Hank Morgenweck

In 1972 Hank Morgenweck achieved a long-held dream—a full-time umpiring job in the major leagues. Four seasons later, in bitter and disputed circumstances, he lost it.

An experienced minor-league ump with a National League playoff game on his résumé, Morgenweck was named to the American League’s umpiring staff in spring 1972. But his contract was not renewed in the fall of 1975, shortly after he had worked that season’s AL Championship Series. League president Lee MacPhail, pressed to explain, pulled no punches: Morgenweck, he said, had received poor evaluations and hadn’t proven good enough for the majors. Morgenweck, for his part, blamed his dismissal on behind-the-scenes politics.1

After his departure from the bigs Morgenweck went back to nine-to-five work, umpired and refereed amateur sports in New Jersey, and served as a college sports administrator. A sense of disappointment lingered after his ouster. “It was a bitter pill to swallow,” he told an interviewer in 1993, “because I loved baseball.”2

Henry Charles Morgenweck was born in New York City on April 9, 1929, the second child and first son of Henry G. Morgenweck, a shipping clerk,3 and his wife Dorothy (Neves).4 His father’s side was of German extraction, while his mother’s included ancestors from Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.5 The Morgenweck family eventually numbered five children.6 About five years after young Hank’s birth, the family moved across the Hudson River to West New York, New Jersey, where Hank attended St. Joseph’s Grammar School and High School.7

Morgenweck’s early boyhood coincided with the Great Depression, and memories of poverty stuck with him. Near the end of his life, he spoke of seeing neighbors going down to railroad tracks to gather coal that had fallen off passing trains.8 Although Morgenweck’s own parents “didn’t have any money,” they managed to buy their son a set of catcher’s equipment, making him “the best-uniformed kid in the neighborhood,” by his recollection.9 He grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and said decades later that the team had even given him a tryout. His inability to hit ended any dreams of a playing career.10

A different path to the majors began to reveal itself in 1947. Looking for a summer job, Morgenweck was asked if he wanted to umpire in a men’s softball league. “I thought they were kidding, but they were serious about it,” he said. “I went along with the joke, and I enjoyed it so much I continued to do it.”11 The league was full of World War II-hardened veterans whose disagreements sometimes broke out into fistfights, but the teenage ump held his ground: “I wouldn’t back off. If I’d make a call, I’d stick with it.”12

As he continued to umpire on the local level, Morgenweck attended college, worked for the New York and Pennsylvania Paper Co. in New York City, and married Shirley Morrison in May 1952.13 The couple remained married until Hank’s death and had two children, son Brian and daughter Dana.14

Two years after his wedding, Morgenweck gave in to his longstanding interest in umping and signed up for legendary AL arbiter Bill McGowan’s umpiring school in Florida.15 By his account, Morgenweck was signed to a contract on his third day there—though not entirely for his umping talent. With minor-league presidents watching, Morgenweck played catcher in a pickup game and impressed the crowd with his hustle. He switched hastily from catching to umpiring, showed the officials what he could do as a game official, and accepted an offer from the Class D Georgia State League.16

His pro career—sometimes conducted under the name Hank Morgan or Morgen—took off quickly. After a season at Class D, Morgenweck rose to the Class B Carolina League in 1955 and the Class A South Atlantic League (or “Sally League”) in 1956. While the fledgling ump took care of business on the field, low pay caused stress off it. “The trouble was, I’d gotten married before I went away,” he said years later, “and I couldn’t really send any money home because I wasn’t making any money to speak of. So my wife was supporting herself.”17

In his second season in the Sally League, Morgenweck passed up an offer that could have changed his career. By his telling, representatives of the Washington Senators took a liking to his work while scouting the team’s Sally League farm club, the Charlotte Hornets, and a Senators representative offered to “sponsor” Morgenweck for a big-league promotion. He turned it down: “Me being as naive as I was about it, I thought, why should I be sponsored? I should be able to do it on my own. I’ve gotten this far. I wanted to do it on my own rather than have some major league club sponsor me.”18

Instead, Morgenweck was promoted to the Triple-A International League in 1958, and there his ascent slowed. He missed his family, and while his paycheck had risen to $450 a month, he wanted more.19 Morgenweck also voiced frustration over a Junior World Series assignment that was given to another umpire in 1961.20 He left pro baseball after that season and stayed out for most of the 1960s, going to work as a salesman for a company called Victor Business Forms and umpiring college games.21 In 1968 he umpired the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, won by the University of Southern California over Southern Illinois University.22

Each year, Morgenweck said, the IL called him back. “Each year, I’d say, ‘Don’t waste your time, don’t waste my time,’” he recalled.23 The league finally won him over in 1969, luring back the by-then forty-year-old for the final weeks of the season with a promise that he would be considered a major-league prospect.24 He stayed in the IL for the 1970 and 1971 seasons.

