A Conversation in the Umpires Room: Laz Diaz, Chris Guccione, Cory Blaser, Clint Fagan

On July 3-5, 2015, the Houston Astros visited Boston’s Fenway Park for a three-game series. Crew chief Jeff Nelson was on vacation, so Laz Diaz served as crew chief for the three games. Chris Guccione, Cory Blaser, and fill-in umpire Clint Fagan were the other umpires on the crew. Bill Nowlin sat down and talked with the crew.

Conversation in the Umpires Room at Fenway Park on July 3 and 5, 2015.

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Bill Nowlin: You guys answered one of the questions I had as you walked in just now. I wondered if you brought your gear with you.

Laz Diaz: DHL. They pick it up at the ballpark where we’re at — we were at the Mets. Yesterday, Citi Field. It’s waiting for us. Our clubhouse guy, Dean [Lewis], he opens it up. Whatever’s underneath, we have in a bag, our dirty clothes. He washes all that and hangs it up here. He does our shoes and has everything ready once we get in.

LD: If you’ve got real fanatic fans, the ones that study baseball and study the umpires, they know who we are. But the regular Joe Blow, they won’t know. I’ve gone with my friends at Wrigley and the first couple of times they came to Wrigley, I’ve taken a shower and gone and hung out at some of the bars around Wrigley, right in the neighborhood. Walk in and have my beer and hang out with them. They [other patrons] don’t know who I am.

Chris Guccione: I think I’ve been recognized twice ever, having dinner or having a drink after the game. Once or twice.

BN: That’s because you were wearing your face mask.

CG: Yeah, that’s what it was. I had all my gear on.

BN: [to Clint] You’re a Triple-A umpire right now?

Clint Fagan: Yeah.

BN: How does that work? You worked like 110 major-league games last year.

CF: I really don’t know, ranking wise. You’re given assignments. You’re put on a list for callups.

BN: Mostly you’re filling in, like for Jeff Nelson tonight.

CF: Yes. I fill in on replay, injuries, vacation.

BN: That’s as many games as most regular guys work. You worked 119 games last year.

CF: I don’t know the exact number.

LD: We’re on our four weeks’ vacation, where he goes first and gets his week [indicates Cory Blaser], then I got my week, then Jeff Nelson, and next week he goes [indicates Chris Guccione.] So he’ll fill in [Clint] for the whole month for us. After he leaves us, Sunday, in Cleveland, when we have the All-Star break, there’ll be another four guys, another crew, having their four-block, so he might go there and work with them for the whole four weeks. Yeah, he’ll work maybe even more than what we work.

BN: You’re the crew chief tonight?

LD: For the whole week.

BN: While Jeff Nelson’s away.

LD: Yeah. These guys have been trembling the whole time.

BN: I imagine! It’s a dictatorship, right?

LD: It’s a dictatorship.

Cory Blaser: I was in his spot [Clint’s] for four or five years and just recently got hired in January of last year, 2014.

BN: Did you all come together here just now, in a taxi or something?

LD: We have a car service that we use. We flew in last night, the car service picked us up at the airport, took us to the hotel. This morning, we did whatever we wanted to do during the day.

BN: Does MLB select the hotels for you?

LD: No, we pick our own hotels.

BN: You tend to stay together at the same hotel? This crew, anyhow?

LD: Yeah, we tend to stay at the same spot. We’re all Hyatt guys; we like Hyatt. There’s some other crews that like Marriott.

BN: If you get with one of their programs, you can build up points.

LD: Exactly. We’re paying for our hotels, a daily per diem rate. Out of your per diem rate, you pay for your own hotels, so if you want to stay at Motel 6, you can, or you can stay at the Ritz.

LD: And when you’re home, like when they’re home in Denver [Guccione and Blaser are both from Colorado], of course, they don’t use their per diem. It’s real nice to be home and open the refrigerator.

GC: Like this city here, different cities have car services that we use — Toronto, New York, San Fran, Oakland, Chicago — both Cubs and White Sox, maybe that’s it. All the rest, we get a rental car.

BN: One guy I talked to maybe 15 years ago, he just took the subway here. Which you could do if you don’t get recognized.

CG: People don’t recognize you.

LD: The only thing they see on the field is a black shirt.

