by Bob Gibson
Reggie Jackson
You’re not going to hit the ball if a guy’s throwing it ninety-five miles an hour and getting calls off the plate.
Bob Gibson
No, you’re sure not. But for every Ed Sudol, there’s an Al Barlick.
Al Barlick was very consistent, but he had a small plate. He never gave me a pitch.
And then there was Doug Harvey. He called himself God.
Doug Harvey used to drive me crazy. He was considered one of the greatest umpires of all time, but he had a very difficult strike zone. You’d throw a ball on the corner and he’d call it a ball, and you’d complain that it was on the black and he’d say, kind of smart-alecky, “The black is not a part of the plate.”
If the ball’s that close, they should be swinging at it.
Reggie Jackson
You have to be aware of everything to be a good hitter. You have to know if the umpire has a high strike zone, a low strike zone, or a wide strike zone, or if he calls one side of the plate better than the other.
Frankly, I like the fact that a hitter has to learn the umpires, just as he has to learn the pitchers. Every ump has a strike zone, and that’s part of the game. I think it’s a good part of the game.
Bob Gibson
It’s hard to judge or measure how much of a difference a guy like Harvey ultimately makes in the final outcome, but I was definitely more exhausted, mentally, after a game that he called. If I’ve got a Harvey back there, or a Barlick, I know I’m going to have to bring the ball over the plate to get a strike. That takes a toll, because I don’t want to bring the ball over the plate. I make my living by not doing that. If you throw the ball over the plate, hitters are going to hit it. If you have to do it, that puts you in a bind. It eats at your confidence. But if you don’t do it, you’re behind in the count. That’s not a very good arrangement for a pitcher.
Reggie Jackson
There are all kinds of umpires. Some are just bad umpires. Others want to put on a show, so you have to be mindful of that with two strikes because you know the guy’s looking to run out there and make a big call. There are umpires you can’t question, because if you do you’ll be paying for it the rest of the game. Joe Brinkman would get mad in a heartbeat if you said something that he thought was out of line.
I didn’t argue much, mostly because Dick Allen told me not to. There was one particular umpire who apparently appreciated my manners at the plate, because he gave me the benefit of the doubt on every close call. He once told me, “You’ll get your pitch when I’m behind the plate.”
I had umpires say to me toward the end of my career, “If you don’t swing today, it ain’t a strike.”
Bob Gibson
I knew there was something wrong with those guys.
Reggie Jackson
When I was trying to hit home run number five hundred in California, Durwood Merrill was the umpire, and he knew exactly what was going on. Most of them did. I got breaks toward the end of my career, for sure.
There were times when I’d be hitting late in a ballgame, a close game, and the umpire would call a ball that I actually questioned. I’d say, “Not now. Don’t do that now. I need everything fair and clean.”
Bob Gibson
Sounds like Bob Uecker, except Uecker wasn’t quite that serious. He was catching against us for the Braves once and the umpire was Billy Williams, and Williams called an outside strike on Mike Shannon. Uecker ripped off his mask and argued with him.
Reggie Jackson
I didn’t want the pitcher to have an advantage, and I didn’t want an advantage. I wanted it to be straight, because in that situation—late innings, game on the line—I think I can get him. Just leave everything fair. Don’t give him anything, don’t give me anything.
Bob Gibson
I’d take whatever I got. But other than Ed Sudol, I never thought I got much. Maybe it was because my etiquette wasn’t quite as refined as Reggie’s.
When I struggled with the strike zone, I usually thought it was the umpire’s fault—especially when I was young and wild. In college, the strike zone was different than it was in professional ball. Once I got to the minor leagues, I couldn’t figure out what the strike zone was. I was thinking, what’s up with this? I’d throw a pitch between the belt and letters and they’d call it a ball and I’d think, what in the hell is going on? I’m sitting there reading the rule book and it tells me the strike zone is from the knees to the letters. It was never the letters in pro ball. I’d throw that thing up there and they’d call it a ball and I’d go crazy.
Eventually, I got used to it. The fact is, if you’re bad that day, it’s not the umpire’s doing. But it does make the umpire a little less likely to pull you out of trouble. If your pitches are all over the place, you’re probably not going to luck into the strikes that you might on a better day. The umpire is sitting right over your catcher’s shoulder and he knows the ball’s not going where it’s supposed to go. If the catcher sets up on the inside corner and you happen to hit the outside corner, there’s a pretty good chance he won’t give it to you.
Reggie Jackson
It’s possible to work the umpire. You have to learn how to talk to him. It’s an art. A hitter can reach down to get some dirt, with his back to the umpire, and say, “That ball was a little outside, wasn’t it? That ball a little outside?” I might be turned the other way, adjusting my helmet, and say, “Damn it now, don’t tell me that ball was a strike. That ball’s not a strike. Don’t tell me it’s a strike. That ball’s not a strike!” You can do all that, but you can’t turn to him and say anything. You can’t look at an umpire. You can look forward, you can call time and look the other way, but don’t look at him. He’ll respect you for that.
