An Umpire’s Fan Club
This article was written by Larry Gerlach
This article was published in The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring
Henry “Hank” Morgenweck had a brief but highly unusual major-league career (1970, 1972-1975). He has the unique distinction not only of beginning and ending his career umpiring a league championship game—in each league—but also having a national fan club. Morgenweck debuted in the National League on October 3, 1970, when as a International League umpire he was called upon to work second base in the first game of the Cincinnati and Pittsburgh series owing to the one-day strike of the regular umpires. After joining the American League staff in 1972, he called two no-hitters — Dick Bosman in 1974 and Nolan Ryan in 1975 — before his contract was not renewed without explanation after umpiring the 1975 championship series between Oakland and Boston.
Morgenweck wondered if the reason(s) for his dismissal may have been confrontations about pitcher Gaylord Perry allegedly throwing spitballs, the failure to eject anyone in 1975, a controversial base call late that season or simply that umpire supervisor Dick Butler didn’t like him.1 But he believed there was another factor: “I had a national fan club that started in Cleveland. At the end of one season, I was invited to Cleveland to speak to a group. Butler intervened, and Ron Luciano was sent in my place. I don’t know why but I believe the fact I had a national fan club was one of the reasons the league did not renew my contract after 1975.”2
A fan club notwithstanding, his surname spelling was problematic. On May 3, while Morgenweck was positioned at second base, the Cleveland scoreboard welcomed the Hank “Morganweck” fan club; even his fan club, present with a banner, similarly misspelled his name. Then, at the beginning of the Oakland-Boston playoffs the Red Sox publicity department incorrectly spelled it “Norganweck.”3
Virtually nothing is known about the fan club, but Morgenweck provided a few details in response to a letter of inquiry in 2003 about the club from John Toland, “a lifelong Indians fan.”4
“Dear John,
The fan club start as a joke when one group took of picture of me and had it put on pins and another group had T-shirts made up—“Hank Morgenweck Fan Club.”
Both groups got together and formed the club. Herb Score [Cleveland radio broadcaster] found about it and whenever I umpired a Cleveland game in another city he would mention it. The club as a result took off and became a National Fan Club.
It alienated me from members of the staff, but if that’s what it took just being nice to fans, signing autographs, I could care less.
Hank Morgenweck”
Depicted here is Paul Horton of Connecticut obtaining an autograph from umpire James Hoye prior to the September 24, 2015 game at Fenway Park.
Horton comes up to about a dozen games a year and always asks for the umpires to autograph something for him. He says he has about 40 or 50 autographs of current umpires at this point. Some, of course, are friendlier than others.
He will also ask for player autographs, too, when he can.
Once in a while, he will see someone else ask the umpires to sign something, but very rarely.
He values their work as an integral part of the game, and finds himself sometimes watching the umpires more than the game. He enjoys watching them work, the different ways that umpires make strike calls, for instance.
He is a distant relative of Canadian hockey great Tim Horton.
LARRY GERLACH, a member since 1979, has served SABR as president and founder of the Umpires and Rules Committee. Emeritus Professor of History, University of Utah, he has written extensively on his two historical loves, the American Revolution and baseball. The latter work includes The Men in Blue: Conversations With Umpires.
Notes
1 He had three ejections in 1972, four in 1973 and one in 1974.
2 “Hank Morgenweck” in John C. Skipper, Umpires; Classic Baseball Stories from the Men Who Made the Calls (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1977), 112-113. See also his obituary in The Record [Bergen County, New Jersey], August 9, 2007.
3 Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 4 and October 5, 1975.
4 Photocopy provided by James Odenkirk.