficult in the minors because there are only two umpires. On the other hand, there is no better place than the minors to be scouted because there are only two umpires. Class will quickly show, no question about it.

In my case, I was told that Branch Rickey was at a game one night when I was behind the plate and that he recommended somebody come down to see me. Bingo!  Bill Klem got a hold of me. He saw me work a game and afterward called me into his office. “Look,” he said, “you use the inside protector.”³ I had been using the outside protector, but said, “All right. I can do that.” And I did. I was in the International League for two years. I was supposed to go up the second year, but Ford Frick [president of the National League] called me into his office and told me they were bringing up Lon Warneke, the great pitcher, instead of me. But, he said, I would get the starting major-league salary of $5,000. When I hit the majors in 1950 – four years, just like McGowan said – I got a salary of $5,500 plus $15 a day expenses and free transportation. That was big money then.

I broke in at the Polo Grounds with the Giants and the [Boston] Braves. Leo Durocher and Billy Southworth. My first game behind the plate was in Brooklyn: Giants and the Dodgers. It was a hell of a thrill being in the major leagues. I was hoping and praying that I’d get everything right, give all the ability that I could put together. My first crew was Al Barlick and Lee Ballanfant. There were three-man crews in the major leagues at the time, but in a few years they went to four umpires. It was difficult to cover plays even with three men. Hellsfire, if you couldn’t move, man, you had problems. I worked with Barlick off and on for six, seven years, then worked with Jocko Conlan, and then I became a crew chief myself in 1962.

I was the first guy to come into the National League from an umpire school, and the older guys took me a little lightly at first, but there was no animosity at all.⁴ When they found out that you are a decent guy and that you intended to run the game, they worked with you. They had to. After all, there are three of you out there, and if one of you is in trouble, the three of you are in trouble. Barlick and Ballanfant were real good in helping me break in. Ballanfant was the best for breaking in young fellows because he was such a nice guy – you had to like him and feel welcome on the crew. They gave me pointers, discussed the rules, and helped with mechanics a little bit. I’d also learn just by watching them. Sometimes I followed their advice and examples, sometimes I’d decide to do it another way. Actually, being at the school was an advantage. You were ahead of the other fellows because you were alert on all the rules. Most umpires would read the rule book once or twice and then put it away. But when you are at the school for six weeks, you learned the rules and then applied them on the field so that they would stay with you.  Umpiring is not a matter of quoting a rule, but applying it on the field.

The best umpires I worked with were Al Barlick, Larry Goetz, and Jocko Conlan. They had what it takes to be a good umpire. First, they had the respect of the ballplayers, which is very important. They could make calls and get away with it, when another guy would get hell for the same thing. They were feared, in a way; players knew they were running the game and would toss them if they got too nasty. The more ability you had and the meaner you were, the more respect you got on the field. Also, they had very good judgment – about l-2-3 in that respect. (I never understood how ballplayers, fans, or anyone else could question my judgment. All they had to do is look at my wife, Mary Lou, and they’d know I didn’t make mistakes.) Other umpires might have judgment just as good, but didn’t run the game or – I don’t like to admit it – worked the political end of it. You must have respect and run the game; if you don’t, when the time comes the ballplayers will cut you to pieces.

The worst situation I was ever in happened a few years after I got to the majors. I almost got into a fight with Leo Durocher, who was managing the [New York] Giants. It was the first game of a Sunday doubleheader at the Polo Grounds [August l7, l952].  Max Surkont was pitching for the [Boston] Braves. The whole game Durocher was screaming at Al Barlick, who was behind the plate, that Surkont was marking up the ball, spitting in his glove, and stuff like that. (At that time there weren’t too many spitballs being thrown; the rules weren’t relaxed as much as they have been recently.) Barlick ignored him, and Surkont kept getting them out and Durocher kept beefing. Then, in the top of the ninth, with the Braves leading [7-3], Durocher started raising hell. While waiting for his relief pitcher [Hal Gregg] to come in from the bullpen, he knelt right down on the mound, covered the ball with dirt, and started roughing it up. You can’t let a man show up an umpire like that, so I ran right in from second base and asked to see the ball. But he tossed it to the pitcher instead. I said something, he said something, and I chased him. He went berserk, probably because he didn’t expect it. He hadn’t been into an argument with an umpire, yet I chased him. He got so mad that a couple of players and coaches grabbed him to keep him from charging me. I was waiting for him. I wasn’t going to run from him; you can’t be run out of the ballpark. Besides, he wasn’t that strong a guy, a man who couldn’t be beat with fists. I knew a little bit about fighting; maybe he did too. While he was trying to get loose from the players, he was yelling some beautiful names at me. So I yelled some back at him and said, “Let him go. Let the man go.” Fortunately, they didn’t let him go; he actually had to be dragged off the field. That’s the closest I ever came to protecting myself. In my report I told the league president [Warren Giles] what I said to Durocher and what he said to me. Leo got fined [$100] and suspended [five days].

