They Called Me God

by Doug Harvey

  “Let’s go,” I said. “It’s hot. I don’t care for your wasting time. I’ve got to work out here. Let’s go. Get in the box.”

  Frank didn’t move. He just stood there, squeezing his bat.

  “You screwed me at first base yesterday,” he said, “and you’re screwing me now.”

  “Hey, what the hell’s wrong with you?” I said. “What are you talking about, screwing you?”

  “You heard me,” Frank said. “You screwed me last night, and now you’re screwing me again.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Get in the box.”

  “I’ll get in the box when I want to,” said Frank.

  “No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I’m telling you now: Get in the box.”

  “I’m not getting in the box,” said Frank.

  “Pitch the ball,” I ordered.

  The ball hit the catcher’s glove. Wham.

  “Strike one. Now,” I said, “will you get in the box?”

  “I’m not getting in the box.”

  “Pitch the ball.”

  Wham.

  “Strike two,” I said. “You getting in the box?”

  “I’m not getting in the box.”

  Shag Crawford came down from first base, and he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  “I told the gentleman to get in the box,” I said, “and he refused, so I called a strike. And I called strike two.”

  Shag said to Frank, “Don’t be silly. Get in the box.”

  “I’ll get in the box when I want to,” he stubbornly said to Shag.

  “Well, let me tell you something,” said Shag. “I’m going to walk to first base, and if you’re not in the box by the time I get there, you’re out of here.”

  “I always thought you were a straight-shooter, Shag,” said Robinson, “but you’re nothing but a son of a bitch.”

  So Shag jerked him, threw him out of the ball game.

  Dick Sisler, Hutch’s right-hand man, came out and called me a son of a bitch, so I ejected him too. Sisler then said to Shag, “If you have the balls, I’ll meet you after the game and kick your ass.”

  This was old-time baseball in the early 1960s. This is what it was like. It was wonderful.

  In 1982 Frank Robinson became the manager of the San Francisco Giants, and he was the same pain in the ass he was as a player. Except that as manager he hated to be ejected, because he knew he would have to spend the rest of the game in the dressing room, watching it on TV. He could still get mad—we had a few good arguments—but as manager, I never tossed him.

  Speaking of Fred Hutchinson—whom we all despised—Fred had cancer the last two years he managed. And during those two years, he was just as nasty as ever.

  One day Ed Vargo ran him.

  Hutch was in the third-base dugout and Vargo was at first base, and it took Hutch a good five minutes to walk over there, because he couldn’t hardly walk. When he finally got to the dugout he took his time emptying his pockets, and then he had to tell someone he was running the ball club, and then he had to walk all the way from the third-base dugout over to first base.

  I was umpiring at second and walked over to first to be a witness, something we were told to do any time one of us got into an argument. I was there to listen. Fred was a bit taller than Ed, and Fred got up really close and looked down at him, and he said, “I hope you get what I’ve got.”

  And he turned and walked off.

  That was the worst I ever heard. I knew that sometimes they wished we were dead, and this was proof of it.

  Fred had to quit as manager in the middle of the ’63 season when he became too ill to continue. Not too long after I entered the majors, he died.

  One evening in Cincinnati, a writer came into our dressing room before a ball game. He said, “Fellows, I just thought you’d want to know. Fred Hutchinson has died.”

  “Jesus,” said umpire Augie Donatelli, “can you tell me where they buried him?”

  “Jeez, Augie,” the writer said. “That’s really nice.” And he started to write the address on a piece of paper.

  “Augie, you want to send a card of remembrance?” asked the writer.

  “No,” said Augie, “I want to go and piss on his grave.”

  That’s what we all thought of Fred Hutchinson.

  CHAPTER 10

  CHARACTERS

  — 1 —

  Hutch and the Reds weren’t the only thorns in my side that first year. The combination of St. Louis Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst and his ace pitcher Bob Gibson was just as toxic. Red was horrible. He wanted everything in his favor, everything to lean toward him. If a call went against him, you were wrong as an umpire. He’d put you in the shithouse in a minute. That was his attitude. He was not a fair person.

  The Cardinals under Red were a bunch of assholes, and Bob Gibson was the biggest asshole. He was the leader. He was also a snake. You know, a snake’s nice if you’ve just fed him a mouse. You’re in pretty good shape if you did that. But don’t reach in there if he’s hungry. He’ll eat you. Well, Bob was hungry every time he went to the mound.

  All the guys on the club were afraid of him. One time his catcher, Tim McCarver, went out to talk to him, and he screamed at Tim, “What the fuck do you know about pitching? Get behind home plate.”

  McCarver walked back, his tail between his legs.

  We called McCarver “Ironhands,” because when Gibson was pitching, he didn’t catch a lot of the balls, and the umpire behind him would get beat to shit. Gibson was tough to catch. He’d throw his fastball, and just as it reached the plate it would start to slow down, and then it would jump three inches—monstrous movement. I don’t know how he did it. He held the ball by the stitching and threw it hard. The ball would start to slow down and then it would explode, moving one way or the other. And McCarver had a tough time catching him.