Bob Gibson
As a pitcher, you can’t say much, and you can’t say anything from the mound. That would show up the umpire, and they’ll nail your butt for it because they don’t like to be shown up. That’s the kind of thing they hold grudges over. When the umpire would make a call I didn’t appreciate, I’d kind of cock my head and look in like I must have seen it wrong or something. Then, when I came in to hit, I might say something like, “You know, those balls are strikes.” But that’s about all you can do. Hopefully, your catcher’s getting in his two cents’ worth.
I remember Tom Gorman, a big ol’ umpire. One day I was throwing high strikes, just above the belt, and he kept calling them balls. I came in to hit and the other pitcher was throwing the ball in the same spot and ol’ Tom Gorman says, “Strike one.”
I said, “Damn it, Tom, that’s the same pitch you keep calling a ball on me.” And he wouldn’t say a word. He just kept tapping his indicator. And here it comes again.
“Strike two.”
And I said, “Damn it, Tom, if that’s a ball from me, it’s a ball from him.”
And he said, “Bobby, you take it again.”
After that, I was swinging at everything.
Reggie Jackson
An umpire can make you do that. What’s worse is when there’s a combination of an umpire who calls a lot of strikes and a pitcher who works the ball just off the plate, like Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine. A smart pitcher with great control, plus a wide strike zone … whew. You’re in for a long, tough night.
Bob Gibson
Maddux can throw a pitch three or four inches outside, and the umpire will say, “Striiike!” Because he’s always there. If the umpire calls that one, Maddux will come right back to that spot, or maybe stretch it out another half-inch. His control is just that good. The umpires know who’s out there, and they have a tendency to give you a break if you have good control and you’re always right there where you want to be.
The hitters always complain about it, but that’s the way it is. It’s that way because guys like Maddux and Glavine—and there aren’t many of them—are so consistent. Those two are probably within about two inches of their target ninety percent of the time. It’s not always a strike, but it’s always there.
They know they’re going to get the call, in all likelihood, and the hitters ought to know it.
It’s the same with hitters. I’m not sure about Ted Williams, though. He might have had the best eye in the history of baseball, but the umpires didn’t like him. He didn’t have the manners. But guys like Tony Gwynn, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Albert Pujols, even Barry Bonds … you get a great hitter up there, a guy with a good eye who doesn’t swing at the ball off the plate, and they’re apt to get the call just like the great pitcher does.
Reggie Jackson
No matter who you are, though, or who the umpire is, you can’t take anything for granted with two strikes. You can’t expect the umpire to bail you out, and you can’t let him beat you, either. A hitter has to make sure it’s just between him and the pitcher.
All you can ask of an umpire is that he leaves it that way.
Bob Gibson
You just don’t want him to upset the natural flow of the game. For the most part, I don’t think anything is thrown out of kilter by an umpire acknowledging the skill of the best pitchers and hitters.
A really tough game is one where the umpire calls a pitch a ball and then calls the same pitch a strike. Inconsistency is hard on everybody concerned. The pitcher doesn’t know where he has to throw the ball, and the hitter doesn’t know what he has to swing at. Everybody gets out of rhythm and you’ve just got a bad ball-game.
An umpire can also impact a game when he is consistent, if he’s consistent one particular way or the other—tight or loose with the zone, for instance, or high or low with it. Harvey and Barlick were examples of that. They would set a tone by the way they defined the strike zone. That can be the difference between a low-scoring game and a high-scoring game.
It sounds as though that wouldn’t give one team an advantage over the other, but it might. If the umpire has a small strike zone, it could favor the better-hitting team, because that’s the team more likely to take advantage of pitches over the plate. Those are the days when a pitcher might wish he were in another line of work. On the other hand, if I knew an umpire was going to give me a strike three inches off the black, I sure as hell wouldn’t throw the ball any closer than that. So I’d consider that an advantage for me, more than the other pitcher.
Reggie Jackson
A major advantage, with that fastball and slider. An unfair advantage, I’d say.
Bob Gibson
And every now and then—not very often—you’ll get an umpire who calls the entire nine innings just like they’re supposed to be called, from the first pitch to the last one. There was one night in particular when I thought Harry Wendelstedt didn’t miss a pitch all night, and I told him so. I lost that game, by the way.
Of course, Wendelstedt was the home-plate umpire for five no-hitters, which tied a National League record. He was considered a pitcher’s umpire.
Like I said, he was a good one.
Bob Gibson
The most critical thing a catcher does is call the game. That’s much more important than blocking pitches and framing pitches and throwing out runners and all that other stuff.