Umpiring is more than applying the rules and handling situations: You must be alert mechanically be in the right position. That’s important: You’ve got to be in the right position to call a tough play. If you’re not in the right position and you guess at it, that is not good and you’ll really catch hell.

There is also a timing element involved here. You’ve got to wait that split-second and then make the call. A split-second. You can’t call it too quick or too slow. You’ll be wrong or look bad if your timing is bad, especially behind the plate where there are so many decisions to make. When I was working, Chris Pelekoudas was one of the best umpires – in the top ten, maybe one of the top five. Some of the boys don’t want to hear that, but it’s so just the same. But he waited too long. He waited so long that sometimes the broadcaster would say a pitch was a “strike” and then he would signal “ball.” It was so noticeable, even the other umpires didn’t like his timing. Still, he seemed to be getting the calls right.

The mechanics in making a call are also important. You have to be decisive, and I always made a simple but very decisive motion. But no gestures, no dancing or jumping around. Toward the end of my career, some of the boys started “showboating.” To me, showboating is out because you start taking your eyes off the ball and thinking more about how you make a particular call than the play itself. For example, Ed Sudol had the mannerisms of an acrobat; there’s no room for it, no time for it. It’s absolutely wrong. I don’t know why he did it. Now take Ron Luciano over in the other [American] league. It appeared that he was showboating, but he was as serious as he could be. He applied a few more gestures on a call, but he was not really showboating. He was that way, so that’s the way he umpired. It was natural; he never took his eye off the play or went into a dance or something like that.

Of course, experience is the big thing. When an umpire gets to the big leagues, he is sure he knows all there is about baseball. But an umpire should improve each year. First, you learn the importance of timing on your calls. Second, you get better at running the game. Third, you can handle the difficult situations more smoothly. Fourth, constant repetition as a pitch-caller or a play-caller automatically improves a man if he keeps hustling. Fifth, you’re supposed to know all the rules – and keep them in your head – but after so many years you really acquire knowledge of the laws of the game. Sixth, with greater experience comes greater execution of the rules.

When I broke into the majors racial integration was still under way. The Dodgers had the most Negroes, with Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Dan Bankhead, but there were other colored boys coming in. There weren’t any real problems with Negroes coming into the majors. Of course, in spring training down South there was still the Negro section of the bleachers and separate restrooms, things like that. What I remember most is how the Negroes would flock to the games to watch the Dodgers. There would be more Negroes than whites. Wherever Jackie Robinson was, boy, how they would draw them. They used to get l0,000 people, easy, in Miami with Robinson.

The biggest thing that happened during my career was the Major League Umpires Association, and I am proud that I helped get it organized. I started out in the majors making a pretty good salary – at least it seemed like it to me, a young guy from the coal mines. But then the cost of things kept getting higher and higher, and we weren’t making a salary you could brag about. Also, some of the boys weren’t getting raises. It wasn’t right: You’ve got to give a major leaguer a raise to keep with the economy. Then of course there wasn’t much of a pension – $l00 for every year in the majors [with l5 years’ minimum service]. Maybe that seemed like a lot of money back when it was started in the 1930s, but didn’t seem like much now. And we didn’t get medical insurance or benefits like that.