During his IL tenure, Morgenweck made his big-league debut in unusual circumstances. On October 3, 1970, the major-league umpires’ union went on strike, refusing to work the first games of the AL and NL playoffs.25

The NL contacted four Triple-A umpires who agreed to cross the picket line and work that day’s game between the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates. From the American Association came John Grimsley and Fred Blandford; from the IL came Morgenweck, working at second base, and George Grygiel.26 The Reds won in 10 innings, 3–0, in a game that passed without controversy. The regular umps returned the next day; Grimsley, Blandford, and Grygiel never worked in the majors again.

Morgenweck told a reporter he’d accepted the offer without hesitation, for three reasons. First, it was a chance to work in the majors, even for a day. Second, he feared that saying no would cost him any shot he still had at a full-time big-league job. And third, he said, the major-league umpires’ union had never done anything for minor leaguers like himself. “As far as I’m concerned, this was my only chance,” he said. “I hope to be one of them [big-league umps] someday.”27

The call to the majors still hadn’t come in mid-August 1971, when Morgenweck gave a reporter in Richmond, Virginia, an earful of frustration. He said the NL had broken a promise to keep tabs on him, that he was getting too old for the majors, that he could make much more money selling insurance, and that he would quit again at the end of the season if the AL didn’t hire him. “I’m not going to be a baseball bum and stay in Triple A all my life,” he declared. Morgenweck also touched on baseball politics, a running theme in his comments over the years: “I finally realized that it doesn’t take ability to get to the big leagues. It’s 25 percent ability and 75 percent who you know.”28

It’s not known whether this cri de coeur reached AL president Joe Cronin in Boston, but if it did, Morgenweck’s blunt honesty didn’t put Cronin off. The league picked up an option on Morgenweck in the fall of 1971—after he’d worked both the IL All-Star Game and the Junior World Series that season—and brought him to spring training the following season to compete for one of two open jobs. On March 31, 1972, Cronin announced the hiring of Morgenweck, who was almost forty-three, and twenty-five-year-old Jim Evans, who had been seven years old when Morgenweck began his pro career in 1954.29

Morgenweck went on to umpire 623 regular-season games, including 154 behind the plate. His career highlights included calling balls and strikes for two no-hitters—Dick Bosman’s for the Cleveland Indians against the Oakland A’s on July 19, 1974, and Nolan Ryan’s fourth career no-no for the California Angels against the Baltimore Orioles on June 1, 1975. Morgenweck later said that Ryan’s final pitch, a called third strike to Baltimore’s Bobby Grich, was his greatest thrill as an umpire.30 Morgenweck also worked at first base when the New York Yankees’ Bobby Murcer hit for the cycle against the Texas Rangers in the first game of a doubleheader on August 29, 1972.

The umpire showed a knack for being on the field during noteworthy ballpark occasions. Morgenweck umped at second base for the Rangers’ first home game at Arlington Stadium on April 21, 1972. He manned third base for the first game at Kansas City’s Royals Stadium, later Kauffman Stadium, on April 10, 1973. And he was present at third base for the start of an odd interregnum in New York baseball history—the Yankees’ first home game at Shea Stadium on April 6, 1974, during the two-year period when the Yankees and Mets shared a home while the original Yankee Stadium was being renovated.