CG: You know, it’s funny, a lot of guys are staying at hotels and there’s a lot of fans at the hotel. We’ll leave the game and many times we’re standing right in the same elevator. They’re talking, “Oh, man, that was an awesome game. This and that.” And we’ll say, “How was it? Who won? How’d the umpires do?” or something like that. And they’re all, “It was great. They did this or that…”

BN: I wondered if you ever might have said, “Did you see that call at third base? What a….” You’ve heard it, but did you ever just goof on them?

CG: Oh yeah.

LD: I have, yeah. In Chicago, with a couple of guys that came see me, there was this one guy “Oh, the Cubbies won! The Cubbies won!” He was so happy. I said, “Yeah, but that second-base umpire” — I was working second base that day — “he blew that call.” He said, “Yeah, he did” and he’d start to get all upset. I told him, “Listen, let’s make a pact. If we ever see that umpire again, we’re going to punch him right in the mouth, okay?” He said, “OK!” And all my buddies standing around me, they’re all looking at me like, “You’re crazy, man.”

They don’t know who we are.

BN: This room we’re in is fairly new. You used to be up over the Red Sox clubhouse, right?

LD: Dean, how long we been here?

Dean Lewis, umpire room attendant: This room’s been here since 2004.

BN: More than 10 years. A long time, now. When you go around the league, are most of the facilities relatively similar these days?

LD: The new ballparks are.…

BN: Bigger than here?

LD: Yes. In the newer ballparks, but in San Diego — which is a new ballpark — that locker room is smaller than this one. Wouldn’t you agree?

CG: Yeah.

Cory Blaser: But like Minnesota, that’s enormous. Our dressing area, our living room area, the bathroom, everything….

LD: Philly’s huge.

BN: What’s the worst one?

LD: Wrigley?

CG: Wrigley’s not bad, because they re-did that one also.

LD: I think the smallest one is San Diego.

CG: A lot of times when they build these new ballparks, they forget. At the last minute, someone will ask, “Where’s the umpires room?”

CB: Miami’s is not that big, either.

LD: Personally, what I look for is — especially in this area here [where the lockers and trunks are], where we get dressed, to have enough room.

BN: Not bumping in to each other.

LD: Not bumping into each other. Stretch. The one in Miami is very small. You could probably touch his hand. Where you are in front of me, that’s how close we are.

BN: But they’re similar enough these days. There must have been some really bad ones, 20, 25 years ago.

LD: Milwaukee.

BN: County Stadium?

LD: County Stadium was bad.

CG: Didn’t that have a dirt floor?

LD: You had to lift up your trunk, because if it rained the clubhouse would get flooded.

[There was a little talk about Cuba, umpires walking in from the neighborhood around the ballpark.]

LD: I’m hoping to be in one of those games, if they have a spring training game next year. When I first heard of it, it would be 2017 but they’ve been pushing it for next year. [Diaz was the third-base umpire in the Tampa Bay vs. Cuba game at Estadio Latinamericano on March 22, 2016 in Havana.]

BN: Are you Cuban by ancestry?

LD: My dad came over in ‘61 and my mom in ‘62. They were already married in Cuba, and then when they got here, they found each other. I was there last week, to see my mom and dad’s home town, in the north central part of the island. Where Livan Hernandez is from. Yuniesky Betancourt. That area.

BN: When you leave here to go to the field, do you go through the edge of the visitors’ dugout?

LD: Yeah, we go through their dugout.

BN: Is that usually the way it is, through one team or another’s dugout?

LD: It depends where we’re at.

CB: Very rarely. There’s maybe only three spots where we go through the dugout, right? It’s usually separate.

BN: A lot of them are right behind home plate, right?

CB: Or a section right over from the dugout, where we go through a different tunnel.

CG: Just here and Toronto, really.

CB: What about Wrigley?

LD: Wrigley.

CB: There’s only three, maybe four, that you still go through the dugout. A lot of them are right next to the dugout, but a separate tunnel.

BN: The positions you’re working tonight, do you make that up, as the acting crew chief or does that come from New York?

LD: When the season starts, the crew chief will always have home plate. For the first game. The #2 guy will have first base, #3 guy second, and #4 guy at third base. And from that rotation, we just go. The whole year.