Anyway, I started talking to Jocko Conlan about it. I knew that he would be retiring pretty soon. I’d call him aside and tell him that he wasn’t going to have anything after he retired except his home. Jocko was always bragging because he was the highest paid umpire in the league, but I knew he didn’t have much money in the bank because he was a high liver. I told him I was also thinking about myself and the other umpires, too. Several times I said: “Look, Jock. We can do something. You and me, we can do something about this.” I had an ace in the hole – Al Barlick, another boy from the coal mines. Barlick, like Jocko, was well respected. They were the top umpires in the league, so they were the guys I had to go to right away. I knew I couldn’t go to everybody. Some of the boys were afraid of losing their jobs if they spoke up for something, and some of them were, well, liked by the league more than some of the others.

All of a sudden, during the l963 season, Jocko says, “All right. What do you want me to do?” So I told him. He said, “What the hell are you talking about? You can’t do that!” I said, “The hell we can’t. We can do it. We can form an association.” Jocko was interested, but worried. “Half of these guys won’t go along with it,” he said. I told him: “That’s right. We don’t need half of them. All we need is half a dozen.” Then I went to Barlick, who said, “Anything you do is all right with me.” Bingo!

We started with telephone calls to every umpire in the league. Jocko, who was from Chicago, was supposed to get this judge to be our representative, but he retired or something and we couldn’t get him. So Jocko got what he thought was the next best thing, his attorney, John Reynolds. We got the boys together in Chicago on an offday and discussed an association. Barlick, Jocko, Tom Gorman, Shag Crawford, and I were elected to the board of directors. We had two or three meetings in all, and of the 24 umpires in the league, maybe 8 or l0 would go against us in the meetings. I remember every one of them.

The last meeting was in May 1964, another layover day in Chicago. Reynolds did all the legal paperwork for us, and all of a sudden we have to get the guys to sign the papers forming the association. When it got down to the last day, when we wanted to meet with the owners and get them to recognize us as an association, the other guys had gone on to their games and there was only four of us left, Al Barlick’s crew – Barlick, Stan Landes, Mel Steiner, and myself. Reynolds met with us at our hotel at 10:00 in the morning. We were supposed to be at the ballpark at 11:30 for a game. “I’ll tell you, fellows,” he said, “they will fire you if you don’t go along with the president of the league [Warren Giles] because the other fellows are done with it.” I thought about it, and decided that I had gone this far and was going to go the rest of the way. So, I said: “John, I’m speaking for myself. I’m going the rest of the way. If we don’t have an association, I’m going to go right to the first reporters I see and tell them what happened. That’s the only way, because if I get fired, they will want to know why I got fired and I’m going to tell them.” 

I was hoping one or two of the other guys would speak up and do the same thing. Barlick spoke up first: “Augie, I’m with you.” The other two guys came along too. So we told Reynolds, “Go ahead and tell Giles we are standing for our rights. We are going to hold the fort. If the rest don’t do it, the heck with it. Let Giles do whatever he wants.” Then we went on to the ballpark and worked the game. Maybe our last one, who knows? What do you think happened? I don’t know whether the owners called Giles, or Giles was approached by somebody else, or if Giles came to a decision on his own. Anyway, he told our attorney that he would meet with us umpires the following week. The following week we met with him and started not asking for things but demanding things that were right for us. We wanted a better pension, higher salaries, regular raises, fringe benefits, and more expense money. They finally agreed to all those things. That’s how we started the association [National League Umpires Association].⁵

Of course the owners and the league president, Warren Giles, didn’t like it. And Giles certainly was not happy with me for getting the thing going. I had some discussions with him that he didn’t like. He had just given us a raise in pension before the association came together, but I had to tell him the truth, that he wasn’t helping us enough. Maybe he felt he was, but he sure wasn’t generous enough. But let’s face it: Giles had a job to do. He had to protect the league and his job. He was against our organizing and so was his assistant, Fred Fleig. We got a lot of bad publicity in the press. The league wouldn’t talk to us about it; hell, at first Giles wouldn’t even meet with us. But eventually they came around.

I don’t know why Giles didn’t just fire me. He could have. Maybe he respected me in a way. And I never missed a day’s work – that helped a heck of a lot. But I was demoted from crew chief and assigned to Barlick’s crew for the 1964 season. In fact, Giles put the four of us together because he thought we were instigators. I guess he thought he was punishing us, but actually it was the best thing he could have done for us because it kept us together all the time. Maybe he would have been better off putting each one of us on a different crew. 