Morgenweck’s down-to-earth personality even inspired a fan club, a rare achievement among umpires. In 1974 he made a tough call against the Indians in Cleveland, and a group of fans stayed after the game to heckle him.31 But the ump won them over with smiles, autographs, and friendly conversation, and the Hank Morgenweck Fan Club was born. Indians broadcaster Herb Score called attention to the fan club by mentioning it on the air, and club founder Mary Ann Gill claimed the group had “thousands of members” and seven chapters across the US by the spring of 1976.32

Unfortunately, some managers and players took a dimmer view of Morgenweck. Criticism of the ump had begun to pile up from his earliest months in the AL. In fairness, it should also be noted that Morgenweck worked numerous games without incident. The next few paragraphs are not presented as “proof” that Morgenweck was a substandard umpire—an impossible judgment to make based on old news clippings. These anecdotes simply show that, deservedly or not, he was poorly rated by some in the game.

In May 1972 Minnesota Twins star Rod Carew described a Morgenweck decision at second base as “the worst call I’ve ever seen.”33 A rhubarb and a cluster of ejections the following month led Boston Red Sox manager Eddie Kasko to call the ump “vindictive,” adding, “The man would probably be a helluva lot better being a bus driver.”34 Oakland Athletics manager Dick Williams called Morgenweck “incompetent” in 1972 and repeated the charge the following season, adding, “Morgenweck is not a good umpire, never has been, never will be.”35 In 1975 Indians manager Frank Robinson listed 10 AL umpires he considered “creditable;” Morgenweck wasn’t on the list.36

Echoing Carew, players by and large weren’t impressed either, according to a confidential survey conducted in 1974 by the Major League Baseball Players Association and leaked publicly in September of that year. AL umpires were given ratings of Excellent, Above Average, Average, Below Average, or Poor. Morgenweck was one of seven to draw a Below Average rating. A single comment was given for each umpire; Morgenweck’s comment read, “is trying—could have better knowledge of rules.”37

But perhaps the deepest well of criticism flowed from Baltimore. In July 1973 Morgenweck ejected Orioles center fielder Paul Blair for throwing his helmet after a strikeout, then thumbed manager Earl Weaver for complaining. Weaver accused Morgenweck of missing ball and strike calls and taking out his frustration on Blair.38 A year later, Orioles pitcher Dave McNally drop-kicked his glove in anger after Morgenweck called him for two balks, drawing an ejection. McNally said Morgenweck cited him for violating a rule that didn’t exist, adding, “The umpiring has gotten worse every year I’ve been in the league.”39

Then came September 3, 1975, when the Red Sox and Orioles met at Memorial Stadium in the midst of a tense pennant race. The two-time AL East Division champion Orioles trailed Boston by six games and viewed the game as a must-win. With Tommy Davis on first base and none out in the fourth inning, Lee May grounded to Red Sox third baseman Rico Petrocelli, who fired to Denny Doyle at second. Doyle, with his back to Morgenweck, dropped the ball—but Morgenweck called Davis out, saying Doyle had possession long enough to register the force.40 Despite protests, the call stood, and the Red Sox went on to win, 3–2, in 10 innings. Baltimore pulled no closer than 3 1/2 games back the rest of the way as the Red Sox claimed the division title.

The feisty Weaver reached new heights of outrage after the game, suggesting that Morgenweck “should be marched out at dawn and executed by a firing squad of the Maryland National Guard.”41 According to Weaver, Morgenweck was out of position to make the call and refused to request a second opinion from crewmate Marty Springstead. “Morgenweck knows less about the play than 15,000 to 20,000 people who were on the third-base side [of the bag] and in position to see it,” Weaver ranted.42 Morgenweck admitted a few months later that he missed the call, adding: “Nobody likes to make a mistake, but you have to live with it. Replays show we’re right 99 percent of the time.”43

The dispute appeared to have no short-term impact on Morgenweck’s career,44 as he was one of six umpires chosen by MacPhail to work the AL Championship Series between Oakland and Boston. Morgenweck worked the three-game series without incident, spending the first two games in the outfield. He umped at third base for the final game on October 7, 1975, as the Red Sox knocked the three-time defending World Series champion Athletics out of the postseason.45

Exactly a month later Morgenweck received a vaguely worded notice of termination. Let go alongside him were fellow umpires Merle Anthony and Armando Rodriguez, both of whom had left the AL before the season ended.46 Morgenweck told The Sporting News that his dismissal appeared to be related to negative ratings of his work given by players, managers, and league officials.47

