Umpiring in Cuba

 

Perhaps one of the most difficult umpiring jobs in the world is the one carried out in Cuba, where verbal abuse can come from the stands when a call is blown, or when a close play that has been called right negatively affects the home team. When taking on umpires, Cuban fans can be really virulent.

With a very modest salary and no union, umpires are prone to be constantly put under the microscope by the fans, the players, the managers, and the media. Since they do not have leadership separate from the Cuban Baseball Federation, they have exactly the same boss as the players, an almighty commissioner who makes decisions within games, stripping all authority from everyone, and creating a bad climate among the men in dark blue.

Cuban umpires have in Amado Maestri their most celebrated colleague, acknowledged more for his action in 1952 preventing a slaughter of university students protesting at Estadio del Cerro during the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista. A group of students from the University of Havana, led by student leader José Antonio Hecheverría, jumped into the field on Estadio del Cerro (now Estadio Latinoamericano) during a game, protesting the Batista regime, just a few months after he had led a coup d’état on March 10. The police stormed onto the field with the clear intention of clubbing the students to death. Maestri stood in the middle, stating that he was in charge of whatever happened on the field, and even though the police took the students away, no fatal incident took place at the ballpark. That day transcended so much politically, that even today November 23 is celebrated in Cuban baseball as the day of Cuban umpiring.

Maestri was indeed known for his authority on the field. He even went as far as ejecting Mexican League President Jorge Pasquel (the guy who once intended to challenge the American major leagues) from a game in the Mexican League on June 5, 1945, despite knowing that this could possibly come back to hurt him.

Another umpire embraced in Cuba for nonbaseball-related events during games was César Valdés. During the “friendship series” between Cuba and the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards in 1999, Valdés physically threw down a man who entered the field making noise and carrying a sign offensive to the Cuban Revolution

But more than those moments of praise, it has been the infamous moments surrounding umpires due to the lack of comprehension and the inborn hostility toward them that has marked them in Cuba.

There was a time in the mid-1960s when, after arguing a call, catcher Ramón Primelles punched umpire Alfredo Paz. This led to a one-year suspension for all-time great Manuel Alarcón (who retired at 27 holding almost every major pitching record in the National Series). And there were the recent unfortunate incidents of the 2012-2013 season, which may well stick in the fans’ memory and haunt umpires for years to come.

The recent incidents started on Sunday, December 22, 2013, when Ciego de Avila’s Vladimir García plunked Villa Clara’s Ramón Lunar, who had been tormenting Ciego de Avila’s pitching. Instantly after the beanball, home-plate umpire Lorién Lobaina ejected the hurler; he believed García had thrown at Lunar. Claiming that no warning notice had been issued, Ciego de Avila’s manager, Roger Machado, withdrew his team from the field and refused to play. Rules state that when that happens, the umpires have a given time (not to exceed five minutes) to forfeit the game to the other team. Yet, an unprecedented occurrence took place, altering forever not only the outcome of that game, but also the way umpires would work for the rest of the season.

Cuban Baseball Federation President Higinio Vélez, then commissioner of Cuban baseball,1 made a phone call and persuaded Machado to take the field again, even though the time for forfeit had been long reached (28 minutes had passed since Machado had withdrawn his team). At the same time, he had umpire Lobaina removed from the game in one of the most disrespectful things ever to happen to a Cuban umpire in the long history of the game on the island.

The next time Lunar and García met was in the second round of that season. Machado’s team had not made it to the Top Eight, and García was acting as a reinforcement for Pinar del Río,2 The first pitch he threw to Lunar was a second straight plunking. This time the hitter jumped at the pitcher. Only Lunar was ejected, despite the earlier history, and Villa Clara’s manager, Ramón Moré, then defending champion, didn’t cause as much of a commotion as Machado had.

Cuban umpires felt caught in the middle of a very bad situation: ejecting a key pitcher of the national team (García had been a member of the World Baseball Classic team) would probably lead to a scene by the manager, and then to a phone call that would end the umpire’s night.

It all reached a low in the night of February 17, 2014, when an unusually wild Freddy Asiel Álvarez (from Villa Clara, coincidentally) got a piece of Matanzas’s Yasiel Santoya, who had previously homered off him. In the heated environment, Álvarez delivered a brushback pitch against Víctor Mesa Jr., son of Víctor Mesa, manager of Matanzas and the Cuban team. Out of the dugout, bat in hand, came Demis Valdés, looking for Álvarez with the clear idea of murdering him. A melee ensued, and when the dust had settled, Ramón Lunar was lying face down with a serious blow to his mouth with the bat.

Umpire Osvaldo de Paula should have ejected the pitcher after the Santoya plunking. Yet, he was walking on thin ice given the fact that the previous similar incident had been costly for Lobaina. With no umpires’ union, and with the obvious need the commission had to punish someone (one might have thought Vélez would present his resignation), de Paula could not find defense, and was given a treatment similar to that of the players: a suspension for not having proven his authority.

Such an event definitely threw light on the biggest complaint Cuban umpires have, aside from wages: There is no union for the umpires to respond to and to be represented by. The fact that someone with power but little umpiring knowledge makes a phone call and disposes of an umpire at will is a dangerous situation, one that can only lead to other unfortunate events.

Even though Cuban umpires are accorded the respectful treatment of being provided a glass of water and a cup of coffee on a tray by a very beautiful attendant during the fifth-inning stretch, the reality of their work is very rough, and most of the times they are the weakest link of the chain, depending on who the transgressor is. Make it Roger Machado or Víctor Mesa, and we’ll have the umpire paying the price for it, since both are commission favorites.

Umpires are trained first in their province and later on in the national umpiring school, and they need to officiate many games at lower-level tournaments (Provincial and National School Games, Provincial Series, and so on) before making it to the National Series. Many of them begin as substitutes before getting a so-called full-time umpiring job, for 32.00 national pesos per game (the equivalent of $1.42 US). Even though many things in Cuba are subsidized, that is still a very low income. (On September 27, 2013, the Cuban government announced a new system to pay athletes better, but did little for umpires.)

Umpires are closely evaluated. Every game is monitored and assessed by a technical commission, making sure that the umpires work properly and call the game the way it should be. That commission gives a game evaluation to every umpire, based on the accuracy of his calls and the control he kept of the game, and all that is kept in a file for the whole season.

The aggressiveness of players can also be a problem; there is often a tendency to protest every decision an umpire makes. We have even seen a hurler protesting a call and a hitter doing exactly the same thing on two different pitches during the same at-bat. Nevertheless, all these events could be prevented or stopped with an umpires’ union that looked after their rights and protected their authority. Maestri’s ejection of Pasquel some 70 years ago is not something that could happen in Cuba today.

 

Notes

1 Right now, Cuban Baseball is divided into two: the Cuban Baseball Federation, which handles mainly issues regarding the Cuban National Team, contract signings, and relations with foreign bodies; and the Baseball National Direction, which handles the Cuban National Series and the rest of the domestic baseball activities.

2 After the 2012-2013 season, the Cuban Baseball National Series changed its format into a two-round tournament in which the top eight teams advance to the second round, each drafting five players from the remaining eight teams.