The American League umpires didn’t form an association at the time, so they fell far behind us in salaries, pensions, and fringe benefits. We wanted them to join the association so major-league umpires would all be the same with regard to salaries and benefits. We promised that we would back them if they wanted to join us, but they were afraid of getting fired.⁶ Their league president, Joe Cronin, had them all tied up. They couldn’t voice their opinion on anything. Finally, two of them, Al Salerno and Bill Valentine, tried to organize the American League umpires and got fired [September 16, 1968] for it.⁷ 

That got the American League boys organized and they joined our association. But then Salerno and Valentine asked us to back them in suing the league. That was their downfall. We did back them, but not enough of us. We had a meeting, and about a quarter or a third of the umpires walked out when Salerno and Valentine started demanding that we should back them. I agreed with them. I got up and made a speech saying the same thing. “Yes,” I said, “they made a grave mistake. Sure they did. But we promised to back them and we have got to back these boys. We ought to have a vote on it.” We had a vote and there only maybe nine or ten of us left – only six or seven in the National League and two or three in the American League stood up for backing them.

Cronin later agreed to hire them back, but he wanted them to go down to the minors for a couple of months to get sharpened up or whatever, and even said they would get their major-league salaries and benefits. But they wouldn’t do it. I know how they felt. After all, it was embarrassing to be fired. Still, umpiring isn’t too bad. I was a coal miner, and I always thought about the mines when things got tough.

Two years later I was involved in the first umpires strike. It was for the same thing – more money. The association was trying to negotiate a raise for the playoffs and the World Series, but the league presidents [Charles “Chub” Feeney and Joe Cronin] wouldn’t see eye-to-eye on that. So we went on strike [October 3, 1970] for the first game of the championship playoffs. I was in Pittsburgh, and instead of working the game I was pounding the cement walks with picket signs.

I wasn’t worried about losing my job that time, but I was worried about the public. After all, the fans pay all of us, even the league presidents and the commissioner. I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the people who went to the park that day to see the game. We got blamed because four minor-league umpires were out there in our place. None of us umpires liked that; none of us wanted to be on strike. The strike only lasted one day. I was on the board of directors of the association, and the next morning we met with Feeney. A few days later, we got our raises. (The minor leaguers thought they would go to the majors because they worked out of turn. One of them [Hank Morgenweck] was brought up, but he didn’t last.)⁸

I had a great career. Twenty-four years. I am proud of the fact that I missed only one game in 24 years. I had lots of thrills, especially All-Star Games and the World Series. You can’t describe the feeling of excitement that pervades a World Series game. Sure, I felt the butterflies and the pressure and the responsibility.  I worked with lots of great ballplayers – Stan Musial, Steve Garvey, Gil Hodges, Willie Mays; pitchers like Warren Spahn, Robin Roberts, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson. I have so many special memories: I was behind the plate [October 8,1961] when Whitey Ford set the record for scoreless innings [32] in the World Series,⁹ when Don Drysdale got the record [June 8, 1968] for the most consecutive shutout innings [58] in a season, when Stan Musial hit five homers in a doubleheader [May 2, 1954], and when he got his 3,000th base hit, and when Nate Colbert hit five homers and had the most RBIs [13] in a doubleheader [August 1, 1972]. I’ll never forget Elroy Face winning about 20 games and losing only three or four [18-1] as a relief pitcher [1959]; even though the Pirates had a lot of power and could come from behind, that was really unusual.

After I umpired my last game, I thought, well, I’m glad to be going home. I had a good career with lots of wonderful memories. But I missed my friends, the profession itself, and baseball – my number-one game. I also missed the competitiveness. And it was hard to lose the money – hey, I was dragging down a pretty good salary when I left. I still think about it every now and then. I hope I’m remembered as a just, fair, honest umpire who called them as they were and as he saw them. And the Association was damn important to me. It went through, and it certainly is helping the boys who are in there now. It helped us a lot too, but it is too bad that we couldn’t have been of the age where we could have enjoyed it more. I wanted to include the old fellows already on pension, but the boys wouldn’t go for it. Today the Umpires Association is very powerful. Now the boys get just about whatever they ask for. But then we were risking our jobs just to get it organized. Things are so much better now – pension, working conditions, everything. And the boys are getting the salary. Even though they have to pay a lot of income tax, they are getting the salary. That’s the important thing, isn’t it?