After a period of silence, MacPhail confirmed that assumption, telling a reporter in May 1976 that Morgenweck had received poor evaluations from AL umpiring supervisor Dick Butler, managers, and others. “Unfortunately, in our judgment, Hank has not progressed like we hoped he would,” MacPhail said. “His abilities as an umpire are below average.” MacPhail added that the decision to dismiss Morgenweck was not solely based on the September call in Baltimore.48 Butler, speaking to a different reporter, said MacPhail released the three umpires to send a message that umps needed to hustle and produce to keep their jobs, just as players did.49

In interviews, Morgenweck advanced several alternative explanations for his firing, most frequently blaming it on baseball politics.50 By his telling, AL managers and players were widely dissatisfied with the quality of the umpiring in the league. But the worst-performing umps were “tenured” by virtue of having six years’ service time, and umps with tenure were much more difficult to fire. Morgenweck claimed that AL officials dismissed him to give the appearance that the league was taking action on its umpiring problems. “I think [MacPhail] thought he had to get someone and I happened to be one of them,” Morgenweck said.51

Morgenweck’s dismissal didn’t pass unnoticed. His former crew chief, Larry Barnett—himself under fire for a controversial World Series call on Ed Armbrister’s bunt—expressed surprise, adding, “I thought he did a great job.”52 Henry Brophy, a fan from Connecticut, wrote to The Sporting News to call the three umps’ firings “disgusting” and “unfair.”53 Members of the Hank Morgenweck Fan Club wrote to MacPhail.54 Morgenweck said he appreciated the protests but didn’t expect them to sway league officials: “Once they do something, it’s final.”55 He was right.

After parting ways with the majors, Morgenweck went to work at the Ribbon and Ticker Paper Company in Paterson, New Jersey. He briefly returned to amateur umpiring until a heart attack in 1977 ended his career.56 He also taught umpiring at schools and clinics in the 1970s and ‘80s.57

For several years in the late 1970s Morgenweck served as an umpiring supervisor for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), where he experienced an umpires’ labor dispute from a different perspective.58 Major-league umps went on strike in April and May 1979, and four ECAC umps agreed to fill in. The conference had a rule, though, that barred its officials from working professionally. Morgenweck, the former big-league substitute, gave the umpires a compromise: They could work in the majors for a weekend, but after the Sunday games, they would have to choose between the colleges and the pros. At the end of the weekend, having had their moment in the majors, the umps all agreed to stick with the ECAC.59

Interviewed by a SABR member in 1993, Morgenweck seemed to have little bitterness against the managers with whom he had once clashed, describing Weaver and Williams as “great managers” despite their tendency to bait umpires.60 He also mentioned that he received a small major-league pension and had largely lost touch with the major-league game.61

Hank Morgenweck died of cancer at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, on August 7, 2007. He was 78. In addition to his wife and two children, he was survived by a grandchild, a sister, and many nieces, nephews, and cousins. Following a funeral Mass at St. Anastasia’s Roman Catholic Church, he was cremated. An obituary in the local newspaper summarized Morgenweck’s career with a comment he made to author John C. Skipper in 1999: “I enjoyed it so much; every game was a great game. And when they asked me to leave the game, it broke my heart.” 62

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Rory Costello and Abigail Miskowiec and fact-checked by members of the SABR Bio-Project factchecking team.

Sources

In addition to the sources credited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for background information on players, teams, and seasons. The author thanks the Giamatti Research Center of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for research assistance.

SABR member Tom Harris’s interview with Hank Morgenweck, conducted in October 1993 and available on the SABR website, also served as a significant source for this story.

Notes

1 Marty Noble, “Ousted Umpire Has Many Fans,” Bergen Record, May 3, 1976: B5; Larry Babich, “Morgenweck’s Career a Roller Coaster,” Jersey Journal, January 17, 1983: 18.

2 Interview by SABR member Tom Harris with Hank Morgenweck, conducted in October 1993 at Morgenweck’s home in Teaneck, New Jersey, and accessed via SABR.org in November 2024, https://sabr.org/interview/hank-morgenweck-1993/.