CG: It doesn’t stay like 1, 2, 3, because like right now, let’s see, it’ll go him [Cory], he’s the three guy now, then it’ll be me, I’m at first — I’m the two guy, then it goes Clint. With guys leaving and everything, it gets mixed up. You keep the rotation pretty much intact. It might get a little bit skewed throughout the year but it stays pretty consistent.

BN: You get feedback from New York on a regular basis? Or from Kevin [O’Connor] upstairs?

CG: Kevin’s a regional observer. There’s supervisors and then there’s regional observers.

BN: How often do you get feedback? After every series?

LD: After every series.

CB: Almost every day, you have video stuff to go over for calls that you had on the field. If New York believes that it’s a close call — close enough — they’ll put it in the system that’s reviewed by a supervisor and put into a system that we log onto that says “Correct. Correct. Correct. Incorrect.” They’ll let you know. Obviously, if you go into replay and you get one overturned, it’ll say “Incorrect” but there may be a lot of comments on positioning stuff.

BN: Do they do that with balls and strikes, too?

LD: We have what they call the ZE system.

CG: ZE. I don’t even know what it means. [The technology (called Zone Enforcement or ZE) that was implemented in 2009 provided all home plate umpires a report after each game, showing them the accuracy of all of their ball and strike calls.]

LD: My game last night is posted, and all I do is log on and it’ll tell me my percentage — raw — and then you’ll have pitches that the catcher maybe butchered, and stuff like that. It might say my percentage, raw, in 93, and with adjustments, 94.

BN: So have a grade every day?

LD: Whether you’re on the bases or on the plate, yeah.

CB: We get graded on everything. You know, a lot of times in the media you hear, “The umpires need to be held accountable.” They have no idea. Every pitch and every play you have on the bases is graded.

BN: And promotions are tied into that.

CG: Sure. And postseason.

BN: It’s a physically demanding job and you don’t see — any more — umpires who seem to be as out of shape as some of them looked 20 or 30 years ago. Do you guys end up working out on a regular kind of basis?

LD: He runs like six or seven miles every day.

CG: I just ran eight miles today. Go for a jog. I work out usually…try to do at least six, depending on travel. Sometimes five.

BN: Hotel gyms?

LD: That’s one of the reasons we like the Hyatts. They have a pretty nice gym. This one has a nice gym and a pool. Minnesota has a real nice gym, big gym and a pool, and a basketball court and a boxing ring.

CB: Twenty-five years ago, they didn’t have a medical director. We have a medical director, Mark Letendre. If you have a head blow, if you take a foul ball off the mask, you have a text message before you even get off the field, and you have to call and check in.

BN: For concussion.

CB: Concussions. Any time you have any injury, you have people from the ballpark who will stop by and check on you. They’ll have different physical therapies for you. And the nutrition part of it’s changed, I think night and day from 25 years ago. In the ballpark, most of the time it’s healthier foods. Postgame meals, I think, are healthier. In the offseason, too, they’ll have outfits if you’re overweight and you need to see somebody — a nutritionist — they’ll take care of all that. They want us to be healthy and in shape.

BN: It can be dangerous if you’re not. And it also maybe doesn’t look as good.

LD: There’s also Mackie Shilstone out of New Orleans, who’s kind of our guru nutritionist guy. In January, we go to a retreat. He has a place in New Orleans and if you need to go, you can stay there for a week. They have a hotel or something and you go through a training process and an eating process. And you can take your wife and you’ll get up and you’ll go through your different work exercises. Then you’ll have a good breakfast, and a snack, and have a good lunch and then some more exercise. You get your routine, along with your wife — meals and exercise and all that, so that way when you get back home, you continue that same process. He’s got several books out. He’s trained boxers….

CG: Venus Williams.

LD: A lot of athletes go to him to get into shape.

BN: Did you ever work in the same ballpark in back-to-back series?

LD: Every series you’re in a different park. We used to do that in the minor leagues, but not here.

CB: The only time would be if we’re working San Francisco, Oakland. We won’t work in the same park.

LD: Maybe we’ll have a three-game set here and Monday will be a day game where they’ll start a four-game set — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Let’s say the Yankees are coming in and they’re playing an afternoon game on Monday at 1, and the crew that’s coming in for that four-game set is not able to make it, we’ll stay for that one game and then we’ll leave for wherever we’re going to go for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

CG: It’s pretty rare that you will see the same team even within the next two weeks. We won’t see Boston for at least two more weeks; we might not even see them for the rest of the year.