Augie Donatelli died peacefully in his sleep on May 24, 1990, at St. Petersburg, Florida. He was cremated and is buried at Bay Pines (Florida) National Cemetery.

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Author’s note

“Augie Donatelli: Umpire and Union Organizer” appeared in the long defunct Baseball History: An Annual of Original Baseball Research (1989), 1-11.  

Notes

1 A “spragger” controlled the speed of coal cars in mines by inserting or removing a metal rod called a “sprag” between the spokes of its wheels. Along steep sections of track the speed of the cars was slowed by inserting sprags to “lock” the wheel so that it slid instead of rolled along the track; the subsequent removal of sprags had the effect of speeding up the cars.

2 National League umpire George Barr established the first umpire school, in Arkansas in 1935; American League umpire McGowan opened the second school in 1939 in Mississippi. Barr’s school closed during World War II, while McGowan moved his operation to Florida.

3 Upon retiring in 1941 from long service as a National League umpire, Klem, “The Old Arbitrator,” served to his death in 1951 as the chief of umpires (i.e., supervisor and head scout) for the senior circuit. He made his preference for wearing a lightweight chest protector inside the jacket when umpiring behind home plate virtually mandatory for National League umpires, while his counterpart in the American League, Tommy Connolly, made the use of the large, inflated “balloon” protector held in front of the chest synonymous with junior circuit umpires. The distinction between the two leagues persisted until the 1970s, when the inside protector earned universal adoption.

4 William F. “Bill” McKinley, who attended both the Barr and McGowan schools, was the first graduate of an umpire school in the majors, being called up to the American League in August 1946.

5 When Ford Frick was named commissioner of baseball in 1951, Giles, then president of the Cincinnati Reds, replaced him as president of the National League. In his first year in office he increased the pension for umpires from $100 to $150 per year, and in May1964 raised it to $200; the initial agreement with the Umpires Association increased it to $300.

6 American League umpires were hesitant to unionize in part because President Will Harridge had summarily fired umpire Ernest D. Stewart in 1945 for alleged unionizing activities. See Larry R. Gerlach, The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 123-26.

7 Ostensibly fired for alleged “incompetence,” both were veteran American League umpires – Salerno since 1961 and Valentine since 1962.

8 Although the strike affected both the Baltimore-Minnesota and the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh championship playoff games, umpires picketed only the National League park. Negotiations resulted in new pay scales for both league playoffs (from$2,500 to $4,000) and the World Series (from $,6500 to $8,000).  One of the Triple-A arbiters who worked the Reds-Pirates game, Henry C. Morgenweck, later umpired in the American League, 1972-75.

9 Ford, who left the game in the sixth inning with a sore foot, extended the record on October 4, 1962, to 33 innings; he had broken Babe Ruth’s mark of 29⅔ scoreless innings set in 1918.

Born in Chicago on February 10, 1884, William George Evans grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, where his father, a Welsh immigrant, worked as a superintendent in a Carnegie Steel mill. As a youngster he participated in YMCA sports programs and a local baseball team, the Youngstown Spiders, named after the Cleveland Spiders. Billy enrolled at Cornell University in 1901. Having excelled in baseball, football, and track in high school, Evans played freshman football and baseball at Cornell University. His baseball coach, former Baltimore Orioles player and future Detroit Tigers manager Hughie Jennings, called Evans a fine outfielder, but Billy’s playing days ended with a football-related knee injury.

Evans spent 2½ years at Cornell studying law before his father’s death forced him to leave school in 1902 to help support his family. He became a newspaper reporter, securing a job with the Youngstown Vindicator for $15 a week, and soon became the newspaper’s sports editor.2 Also in 1902, Evans began umpiring local baseball games. When the scheduled umpire failed to appear due to illness for an Ohio Protective Association game between the Youngstown Works club and a team from Homestead, Pennsylvania, Evans was persuaded to umpire the contest. He wound up working in the league as a substitute for a few more days, and was then hired as a regular umpire for $150 a month, a substantial increase from his newspaper salary.