3 The Morgenweck family’s entry in the 1930 U.S. Census describes the elder Henry Morgenweck simply as a clerk; in the 1940 Census, he is more specifically identified as a shipping clerk. 1930 U.S. Census, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RHB-C14?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AX4KG-QB9&action=view&cc=1810731, and 1940 U.S. Census, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89MY-6Q2M?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AKQ5N-WVN&action=view&cc=2000219, both accessed via FamilySearch.org in November 2024.

4 “Morgenweck” (death notice), Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey), September 29, 1958: 14.

5 German lineage from The Sporting News umpire card, accessed via Retrosheet in November 2024, https://www.retrosheet.org/TSNUmpireCards/Morgenweck-Henry.jpg. The 1920 U.S. Census entry for Dorothy Neves—Hank Morgenweck’s mother—says her paternal grandparents were born in Portugal and Spain, while her maternal grandparents were Irish. Accessed via Familysearch.org in November 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRJQ-83S?view=index&action=view&cc=1488411.

6 1950 U.S. Census listing, accessed via FamilySearch in November 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHN-PQHW-LJXR?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3A6F91-L7XS&action=view&cc=4464515. In the 1993 Harris interview, Morgenweck described his family as “two brothers, two sisters,” presumably meaning in addition to himself.

7 1993 Harris interview.

8 Merry Firschein, “They Didn’t Know ‘Jay’s Dad’ Was a Champ,” Bergen (New Jersey) Record, June 9, 2005: L1.

9 1993 Harris interview.

10 1993 Harris interview.

11 Babich, “Morgenweck’s Career a Roller Coaster”; 1993 Harris interview.

12 1993 Harris interview.

13 “Party In Honor of Miss Morrison,” Jersey Journal, April 23, 1952: 21. This article lists Morgenweck as having attended Drake Business College, a professional-skills school in New Jersey. Various sources, including the 1993 Harris interview, quote Morgenweck as saying he attended Drake University, a school in Iowa not related to Drake Business College. The author of this biography searched the 1947 through 1952 editions of Drake University’s yearbook, the Quax, for Morgan, Morgen, Morgenweck, and Morganweck, and found no mention of the future umpire. An online search of the archives of Drake’s student newspapers also found no mention of Morgenweck attending Drake University. Drake University online archives, accessed November 2024, http://content.library.drake.edu/digital/collection/yearbooks/search/page/6.

14 “Morgenweck” (death notice), Bergen Record, August 9, 2007: L7.

15 Babich, “Morgenweck’s Career a Roller Coaster.” McGowan umpired in the majors for 30 seasons, working eight World Series and four All-Star Games, including the first in 1933. The 1954 season was his last: He worked his final game on July 27 and died that December.

16 1993 Harris interview.

17 1993 Harris interview.

18 1993 Harris interview. Morgenweck does not identify the Senators’ representative.

19 Augie Borgi, “Ump’s Trip to the Top Too Slow,” Bergen Record, July 18, 1968: B10. According to an online inflation calculator hosted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $450 in June 1961 had the same buying power as $4,761 in September 2024.

20 1993 Harris interview. Morgenweck identified the ump who got the assignment as Lee Weyer, but Weyer was working in the NL at the time of the Junior World Series in late September 1961. Morgenweck might have been thinking of another IL ump who later reached the major leagues, Bill Williams; box scores indicate that Williams worked the Junior World Series. “Bison Box Score,” Buffalo Evening News, September 28, 1961: IV:59.

21 Borgi, “Ump’s Trip to the Top Too Slow.”

22 Box score accompanying Bob Williams, “Champion Trojans Prove Scouts Have Real Eye for Talent,” The Sporting News, June 29, 1968: 23.

23 1993 Harris interview.

24 1993 Harris interview.

25 United Press International, “Umpires Strike; Feeney, Cronin Get Subs Ready,” Harlingen (Texas) Valley Morning Star, October 3, 1970: 1.

26 In the 1993 Harris interview, Morgenweck said the biggest challenge of the game was coordinating each umpire’s responsibilities. The umps were accustomed to working in three-man crews at Triple A, rather than the four-man crews used in the majors. “We had to make sure that two men weren’t running out on a fly ball,” he said.

27 Augie Borgi, “For the Record,” Bergen Record, October 5, 1970: B9.

28 Jerry Lindquist, “Is the Big League A ‘Crazy’ Dream?” Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, August 22, 1971: E6. Morgenweck appeared to indulge in the timeless baseball tradition of shaving a few years off his age. He was quoted as saying, “I’m thirty-nine, and I’m too old;” he was actually forty-two.