That’s why Tim McCarver was such a good catcher. He had a terrible arm, but my goodness, could he call a game. All he had to do was catch you for an inning or so and he was on the same page. He’d know what you wanted to do in just about every situation. When a pitcher can place that kind of trust in his catcher, it puts his mind at ease. You don’t have to wear your brain out deciding what to do on every pitch and shaking off the catcher and battling him all the way.
Reggie Jackson
You don’t want stuff rolling around in your head when you’re trying to play ball. You know what you want to do, and you want to just do it.
Bob Gibson
I was so sure what Tim would call that I once balked in a run when he surprised me and asked for something different. A lot of times I’d start winding up before he was even finished giving his signs. What he would do is put down one … two … three … And when I started winding up, that was the pitch. That was sort of my signal to him. Well, this particular time I started winding up and he wasn’t finished giving his signs yet. I thought, uh-oh, and stopped for a second, then tried to start up again. Everybody in the whole ballpark yelled, “Balk!”
I’d occasionally shake Tim off, but more often I’d just stand there and wait for him to put down something else. The thing you can’t do is shake a catcher off twice. If you do that, the hitter knows it’s a fastball. The second shake is probably for location, and that’s the tip-off that it’s a fastball. A catcher usually won’t signal for location on a breaking ball, unless maybe it’s a slider. Partly for that reason, I generally didn’t shake off location.
With McCarver, sometimes we didn’t even need a sign for location. He knew, for instance, that if it was a left-handed batter I’d probably want to jam him with the fastball.
Reggie Jackson
As far as the second shake-off meaning it was a fastball … That was especially true for a pitcher like Hoot, who was mostly all hard stuff. If it was Luis Tiant or Juan Marichal, two shakes wouldn’t mean as much. Those guys had so many pitches, it might take more signs for them to settle on one.
Of course, with Gibson, I’d be focused on the fastball anyway, hoping to hit it to left center—or pull the slider if he came with that instead. I wouldn’t be paying much attention to anything else.
Bob Gibson
I was fortunate in that I always threw to good catchers. But sometimes it took a while to get in sync.
My first two or three years, I let the catcher call the game for me. The first one was Hal Smith, and he did a nice job of it. Gene Oliver caught every now and then, but he wasn’t quite as sharp back there. I once hit him right in the chest. Don’t know what happened. More often, though, Carl Sawatski would catch when there was a nasty right-hander pitching for the other team.
One night, around my third year, Sawatski, who’d been around for a long time, kept calling fastball, fastball, fastball. I shook him off. Fastball. Shook him off. Finally, he called time and trotted out and told me I was going to throw a fastball. I said I just threw the guy five in a row; I want to change it up. He said, nope, you’re going to throw a fastball. So I threw the guy a half-assed fastball and he hit a home run. Now I’m blaming Sawatski. That’s when I told myself I’d never, ever do that again: When I want to throw a pitch, that’s what I’m going to throw. If the catcher wants to fight about it, we’ll fight about it. But I’m not going to throw something I don’t want to throw.
Once a pitcher reaches a point where he knows what he’s doing, the catcher’s not really calling the pitches anyway. He’s suggesting. He’s just making a recommendation. Now, with a young pitcher who just came up and an experienced catcher, yeah, the catcher does and should call the game. The pitcher, at that point, doesn’t know the hitters and doesn’t fully understand the situations and circumstances. But once you learn how to pitch—if you know how to pitch at all—you don’t let the catcher call the game.
The worst thing is to give up a hit or a home run and lose a ballgame and second-guess yourself on something a catcher called. That’s what I learned from Carl Sawatski. You don’t want to blame anybody but yourself when you lose a ballgame.
Reggie Jackson
A while back, somebody with the Yankees was telling me that our young pitchers were nervous about being in the big leagues and were trying to be too fine with their stuff and location. I asked the guy what he meant, and he said, “They’re throwing a lot of changeups. The other day, Ian Kennedy threw a three-two breaking pitch.”
I said, “Who was catching?”
He said Posada.
I said, “Why didn’t Posada put down a fastball?”
He said he did, and Kennedy shook him off.
I said, “Well, why didn’t Posada put it down again? This kid’s twenty-three years old. Posada should walk out there and say, ‘If you’re dead set on that and think you have to throw it, then you
should throw it. But here’s what I think you should do in this situation.’”
You explain it to the guy, let him swallow it, digest it.
Bob Gibson
The one with experience should take the lead. Both the pitcher and catcher need to recognize which of them that is.
Ted Simmons used to drive me crazy when he was a young catcher. One day he called time and came out to ask if I was giving him a hard time. I said, “Giving you a hard time?”
“Yeah, you keep shaking me off.”
I said, “You know what I’m really trying to do?”
He said, “What’s that?”
I said, “I’m trying to win the friggin’ ballgame. I don’t have the luxury of giving you a hard time.”