In 1904 Evans joined the Class-C Ohio-Pennsylvania League. In 1905 he visited a clothing store in Youngstown owned by former Cleveland outfielder Jimmy McAleer, now manager of the St. Louis Browns, who told Evans he had seen him umpire and liked what he saw. McAleer recommended Evans to American League President Ban Johnson. McAleer had witnessed a game between Youngstown and Niles in which a Niles batter fell down after being hit by the pitcher. But Evans called the pitch a strike, ending the game. Evans had to be escorted from the field by police and Niles manager Charley Crowe.3

Acting on McAleer’s advice, Johnson offered Evans $2,400 per year plus a $600 bonus to umpire in the American League in 1906. Evans said that looked like all the money in the world and claimed to break all speed records in getting his acceptance back to Johnson in a tersely-worded telegram reply saying, “Yes and thanks!”4 Known as Big Boy Blue or the Boy Umpire, Evans was the youngest umpire to be hired by the majors when he joined the American League in 1906 at the age of 22. (The Sporting News obituary said that Evans rose from a Class-D minor league to the major leagues, but the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball5 reports that the Ohio-Pennsylvania League was Class C.) Evans subsequently became, at 25, the youngest World Series umpire.

Being an umpire during the Deadball Era was not a comfortable position to be in as then a single umpire worked most games. Through his actions and on-field judgment, Evans built a reputation as one of the fairest arbiters in the game.6

Unique among his profession, Evans openly admitted that he was fallible and could make mistakes. The man behind the plate for Walter Johnson’s first major-league game, Evans later confessed that Johnson’s fastball sometimes came to the plate so quickly that he would close his eyes before making a call. “Why, do you know, Johnson was the only pitcher I ever closed my eyes on, in automatic self-defense, in spite of wearing a mask and having a catcher standing in front of me as extra protection,” he once said.7

“The public wouldn’t like the perfect umpire in every game,” Evans contended. “It would kill off baseball’s greatest alibi – ‘We wuz robbed.’”

After Evans became a major-league umpire, he had a confrontation with Hughie Jennings on May 22, 1907. “In the tenth Detroit’s coaches sent (Boss) Schmidt in from second on (Charley) O’Leary’s double but Umpire Evans, on (Monte) Cross’ appeal, declared Schmidt out for not touching third base. The spectators swarmed the field and Evans had to call for police protection; at the same time he sent Manager (Hughie) Jennings to the club house.”8 Detroit won the game in the 11th and Jennings was suspended.

Evans quickly built a reputation as a “fair and square umpire” capable of handling any situation that arose on the diamond. He often said the trick of umpiring relied upon three talents: the ability to study human nature and apply the findings, the ability to be at the right angle to make a call and the ability to bear no malice. Billy demonstrated this third skill in St. Louis in September 1907, when his skull was fractured by a bottle thrown by a 17-year-old fan after a controversial call. Ban Johnson came to St. Louis to announce he had hired an attorney and would prosecute the young offender. To his dismay, however, Evans refused to press charges, saying the youth’s parents were nice people and the kid had apologized for throwing the bottle.9

But Evans was not a saint. If pushed he would not back down, and in September 1921 was involved in a fistfight with Ty Cobb under the stands after a game. According to the Washington Star, Cobb was irate over over Evans’s calling him out at second on a steal attempt. During the argument Cobb reportedly told Evans that he would whip him right at home plate, but would not do so because he knew he would be suspended. Evans invited Cobb to the umpires’ dressing room for the postgame festivities. The brawl itself took place under the stands, with players from both teams forming a ring for the combatants. According to some accounts of the incident, the fight ended in a draw and was the bloodiest they had ever seen. Cobb was suspended for the next game, which Evans umpired wearing bandages.10

Among his colleagues, Evans was well known as a mentor for young umpires, generous with his time and advice. Evans also became a strong advocate for the establishment of formal school training for umpires to meet the growing demand for officials. He was highly critical of Organized Baseball for doing little about the situation. Ironically, if the present-day umpire-school system existed during the Deadball Era, Evans would probably have never gotten a chance to umpire in the major leagues. Hall of Fame umpire Bill McGowan was quoted in the 2005 book, Dean of Umpires: Bill McGowan, as saying that being teamed with Evans early in his career was “the greatest break of my life” and “whatever I’ve accomplished in my life, I owe to Billy Evans … and Tommy Connolly.”11

