A Visit to the Wendelstedt Umpire School in 2017

 

After interviewing so many umpires, and hearing about their experiences in umpire school, and reading Shaun McCready’s wonderful blog, I figured the final thing I needed to do to try to bring this SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring to completion was to see where modern professional umpiring all begins.

Hunter Wendelstedt invited me to visit after his umpire school began in January 2017, and I took him up on it, flying to Daytona Beach, Florida, and visiting the school for parts of three days from January 12-14. It was an enlightening experience.

The school has turned out umpires for all levels — some make it all the way to the big leagues, but of course there simply aren’t that many openings. Others find slots in the minor leagues. Many go on to work in college or high-school ranks, some working in multiple sports. It was evident to me within just a couple of hours that a certificate of graduation from the school really meant something and would be an asset valued in many walks of life.

A quick count of today’s 76 current major-league umpires shows that 39 of them are graduates of the Wendelstedt School or its predecessor Al Somers School.

This session had 139 students enrolled, 132 of them for the full course. (Two of them, including the only woman in the course, had signed up for two weeks.) There were three students from the Korean professional league. Six or seven were returning students, coming back for a second year. The students ranged in age from 16 to their early 60s. In the past, the school has had students as old as their early 70s. Almost every one of them — realistically or otherwise — declared they were seeking a position in professional baseball. There has been at least one student in recent years who was as old as 45, and ultimately hired by professional baseball.

The days are not easy. Classroom work on the 13th started at 9:00 A.M. and ran until nearly 1:00, with just over 30 minutes for lunch, and then fieldwork that ran until close to 6:00 P.M. Dinner is 7 to 8 and then most students join in study groups in the evenings. There is one day off, Sundays.

The cost to attend is $3,200 and you get a lot for your money. Even leaving aside the most important part — instruction and training by a dedicated, hardworking group of around 25 or 26 instructors — each student receives room and board, and umpire school gear — four shirts, a rule book, a tote bag. The school provides 20 meals a week for students (only Sunday lunch is not included in tuition) and 32 nights at the hotel. We stayed at the Best Western Castillo del Sol at Ormond Beach. You can look it up on the internet — this is indeed a beachfront hotel. Sometimes students hit the beach in the evenings, working on stances and the like.

It’s about a 20-minute ride to the sports complex where the school is based. A classroom building and four baseball fields are utilized. The fields are for demonstrations and drills, and part of me was surprised to see the level of detail. Nearly an hour was spent on demonstrating the way an umpire should properly handle a discarded bat near the plate when runners are on the bases, and might come home to score — without taking your eye off the ball.

For 2016 the school added a doctor to the staff, Steven Dorsey. He took the course with his son, Harley Acosta, in 2016, and enjoyed the experience so much that he returned on staff in 2017. Harley was hired by Minor League Baseball. Steven wanted to come back. He’d seen a need — for students to improve their stretching and conditioning and for the occasional problem. Someone had collapsed on the field in 2016 and it took 20 minutes for EMS personnel to arrive. Steve told Wendelstedt, “If you will allow me to come here and lead a Bible study — that’s the reason I got into medicine, to open that door for me — I will come here and help you with your medical needs.” It’s a win-win. He’s a volunteer, the school covering his expenses. “I don’t want a salary,” he added, “This is just an extension of my missionary work.”1 Every day there are one or two things. The day I arrived, student Jeff Diosi suffered strained ligaments that put him on crutches. Another had very low blood pressure, with “complaints that were consistent with a neurologic deficit.” Fortunately, he tested OK after being transported to the emergency room.

This is a school with a long tradition. Before it was the Wendelstedt School, it was the Al Somers School, and before that Bill McGowan’s — started in 1938/39. Reverence for history was one thing that struck me right away. Students were told that their first test was going to be at the end of the classwork on Friday the 13th. During the course, they were taught about the two-man system with a runner on second base. They were taught about the infield-fly rule, taught the discretion involved in how many pitches to allow a pitcher brought in unexpectedly (perhaps to replace an injured pitcher), taught about the 12-second rule, what constitutes a quick pitch, about the rosin bag, why an umpire’s judgment call cannot be wrong (it’s his judgment), and more. So what was the quiz about?

The students had all been assigned to 15 working groups for the course as a whole — the Chylak Group, the Froemming Group, Hubbard, Klem, etc. — each named after a noted past umpire. The quiz was, unexpectedly, for each group to get together and then identify images projected onto the screen at the front of the room. Each image was of a former umpire. There were five multiple-choice questions, and each group needed to come up with an answer and key it into an app on their phones. There were 10 images. The winning group was the McGowan Group, with a perfect 10-for-10. I didn’t fare as well myself; I was only 8-for-10 (but plead interference in one of the two I got wrong — I couldn’t see the fifth name at the bottom of the screen and that’s who it was.)