BN: This is the second time you’ve been here this year and you might be back….

CG: This is it. We’re not coming back to Boston.

LD: We miss seven stadiums this year. We miss Wrigley, Yankee Stadium, Philly, Tampa, Houston, Atlanta, and DC. We miss those seven stadiums this year.

BN: I’m surprised you’re missing that many.

LD: Usually, it’s not that many. Usually it’s three or four, but this year we miss seven.

BN: You guys all go to New York for replay?

LD: Yes.

BN: As a crew?

LD: As a crew.

BN: When you’re there, will all of you be….

LD: In the room together?

BN: Or maybe just or three of you.

LD: There’s two crews in there. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, there are 15 games.

BN: There’s a lot of games, and there’s East Coast games and West Coast games.

LD: Mondays and Thursdays are usually travel days/off days. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, everybody plays. I’d say Tuesdays and Fridays are the most hectic days in there because everybody starts to play.

CB: We work in shifts, four to five hours. Or if you’re working the West Coast…I call them the graveyards, they’re start at 10 or 11 and you go 15, 16 innings, you’re in there until 4 in the morning.

LD: We’re in Miami Labor Day weekend, and we go in to replay Labor Day Monday. I’ve already talked to the people at replay. I’m driving home from Miami to Orlando and I’m going to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning and catch the first flight out to be there for 1 o’clock, because there’ll be a lot of day games. I told them already, I’ll take the West Coast games, the late shift. That way, I can get up at 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock.

CG: Here’s the whole schedule for the year. [Displays schedule.]

BN: I’m not supposed to see that.

CG: After the first night, they know you’re in town anyway.

LD: Sometimes they post it anyway, right on the scoreboard.

CB: Minor leagues.

LD: Umpire hotel sponsored by….

BN: [to Laz] You started as an American League umpire. [To Chris] And you started as a Major League umpire.

CG: The first year, 2000, through spring training, I worked National League and American. That’s the year they combined the two.

BN: You talked about wearing a black uniform. What’s the last year you actually wore blue? American League umpires were wearing red jackets for a while there.

LD: We wore dark blue and red, in the American League.

BN: You always hear people yell, “Hey, Blue!” And I’m thinking, yeah, maybe 20 years ago.

LD: We still got the blue… [indicated shirt hanging in locker]. We always wear black. I remember being at first base one time and, “Hey, Blue! You missed that call.” I look at him, like, “I missed the call?” “Yeah.” “You say I’m blind?” “Yeah, Blue, you missed it.” “You’re one who’s blind, because I’m wearing black.” After that, they don’t say anything.

OK, now, can we call them black?

BN: Well, you don’t want people calling you black, because that causes another problem.

LD: If they’re going to call me Blue, but I’ve got a black shirt. There’s some guys that are, “You know what? You’re right. Hey, Black, you missed that call!”

BN: What made you first get into umpiring? What made you choose this as a profession?

Clint Fagan: I went to a college umpire camp because I wanted to learn how to umpire. I played high-school ball. I started doing it through college as a part-time profession, just to help pay bills and tuition. I ended up running into a major-league umpire, Eddie Hickox, and David Rackley. They asked me if I ever thought about going to umpire school. I said, “No, I’m just graduating college and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I said, “Sure, I’ll go.” I got a business degree from the University of Houston. After that, it was all downhill. They gave me all the information. I graduated in December and I went the next month, in January. 2005.

BN: When you say it’s all downhill, then there’s a long uphill. One you’re still going through right now. And I guess, Cory, you say you spent like five years or so doing what Clint’s doing now?

CB: Yeah, I spent 12 full years in the minor leagues. In his position, four or five years. [Before that] lower minor leagues, working your way up.

BN: When you’re here working in the major leagues, you get the same per diem everybody else gets.

CF: Yeah. The per diem rate is the same across the board.

BN: What about when you’re in the minor leagues?

CF: Different. It’s a different contract.

BN: When you first came up and joined a major-league crew, was there any kind of hazing or anything? Here you’re a tighter and smaller crew than on a ball team.

CF: No. No type of hazing. You get your chops busted a little bit because you’re the young guy, but no hazing. It’s all in fun.