29 “Morgenweck and Evans Join A.L. Umpire Staff,” The Sporting News, April 15, 1972: 26.

30 “Morgenweck Defends Series Ump,” Jersey Journal, January 22, 1976: 25.

31 A review of Cleveland Plain Dealer news coverage from the 1974 season found two games in which Morgenweck made a disputed call against the Indians in Cleveland. On June 29, Morgenweck ruled that Indians third baseman Buddy Bell had thrown to second base too late for a force; the Red Sox went on to score six runs in the inning and won, 12–2. And in the second game of a doubleheader on September 23, Morgenweck ruled that Indians left fielder Leron Lee dropped a fly ball, while the Indians claimed Lee had made the catch but bobbled the ball while throwing. The Indians pulled out a 7–4 win in that game, which perhaps makes the June 29 loss a more likely date for Morgenweck’s interaction with the would-be hecklers. Russell Schneider, “Indians Jolted, 12-2,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 30, 1974: 1C; Russell Schneider, “Tribe Splits with Brewers, Jumps Into, Out of 5th Place,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 24, 1974: 1D.

32 Noble, “Ousted Umpire Has Many Fans”; Larry Gerlach, “An Umpire’s Fan Club,” The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring, edited by Larry Gerlach and Bill Nowlin (Phoenix, Arizona: Society for American Baseball Research, 2017): 441.

33 Herschel Nissenson (Associated Press), “Royal Skipper Enjoys 16-1 Win,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, May 20, 1972: 10. This article appears to be a somewhat jumbled compilation of wire-service accounts of the previous day’s games.

34 Clif Keane, “‘Ump Would Probably Make Helluva Bus Driver’ – Kasko,” Boston Globe, June 25, 1972: 68.

35 Associated Press, “Indians Trim Athletics 3-1 Behind Tidrow,” Salem (Ohio) News, August 21, 1972: 13; Ron Bergman, “It’s Thumbs Up for the Catfish,” Oakland Tribune, August 20, 1973: 29.

36 Russell Schneider, “Robinson Lists Creditable Umps,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 10, 1975: 2F.

37 Russell Schneider, “Secret Quiz Evaluates Umpires,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 15, 1974: 13C.

38 Gordon Beard (Associated Press), “Weaver Ejected for 5th Time,” Clarksville (Tennessee) Leaf-Chronicle, July 4, 1973: 10.

39 “Oriole Items,” Baltimore Sun, August 19, 1974: C11. McNally made his remarks after another AL ump, Dave Phillips, called him for his fifth balk of the season during a win over the Kansas City Royals.

40 Bill Free, “Bird Loss Attributed to Umpire,” Baltimore Sun, September 4, 1975: C5. The Boston Globe’s Ray Fitzgerald wrote three months later that “Doyle was never close to catching the ball” as it bounced off his arm, chest, and shin, but not his glove. Ray Fitzgerald, “One Bad Call, and You’re Out!” Boston Globe, December 16, 1975: 25.

41 George Kimball, “The Sox Didn’t Even Need Weaver’s Temper,” Boston Phoenix, September 9, 1975: 32, https://archive.org/details/sim_boston-phoenix_1975-09-09_4_36/page/n31/mode/2up. Peter Gammons of the Boston Globe paraphrased the remark, but captured its essence, in, “Sox Choke? The Gag is On the Orioles, 3-2,” September 4, 1975: 27. The Baltimore Sun, meanwhile, reported that Weaver also suggested that league president MacPhail be shot. Free, “Bird Loss Attributed to Umpire.”

42 Free, “Bird Loss Attributed to Umpire”; Associated Press, “Red Sox Stretch East Advantage to Seven Games,” North Adams (Massachusetts) Transcript, September 4, 1975: 14.

43 Fitzgerald, “One Bad Call, and You’re Out!”

44 A side note: Morgenweck umpired his last regular-season game on September 22, 1975, a 6–4 win by the Red Sox over the Yankees at Shea Stadium. He missed the last series of the season worked by his crew, an Indians-Red Sox four-game series in Boston from September 26-28. The author of this biography did not find an explanation of Morgenweck’s absence in newspapers, and Retrosheet’s list of umpire injuries did not include any mention (as of November 2024) of Morgenweck being injured seriously enough to leave a game.