Was there any reason that students planning to umpire contemporary ballgames in the twenty-first century should be able to pick out a face of an umpire who worked 80 or 100 years earlier? The reason I was given made perfect sense to me. Umpires need to stick together. They need first of all to respect the profession and each other, and a respect for those who came before and excelled is an important part of building on a tradition.

The chief of instruction at the school is Brent Rice, a former student at the school and someone who Hunter Wendelstedt said was “a real asset to the program, one of the best teachers of baseball I’ve ever seen.”2

Brent Rice comes from Michigan and had been instructing at the Wendelstedt School for 17 years, the last eight of them as chief of instruction. He first attended the school at age 18, graduated, and put in his time in the minor leagues, getting as high as Double A. Much of his work is administrative and it’s year-round work, though he does some forensic work for an accounting firm and a private investigation firm. He oversees the staff of 25 or so, several of whom are returnees. Junior Valentine was there, instructing for his sixth year. Brian Carnahan would be working Triple-A ball this year, in the International League; he’s got a degree in environmental economics in case somehow umpiring doesn’t work out.

Rice is, I observed, an exceptional teacher with a sense of perspective and good humor, and yet displays the clarity, certitude, and forcefulness it takes to command the attention of nearly 150 students for a couple of hours at a time, in the classroom or during demonstrations and drills on the fields, without allowing “drill-itis” to creep in. The demonstrative gestures we see umpires make are no accident; the students are taught to make calls loudly and aggressively — and to “sell the call.” As he explained, “We’re definitely a different group. A lot of Type-A personalities — and we’re dealing with other Type-A personalities” in baseball’s highly competitive ballplayers and managers.

Umpires are taught, though, to always keep their chest to the ball, and never to rush their mechanics.

I told him that most of the games I see are big-league games, and that it was an eye-opener to see the instruction for two-man crews, to see how much more work there seemed to be for umpires working (as all students initially will) in two-man crews.

Rice said, “Way more! Now, in some aspects, it’s easier, though. You don’t have a lot of gray areas. One umpire does this, and there’s only one other umpire so that umpire does that. There are a lot of good things in the two-umpire system. We say that in the two-umpire system, a lot of it is just black and white. You do this; I do that. In the three-umpire system, it becomes a lot more about verbal communication. You’re rotating, and you’re covering up for another umpire, and so a lot of it’s verbal communication. Yelling on the field and communicating with each other. With the four-umpire system, when they get there, there’s obviously verbal communication involved, but it’s a lot more visual communication.”3

There are a lot more people in the stands in major-league ballparks. It’s much louder.

“That’s right. It’s more of a looking at each other. Pre-pitch signals to determine what’s going to happen. Four-man is more difficult in some ways, because you have a lot more things that you could end up doing. Your responsibilities change simply on where the ball is hit. In the two-umpire system, OK, it’s hit there. This is where I go. But you’re definitely covering a lot more of the field when you’re in the two-umpire system.”

The basics are the basics, though, and the class was building from the two-man system, on up. Major-league umpires Dana DeMuth and Ed Hickox were at school for the duration. Dana, who had first attended the school in 1976, the year before Al Somers sold it to Harry Wendelstedt, told me that what I was seeing was more or less akin to observing students finish elementary school. Were I to come back in three weeks, he said, I’d be impressed at the tremendous progress the students had made.4

Hunter Wendelstedt expressed his feelings that the Class of 2017 was one of the best he’s seen, “a class like I’ve never seen in terms of their work ethic.” That will just make it more difficult for the staff in the end. “Our evaluation day is the hardest day for us. You have to look somebody in the eye and say, ‘Your highest level is going to be high school. You can work high school and you’re going to do good but don’t try and do college.’ And that’s really hard to do.” And when it comes right down to it, there may be far more people truly qualified to start working in professional baseball — but only so many openings.

There’s good news for some, though. In fact, just a day or so before I arrived, Wendelstedt explained, “We have a couple of kids — instructors — who just found out they’re getting big-league spring training. Rich Rieker and Ed Rapuano came and they told the kids they were going to big-league spring. They worked in the Fall League. They’re going to get the opportunity to work spring-training games and then if they’re successful, they might get the opportunity to fill in at the major-league level this year. So it’s a pretty exciting time for them. Their dream started here, coming through these doors, and now there are big-league supervisors on these fields saying. ‘You know what? We’re going to give you a shot.’ I find that pretty cool.”

 

Notes

1 Author interview with Dr. Steven Dorsey, January 13, 2017.

2 Author interview with Hunter Wendelstedt, January 12, 2017.

3 Author interview with Brent Rice, January 12, 2017.

4 Author interview with Dana DeMuth, January 13, 2017.