BN: What do they do to bust your chops? You don’t wear pink backpacks or anything like that.

LD: Mostly talk. In here. In years past, the young guy…they’re supposed to get all the towels. So if there’s a young guy here, one of us will go get all the towels. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get the towels.” Then the other guys will say later, “You let the crew chief go get the towels?”

That was a big thing back in the day, especially in the National League. In the National League, the young umpire had to go get the towels. The young umpire was the last one to shower. The young umpire was the last one to sit at the table and eat. Routine. Not so much in the American League, but in the National League.

BN: That’s one of the things I want to talk with Ted Barrett about next weekend, what it was like between the two leagues. I guess there used to be some rivalry between the two leagues. It almost doesn’t make sense.

LD: It used to be.

CG: That’s called pride.

BN: But basically you find that the more senior umpires are really helping you learn the ropes.

CF: Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s no way you can work in the big leagues without getting advice from the guys who have been here. You wouldn’t survive.

BN: You’d go to different cities you hadn’t been to before, so you’d just sort of tag along and go where people suggest.

CF: Absolutely.

BN: And you’re working in a brighter spotlight, too.

CF: That’s true. Very true. It’s a lot different than working in Triple A. Absolutely.

BN: What are one or two of the ways you say it might be different?

CF: I’d say the play is better. There’s not as many mental mistakes that the players go through, or the manager. As to yourself, you don’t want to make those type of mental mistakes. The physical is the same, but the mental aspect of the game is more…captivating. You’ve got to be on every pitch, every play. You can’t drop a second while you’re out there.

BN: And every game is televised, which probably isn’t always true in the minor leagues. I guess it depends on the level.

CF: I think Triple A they have a video on every game, but it’s just for in-house. It’s not broadcast nationally, or regionally.

BN: Have you already worked some games in the minors this year?

CF: Yes, I worked a couple.

BN: And you may work another few as things progress?

CF: Yeah, I kind of move around.

LD: Hopefully not!

CF: Yeah, hopefully not, but sometimes you’re switching crews and there’s breaks and stuff and sometimes you just go down for a while. It’s part of the system.

When you go down, you work twice as hard.

BN: Why?

CF: Because you set an example for young guys. You set an example. This is a profession that’s seniority-based. You don’t want to come down and big-league it or anything like that, so you work twice as hard when you go down.

BN: That makes a lot of sense. There are guys who have never been up.

CF: Exactly. And you want to teach them the ropes and give them the opportunity, and pass down what was passed down to you.

LD: And shame on the guys who go down to Triple A and don’t do that. A lot of guys when I came up, they would go down and would not pass on the information, being that they were probably uncertain of themselves or whatever the case might be.

BN: Well, going back in history with ballplayers, the veteran ballplayers would almost always freeze out the young guys because they were afraid of having their job taken. I was wondering about that here, the way you get graded on everything. You’re all trying to get better. They want you to get better, or stay at the level that works for them. But with the grading system, do you find that some people don’t get promoted?

CB: Are you talking about from the minor leagues to the big leagues, or up the big-league ladder?

BN: I’m talking about actually once you’re in the major leagues and you’re being graded. Or if you’re filling in and being graded. What happens if you get bad grades? I know what can happen in other jobs.

LD: A bad grade for us, when you average it out, is still a 96 or a 97. Doctors aren’t that good.

Somebody’s got to be at the bottom of the barrel. And if you’re at the bottom of the barrel with a 95, it’s kind of hard for them to say, “Hey, you’re 95. You’re going to get fired.” If you’re 85 and the next one above you is 93, then there’s a gap. But when you’ve got 95.2, 95.3, 95.7, 96, 97, and the highest one is 98, and you’ve got 76 of us….

BN: So there’s not that many guys who wash out, because that would have happened well before.

CG: There’s never been an umpire fired, ever, within the recent…for performance.

BN: That says a lot for getting to this point. Let me ask you, Cory, how you got started umpiring.