Yet Evans’s umpiring philosophy sounds like something straight out of a handbook: “Good eyes, plenty of courage – mental and physical – a thorough knowledge of the playing rules, more than average portions of fair play, common sense and diplomacy, an entire lack of vindictiveness, plenty of confidence in your ability.” Nonetheless, he was not afraid to admit his mistakes. He once called a ball foul before it stopped rolling. When the ball struck a pebble and bounced back into fair territory, the manager of the team at bat rushed onto the field, cursing Evans and demanding that he reverse his ruling. Billy responded, “Well, it would have been a fair ball yesterday and it will be fair tomorrow and for all years to come. But right now, unfortunately, it’s foul because that’s the way I called it.”12

During his 22-year umpiring career, Evans umpired 3,319 games and umpired six World Series. He umpired four no-hitters as well as Walter Johnson’s three consecutive shutouts of the New York Highlanders in 1908. A final point to Evans’ umpiring career came from Fielder Jones, who often had arguments with him: “We always liked to meet up with Evans on the road and knew he was to umpire.”13

Throughout his umpiring career, Evans continued to write about the game and the umpiring profession. He wrote frequent articles for the popular magazine Collier’s, as well as for The Sporting News. He authored two books, Knotty Problems of Baseball (1950) and in 1947 Umpiring From the Inside, a superb umpire’s manual that has withstood the test of time for its sound advice on the mechanics of umpiring and handling game situations. Among his tips for calling games were: You can’t be too thorough a student of the playing rules. Never take your eye off the ball. Never flaunt your authority. Always work on the theory that the fans came out to see the players perform. Never look for trouble. Treat players with the same consideration that you expect from them. Hustle every minute you are on the ballfield.14

Evans retired as an umpire in 1927 to become general manager of the Cleveland Indians. It was the first time the term “general manager” was used; before that almost every club had a business manager.15 During his nine years with Cleveland, the team showed steady improvement on the field and Evans was credited with signing Bob Feller, Tommy Henrich, Wes Ferrell, and Hal Trosky, among others. While attending Cleveland’s Amateur All-Star Game in 1929 with his wife, Hazel, he asked her if any young players impressed her, and she said, “That good looking Viking over there.”16 The player was Joe Vosmik, who spent a 13-year career with the Indians, St. Louis Browns, Boston Red Sox, Brooklyn, and Washington.

Evans left the Indians in 1935 because of a salary dispute and accepted a job as farm director for the Boston Red Sox. His tenure was marked by conflicts with owner Tom Yawkey and manager Joe Cronin. His association with Boston ended in October 1940 when he was fired by Yawkey. His trouble with Cronin came after Evans had persuaded Boston to purchase the Louisville Triple-A franchise. The player wanted by Evans was Pee Wee Reese. In July 1939 Cronin traded Reese to Brooklyn, thus beginning a major feud with Evans.17

In 1941 Evans became the general manager of the Cleveland Rams of the NFL, but left the next year and became president of the Southern Association. From 1942 until 1946, while many other minor leagues went bankrupt because of the manpower shortage during World War II, the Southern Association increased attendance from 700,000 to over 2 million. Evans also rewrote The Southern League Record Book which he said, “is what I consider my No. 1 achievement while president, but my biggest thrill came in getting the League thru 1943. All but ten leagues had folded, and when we finished in the black, I was really happy.”18

Evans got back to the major leagues in 1946 when he became executive vice president and general manager of the Detroit Tigers, a post he held until he retired in 1951. He sold slugger Hank Greenberg after the 1946 season for cash to the Pittsburgh Pirates, which was an unpopular move. Detroit never won a pennant during Evans’s tenure, and after the team collapsed in 1951 he left baseball forever.

Always a dapper dresser, Evans, a devout Presbyterian, was known as a good family man, though his baseball activities often kept him away from his Cleveland home. He married Hazel Baldwin in 1908 and the couple had one child, Robert, who enjoyed a successful career as a radio executive. Evans died at 71 in Miami, Florida, on January 23, 1956, after suffering a massive stroke while visiting his son. He was buried in Knollwood Cemetery in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. His greatest honor came posthumously in 1973 with election as the third umpire enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame (after Bill Klem and Tommy Connolly).

Last revised: March 22, 2021 (ghw)

This biography is included in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.

Notes