45 Morgenweck thus made his first and last major-league umpiring appearances in postseason games.

46 Anthony worked his final game on August 19. Rodriguez umpired his last game on September 27, one day before the end of the regular season. According to The Sporting News, Rodriguez handed in his resignation and went home to Mexico. The rest of his crew worked the season’s final game as a trio.

47 Stan Isle, “Umpires Cry Foul Over Termination of Three A.L. Arbiters,” The Sporting News, December 13, 1975: 58.

48 Noble, “Ousted Umpire Has Many Fans.” In the article, MacPhail did not elaborate on what “progress” the AL had expected to see from an umpire who was almost forty-three years old at the time of his hiring and had entered the profession in 1954.

49 Peter Gammons, “Hobson Ready if Rico Quits,” Boston Globe, December 16, 1975: 26.

50 Other potential reasons Morgenweck presented in interviews: Butler had taken a dislike to him, AL officials and/or other umps were resentful of his fan club, or he was being punished for crossing the picket line during the 1970 NL playoffs. Gerlach, “An Umpire’s Fan Club”; Brian Bailey, “The Day Morgenweck Was Told Get Lost,” Paterson (New Jersey) News, June 16, 1976: 52.

51 Noble, “Ousted Umpire Has Many Fans”; Babich, “Morgenweck’s Career a Roller Coaster.” Morgenweck repeated this claim in the 1993 Harris interview, adding that Butler refused to allow him to see the evaluations of Morgenweck’s work.

52 Joe Goddard, “Ump Still Gets Hate Mail,” Detroit Free Press, January 27, 1976: 5C (article originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times). In the 10th inning of Game Three of the 1975 World Series, home-plate umpire Barnett ruled that Cincinnati batter Armbrister hadn’t interfered with Boston catcher Carlton Fisk on a play in which the two got tangled up and Fisk threw Armbrister’s bunt wildly into center field. The Reds won the game three batters later, 6–5, on a walk-off single by Joe Morgan.

53 “Protests Dismissals,” The Sporting News, December 27, 1975: 4.

54 Noble, “Ousted Umpire Has Many Fans.”

55 Bailey, “The Day Morgenweck Was Told Get Lost.”

56 Noble, “Ousted Umpire Has Many Fans”; Babich, “Morgenweck’s Career a Roller Coaster.”

57 “Hank Morgenweck Baseball Umpire Clinic” (advertisement), Bergen Record, October 19, 1975: C2; Tony Lamonda, “Martin: ‘We Ate, Drank and Slept Baseball,’” Massena (New York) Observer, August 15, 1986: 9, https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=tmo19860815-01.1.8&srpos=1&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———-.

58 Babich, “Morgenweck’s Career a Roller Coaster.”

59 1993 Harris interview. Morgenweck did not specify that this incident occurred in 1979, but it could not have taken place during the umpires’ strike of August 25, 1978, which only lasted one day. He also did not name the umpires involved. Two of the ECAC umps who worked in the majors in 1979 were identified as Al Forman and Jim Dunne in E.M. Swift, “They’re Out!,” Sports Illustrated, April 16, 1979: 18, https://archive.org/details/Sports-Illustrated-1979-04-16/page/n23/mode/2up. It appears likely that a third was veteran Cape Cod umpire Bob “Curly” Clement, whose career is summarized in Bob Sylva, “The Correct Call,” Cape Cod Times, updated January 4, 2011, https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/1999/12/06/the-correct-call/51019520007/.

60 1993 Harris interview. Near the end of the interview, Morgenweck and Harris attempted to remember the Red Sox managers during Morgenweck’s career; neither man could recall the names of either Kasko or Darrell Johnson.

61 1993 Harris interview.

62 Jay Levin, “His Life’s Calling: Balls, Strikes,” Bergen Record, August 9, 2007: L1; “Morgenweck” (death notice), Bergen Record, August 9, 2007: L7. The quote reproduced here originally appeared in John C. Skipper, Umpires: Classic Baseball Stories from the Men Who Made the Calls (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1997).