CB: I was 14 or 15 when my dad said, “If you want to get a car when you’re 16, you’ve got to get a job.” So I got a job at Target. I was working at Target, working eight-hour days or more and making very little money after taxes. I was working inside, and didn’t really care for it. My dad was a longtime high-school umpire in the State of Colorado for 20-plus years and he asked why I don’t umpire. I said I never really thought about it. I took a course and got into umpiring and I was 14 or 15, working Little League games. I worked eight-hour days there and made a heck of a lot more money doing that. I really liked the job. The next summer, I started getting into high-school ball, in the summer leagues. I promised my dad two years of college before I decided to go to umpire school or not. I wanted to go right out of high school but he said, “Go to college for a couple of years and make that decision.” I went to Colorado State University and then two years later went to umpire school in 2002, and here I am, 14 years later.

BN: It worked out.

CB: Yeah. Luckily.

BN: Economic questions can be kind of touchy sometimes. If you don’t mind, what is the per diem you all are getting? Are food and hotels separate?

CB: No, it’s four something, but we get taxed.

LD: 52% of our per diem is taxed. Let’s say we get an even number of $400 a day. Fifty-two percent of that is taxed, which is $208. So we get $192 cash money and the other money is taxed.

CB: It sounds like a really large number, but after tax we get close to 4. It’s the high 390s, I think. The first night here, we stayed at this hotel, with us working out that multiple people would be staying here…$299 for the first night.

CG: $340 with taxes.

BN: That’s pretty close to breakeven, then, with food and all.

All: Yeah.

CB: It sounds like a large number and people think you’re going to pocket some of that money, but in the bigger cities — Boston, New York…it evens out. You may go over your per diem.

BN: It’s the same per diem regardless of the city.

All: Yeah.

CB: So you may have a little extra from Cincinnati and St. Louis but then when you come to bigger cities, you’re paying more than your per diem. It evens out. You don’t really make any money off the per diem.

LD: Any umpire that thinks he’s going to make…you can, but you’re going to be staying at a Comfort Inn, a Holiday Inn Express, places like that.

CB: Another thing. We pay the clubhouse guy. We pay him between $60 and $100 a day. Per guy.

BN: That’s a pretty good job.

CG: Real good pay.

BN: He was telling me how he brings in food and all that, all on his own dime. He pays for all that.

CB: You’re making $300 a day or more. Up to $400, depending on the service.

BN: That’s why he’s been doing this since 1990, I guess.

CG: Yeah.

BN: You’ve got these chairs [pointing to chairs in the room, each of which has the Red Sox logo on their back and on the seat cushion], with the team logo on them.

CF: I didn’t notice that.

BN: I just wondered, why wouldn’t they have neutral chairs in here?

CB: We don’t care. It’s just a chair.

LD: They probably just order a whole bunch.

BN: Sure, but I thought MLB might frown on it.

LD: MLB doesn’t have to pay for it. These chairs are paid for by the Red Sox. They [MLB] don’t care where we sit.

BN: It’s just the visual, seeing team logos. I realize that…I’ve talked to a few umpires who, if you ask them after the game is over, it might take them a moment to remember which team won.

CB: Yeah. We don’t care.

LD: You come in here after the game, you take a shower, you go back to the hotel. You might sit at the hotel bar for a minute and the bartender…the bartender probably didn’t see the game, and he’d ask, “Who won?” Who did win? “What was the score?”

CB: It’s funny, too. We’ll get to the next city and you’ll get asked, “Where are you guys coming from?” We’ll all be looking at each other. We can’t even remember what city we were just in.

LD: We know more where we’re going next than where we just were.

BN: Your pay now is much better — maybe even double — what it was when you were starting off [asked of Laz]?

LD: When I started, it was 75 [thousand] for a first-year guy. 72. I don’t know what it is now. One something. [Over $100,000]

BN: So when you’re working in the major leagues and you were working in the minor leagues, that’s a big jump?

LD: Drastic.

CB: Probably quadruple.

CG: What would a Triple-A umpire, if you worked every game at Triple A….

CB: $3,400 is the max you can make a month.

CG: Times April, May, June, July, August, and a little bit of September.

CB: You don’t get paid in the winter. It’s just the months you’re working.

CG: $15,000.

CB: Yeah, it’s like, max.

CG: And you get a per diem of $40?

CF: You max out at $55.

LD: My last year at Triple A was $34.

CB: And Triple A is the highest you can go in the minor leagues. We all started out in rookie ball.

BN: That’s when you pay them per diem!

CF: Ed Hickox told me that when you reach the majors, it’s kind of like you’re getting back pay.

