What’s In the Water in Coldwater, Michigan?

Coldwater, Michigan had a population of 10,945 at the time of the 2010 United States census. Founded in 1861, the city is the county seat of Branch County and sits more or less 65 miles due north of Fort Wayne, Indiana on I-69. It is also the home of three major-league baseball umpires: Tim Welke, Bill Welke, and Jeff Kellogg.

Of the 76 big-league umpires, three came from the state of California, and three came from Coldwater.1

As it happens, so did Jim Curtiss who played center field in 27 games for the Cincinnati Reds back in 1891 and Alice Haylett who pitched for the Grand Rapids Chicks in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1946-49. Her 25-5 record in 1948 with an ERA of 0.77 earned her All-Star and Pitcher of the Year honors.

Tim Welke was born in Pontiac in 1957, but the family moved to Coldwater and he graduated from Coldwater High. Tim umpired his first major-league games in 1983 for the American League and worked 4,213 games through 2015. After having knee surgery in January 2016, and with surgery for the other knee scheduled for June, Tim was on the disabled list for all of 2016.

Tim’s younger brother Bill was born in Coldwater itself, in 1967. His first of more than 2,000 games in the big leagues also came with the A.L., in 1999.

Jeff Kellogg is also a Coldwater native, born in 1961. Jeff was a National League umpire before the leagues merged, working his first four games in 1991. He’s now worked over 3,000 games.

When Bill Welke married Jeff’s younger sister Teri (Teresa), the families became united through marriage. ‘But for the record,” Bill points out, “I was dating her before Jeff went to umpire school. Small town. The Kellogg family and the Welke family, they had eight kids and we had seven kids.”2

The three knew each other to some extent while growing up. Jeff and Teri’s father Wayne Kellogg coached for many years and for the last 20 years or so has been athletic director at Coldwater High School. Jeff says, “I actually graduated with one of the Welke sisters and then I wrestled with one of the other brothers.”3

All three went to Coldwater High. Tim, the eldest, played sports all through high school and went to umpire school at age 19. Following his retirement at the end of the 2016 season, one of his goals in life is to go back and finish getting a college degree. Tim said that his and Bill’s father worked for the State Highway Department of Michigan. “He built roads and bridges and at the end of his career he was in charge of the entire department and worked out of Lansing. I got my work ethic from him.”4 Tim was the oldest of seven Welke children and Bill was the youngest. Coming up in baseball, with a brother who’d started umpiring in the majors 16 years earlier, a player might ask Bill if they were related. “I’d say, ‘Distantly.’ He’d say, ‘Distantly?’ and I’d say, ‘Yeah, there’s five kids between us.’”

With the age difference, Tim had left home to go to umpire school when Bill was only 8 years old. Bill said, “From the age of 8, I was more interested in following the umpires than following the teams. I’ve really been an umpire fan since I was 8 or 9 years old.” But Bill didn’t automatically follow in his brother’s footsteps, and Tim certainly didn’t encourage him. “I went to Western Michigan and got a business degree. I was thinking about quitting college to go to umpire school and give it a try. I had done some umpiring around home and I really enjoyed it, so I said something to Tim about it and he said, ‘If you quit college, I’m not going to help you.’” That came about in time, after graduation. “He gave me a lot of good advice and some used uniforms, and I went off to umpire school.”

When Bill joined Tim as fellow A.L. umpires, they were on the same crew for some time under crew chief Jim Evans. Bill knew he wanted to be seen as his own man, and shared that with Evans from the start. Evans told him, “I’d love to have you come and be one of us,” but acknowledged, “It’ll probably put you under more scrutiny.”5 There was remarkably little backlash. Bill recalls one story: “I was in Tampa and I had a chopper in front of the plate, the catcher came out to field it, and the batter ran into him and I called interference. Lou Piniella’s managing Tampa. He came out and put on this little show. Tim’s the chief and Tim walks out. I said, “There’s a time for Lou to either get ejected if he wants to get ejected, or leave.” So Tim comes down and talks to Lou and tried to get Lou going, and Lou starts and then stops and he says, “Oh, this is bullshit.” He starts walking back and then he stops and turns and looks at Tim and I and goes, “I think I’m getting brothered here.” And then just walked away.”

Tim recalled, “We had a few years when we worked together as partners, which was good. We worked together for a few years and then I just kinda felt that maybe it would be better for his career if he worked with different people also, not just see it from his big brother’s standpoint…Working with different people helps you become a better umpire because you see different ways to do things.” It probably made the powers that be a little happier, Bill suggested: “I don’t think baseball was crazy about it [being together on the same crew.]”

He added, “The first couple of years, I got called ‘Tim’ all the time. After about four or five years, someone would call Tim ‘Bill’ and I knew I’d arrived when they started calling Tim ‘Bill.’ I really enjoyed working with him, but I think it was time to move on. You don’t want to be in anybody’s shadow.”

All in all, Bill said, “This is the best way to sum it up: when we’re on the field, we’re two umpires who happen to be brothers, and off the field we’re two brothers who just happen to be umpires.”

Jeff had known that Tim was umpiring, of course, but Tim was significantly older. “I knew him, but I didn’t know him,” he says. Jeff had gone to college at Central Michigan, then transferred into a Criminal Justice program at Ferris State. One day, he remembers, “I was watching the Saturday Game of the Week and the home plate umpire walked out to the mound to break up a conversation, and it was Tim. I was like, ‘Holy cow! He’s in the big leagues.’”

Jeff graduated and worked for about a year for the Sheriff’s Department in Coldwater, but then decided he wanted to check out umpire school himself.

“I’ve worked postseason with Jeff a couple of times,” says Tim. “We had a World Series together and a couple of other events, but we’ve never been on the same [regular-season] crew.” Both are crew chiefs now.

Jeff says, regarding the three of them. “We all together over the holidays. We might talk a little shop, but otherwise we’re talking about anything but baseball. Especially football season. We all enjoy football so we’ll talk football. It depends on the time of year.”

As it happens, there’s a fourth major-league umpire in the area. Scott Barry was born in 1976 in Battle Creek, about 40 miles from Coldwater, but grew up in Quincy, which is, Jeff says, “right next door. It’s right off Route 12, which runs right through Coldwater. It’s 5-10 minutes away. It’s right up the road.” Scott umpired his first big-league games as a fill-in umpire in 2006 and joined the major-league staff in 2011. So three major-league umpires come from all of California, but four grew up within a short bicycle ride of each other in Branch County, Michigan.

Note: Midland isn’t next door, but it’s where Paul Emmel was born. He graduated from Central Michigan University. D. J. Reyburn was born in Grand Rapids and graduated from Olivet College.

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.

 

Notes

1 The California natives are Bill Miller, Mark Ripperger, and Mike Winters.

2 Author interview with Bill Welke, September 22, 2015. All quotations from Bill come from this interview.

3 Author interview with Jeff Kellogg, September 21, 2016. All quotations come from this interview.

4 Author interview with Tim Welke, July 30, 2015. All quotations come from this interview.

5 Author interview with Bill Welke.