BN: So, let me ask you, Gooch — how’d you get started? You told me a little before.

CG: I grew up in a small town in Colorado. We didn’t have much baseball. We didn’t have any baseball in high school. Our last year of baseball was like a Babe Ruth at age 15, but in between then, I was already at the ballpark anyway with my brother, who was four years younger than me. I was umpiring Babe Ruth baseball even into high school. I was already there because my brother was playing and it was easy money. It was enough to buy fishing lures or fishing poles or whatever else garbage I could buy. So I did that for a lot of years. My best friend in high school, Chris Carson, his dad said, “Why don’t you guys go to umpire school?” I’d never heard of umpire school, didn’t know what it was about, never knew where it was. So he and I and his brother C.P., we all ended up taking a bus 52 hours from Salida, Colorado, to Kissimmee, Florida. That’s kind of how I started umpiring. The shorter version.

BN: You probably get asked this question a lot, but I better ask it. Sometimes you guys are out there four or more hours a night. What happens if you’ve gotta go?

CG: You leave. You just leave. You just run off. It takes you longer than the inning goes, you wait ‘til the next half-inning. And you work three-man. Very rarely, but it’s happened. You just wait out the half-inning.

BN [to Laz Diaz]: I wanted to ask you about the town in Cuba, if you could spell it for me.

LD: La Panchita.

BN: Are your parents still living?

LD: My mom is. My dad passed away three years ago.

BN: Did she go with you?

LD: Yeah. I was 15 years old the first time I went back. Then I joined the Marine Corps and I didn’t dare to go back until….

BN: Not in uniform anyway.

LD: Until now. This is the fourth time I’ve been.

BN: You’re fluent in Spanish.

LD: Yeah.

BN: What did your parents do before they came over here?

LD: My dad worked the sugar cane.

BN: Cutter?

LD: Yeah.

BN: That’s about as tough work as you can get.

[Shows on Google Maps, shows where his parents grew up, and even found a baseball field.]

BN: You like going back?

LD: I like it. There’s nothing to do. Your day consists of waking up and having a coffee, having breakfast, going on the porch and having a cigar. Then in the afternoon your cousins, they all come over from work or wherever they’re at. My uncle’s retired now so he’ll come by. You go to the little store that’s nearby, you buy a case of beer and bring it back to the house, you sit on the porch and have another cigar and tell stories and drink a couple of beers.

Havana’s about four or five hours away from my mom and dad were at. We used to fly to Havana. Now we fly into Santa Clara, which is an hour away.

BN: You mentioned Mackie Shilstone. He seems to cater to all sorts of athletes, but does he offer some umpire-specific programs?

CB: Fat camp.

LD: I’ve never been but from what they tell me the place he has is immaculate. They have a kitchen area. They’ve got cooks that can teach you and your wife how to cook. You just go down for a week, maybe 10 days.

BN: Mark Letendre who you mentioned, does he travel?

LD: No, he sees most of the crews when they go through Phoenix. He used to travel more but he slipped and fell and had a head injury. He had trouble with his equilibrium so he’s not traveling as much.

BN: It kind of impressed me. I went to look him up and I got onto an MLB umpires page and I saw the list of people, from Joe Torre on down, there’s a long list of people. That’s quite an investment they’re making to make sure that umpires are on the field and doing their job well.

LD: Mark Letendre has his hands full. When we get sick or we get hurt, they’re going to try to put us back on the field. When we’re not able to do that, they’re going to bring up minor-league guys to replace us, which dilutes the staff a little bit. They’ll keep pushing — “Hey, you need to get Clint on the field? What’s wrong with Cory?” He’s constantly calling — “Cory, how’s your knee? Have you been going to rehab? Have you been taking your pills?” He’s constantly calling Cory trying to get him back on the field. He’s getting pressure from the top to get him back on the field. He’s got a very difficult job. He’s between a rock and a hard place.

BN: Tell me how you got started.

LD: Well, I played high-school ball. Played college ball, and I played in the minor leagues, with the Twins organization. Shortstop/outfield. In ‘84. I got released at the end. In ‘85 I tried out with the Cardinals. Got hurt and left. Sat out ‘86. In ‘87 I went to spring training with the Yankees. They let me go and I said, “OK, I’m done.” That’s when I started umpiring. One of my best friends that I played baseball with, he was going through a divorce and he needed to make some extra money so he said, “Why don’t we do umpiring?” We were good friends. I said, “OK, we’ll go umpire.” We started with slow-pitch softball. We did beer leagues on weekends. Then we got into high-school ball and from high school we got into college. When I got my divorce, one of the guys who helped after I was going through my divorce said, “Hey, now that you’re divorced, you don’t have anything holding you back. Why don’t you go to umpire school?” And like Gooch, I didn’t know anything about umpire school. Didn’t know anything about nothing. I knew there was one in Cocoa. Joe Brinkman School. And the Harry Wendelstedt in Daytona. I knew what Cocoa was all about because that’s where there was minor-league spring training for the Twins. There was nothing there. No way I’m going back to Cocoa. It’s closer to Miami than Daytona, but you know what, if I’m going to go do this I’m at least going to have fun.

So I went to Daytona. I got lucky and blessed and came out of there as one of the top students and got a job, worked my way up, and here I am.

BN: How often do you go to replay?

LD: We go twice. We went in May and now we go in the middle part of September. There’s some crews, they go….

CB: Max is three weeks. When you go, it’s a week at a time. The crew chiefs can bid on what ones they want, by seniority. Some of those have three weeks. Some have two. One or two have two and a half.

BN: Now you three guys were on the same crew — were you on the same crew last year?

LD: No. I was with Jeff Nelson last year. He was the crew chief. Gooch, who were you with?

CG: Hallion.

CB: I was with Jimmy Joyce.

BN: And is that…can you assume that next year, you’ll all be on different crews?

CG: You can assume that. We could all four be back together, but it’s highly unlikely.

LD: Yeah. He’ll [CG] probably be a two man somewhere. Most definitely, he’ll be a two man somewhere. With his skills and everything, he’ll be a two man somewhere.

BN: You’re a number three right now.

CG: Yeah.

LD: Last year Mark Carlson was number three and now he’s a two man on another crew.

BN: They probably want to mix it up anyhow.

CB: Yeah.

LD: See, that’s one thing sometimes I don’t understand. If you’ve got a crew that gets along and you do well off the field, on the field, unless you’re going to promote him from three man to number-two man, why don’t you keep the same crew together?

If we’re gelling, we get along on the field, we get along off the field, we have fun, and we’re a good crew.

BN: The only reason I think they might want to do that is that they thought you might get stale somehow, or that there’d be some funny business going on. There was a thing with someone selling memorabilia some time ago.

LD: No, trust me, with Cory around, nothing gets….

CG, pointing to his chest protector: This is kind of my thing here. These are all the patches for people who have passed that have been umpires. Frank Pulli, Harry Wendelstedt, Marty Springstead, Wally Bell….

BN: People you worked with at one time or another.

CG: No, I never worked with Frank. I never worked with Harry. I never worked with Marty. Never worked with Wally. Shag Crawford, Sammy Holbrook.

LD: Those are just people who passed. [Points to the inside top of his trunk.] That’s a picture of my dad there, a patch for Wally Bell. And that patch used to be for Harry Wendelstedt. It’s upside down, because Michael Hirschbeck passed away last year. John Hirschbeck and I…worked with John together for so many years that I know his family very well, been in his house. So I looked at the patch and I turned it around. HW — MH. That’s a tribute to Michael Hirschbeck [John’s son]. When I went around the league last year, I asked all the clubbies if they still had Harry Wendelstedt patches, which they did. And I shipped them to….

CB: [talking about posing for a photo] I’ll get one rubbing a baseball.

CG: (laughs) You haven’t rubbed a baseball since Double A.

CB: Shall I do one with my mask on, since I usually work the plate?

BN: Fine with me! Fool around. You can take one in the shower. No…

LD: Sitting on the pot.

BN: Yeah, right. Thank you all again.

 

BILL NOWLIN, known to none as “The Old Arbiter” since he has never worked a game behind the plate, still favors the balloon chest protector for its nostalgic aesthetics. Aside from a dozen years as a college professor, his primary life’s work was as a co-founder of Rounder Records (it got him inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame). He’s written or edited more than 50 books, mostly on baseball, and has been on the Board of Directors of SABR since the magic Red Sox year of 2004.