  When Bob was pitching, he was in another world. Anyone who crossed him was the enemy, and he didn’t care for me. He wanted me to give him five inches on either side of the plate, and despite his attempts at intimidation, I flat-out refused to do it. He didn’t care a bit for my strike zone, because mine was a true strike zone. Gibson would bitch like hell throughout the whole ball game.

  We were in St. Louis, and Gibson (who, along with Sandy Koufax, was perhaps one of the two best pitchers in the league despite his deficiencies in personality) had pitched eight innings of shutout ball with me umpiring behind the plate. He won the game 2–0.

  After the game our umpiring crew was in the dressing room. The radio was on, and I could hear Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck interviewing Gibson after the game.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Buck, “we have Bob Gibson as our guest. Bob, how are you?”

  Gibson said, “I knew yesterday that I would be in trouble today.”

  “What do you mean, in trouble?” asked Buck.

  “When I saw Harvey at first base yesterday,” he said, “I knew I’d be in trouble today. He doesn’t give me anything.”

  Now, Gibson had just thrown a two-hitter and won the game. I had fought the rain, did everything I could have done to get the game in, and he had his victory. And he was bitching.

  The next day I ran across Mike Shannon, who had played third base for the Cards and was Jack Buck’s radio partner.

  “Hi, Harv,” Mike said.

  “Do I get equal time?” I said to him.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not kidding.”

  “Hell, yes,” said Shannon, and right there and then we went on the air.

  I told the people of St. Louis: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m an honest man, and Bob Gibson wants five extra inches on both sides of the plate, and I refuse to give it to him. And that’s why on occasion I have to eject him. It’s the reason we have arguments. Because I’m not going to give him ten inches more than he deserves, and that’s what he wants.”

  Later Shannon told me, “Harv, we got more phone calls and letters a
fter your response than from anyone we ever had on.”

  “And how did they look at it?” I asked.

  “They were all in your favor,” Mike said. “There wasn’t one who said you were wrong.”

  “Great,” I said. “Then I got my message across.”

  — 2 —

  Red was managing in my first World Series in 1968 against the Detroit Tigers. With the Cardinals leading three games to one, game five pitted the Cards’ Nellie Briles against Mickey Lolich of Detroit. St. Louis needed to win only one more game to take the series. The game was played in Tiger Stadium. It was a day game, back when the World Series was still played during the day.

  With the Cardinals ahead 3–0 in the fifth inning, the speedy Lou Brock doubled. Julian Javier then hit a single to left field. Brock rounded third as the left fielder, Willie Horton, came up throwing. He threw a pea to Tigers catcher Bill Freehan.

  Brock didn’t slide. With Freehan in the way, Brock altered his line to the plate, and as he ran past it, Freehan tagged him. I had a perfect view. Brock never touched the plate. He didn’t miss by much, perhaps an inch, but I could see the space between the plate and Brock’s cleats, and I called him out.

  When I called Brock out, it was the turning point in the series, because pictures showed that just before I made my call Tigers manager Mayo Smith was stepping onto the top step of the dugout to take Lolich out of the game. When I called Brock out, he left Lolich in, and Lolich went on to win the game 5–3. The Tigers then won the next two games to win the series four games to three.

  I was criticized by National Leaguers for calling Brock out, but when Doug Harvey is umpiring, there is no such thing as a league. I could have called Brock safe just as easily and nobody would have argued. Nobody. But my heart wouldn’t let me do it. Had Brock slid, he would have been safe, and I’d have called him safe. But he didn’t, and it changed baseball history.

  Red came charging out. With Red, whenever the call went against him, you were wrong. Like his star pitcher, there was nothing fair about him in any way.

  Red Schoendienst’s biggest gripe was that he said I never gave his pitchers the high pitch. Well, you have to understand that whether a pitch is a ball or a strike is determined by where it’s located when it goes across the front of home plate. And I could never get people to understand that. Batters stand at the rear of the batter’s box because they need as much time as they can get to hit the ball. They have perhaps a hundredth of a second to hit it, so they stand as far back as they can. The ball would come downhill from the mound, would be shin-high at the front of the plate, and then as it crossed the plate it would be knee-high. That pitch is a ball, and as a result Red would be complaining, “Harvey never calls anything above the belt line.”

  Well, that wasn’t true, but I couldn’t get Red to understand that.

  Red moaned and bitched and cried that I wouldn’t give his pitchers the high strike, and now they’re trying to get the umpires to give the batters the low strike. You can’t give them both. An umpire can set himself to give a higher strike by standing up higher. Or you can call a lower strike by bending down more. But by definition you can’t do both. They are two different stances. By saying, “We want a bigger strike zone,” they are asking for both. Hell, if that’s what you want, widen the plate.

  I harken back to a conversation I had with Ted Williams when I asked him, “Ted, where would you want the pitchers to throw if you wanted to put on a hitting exhibition?”

  “Right up here,” he said, indicating the high part of the strike zone. “You don’t even have to think about the angle of your bat. It’s right in line with hitting a home run.”

  And because baseball has stopped calling the low strike, pitchers are forced to throw right into the zone where 250-pound batters hit home runs. What baseball needs are umpires who call the good, low strike zone.

  Another important thing to note about the strike zone: When I was coming up through the minor leagues, the old saying was, “If you want to make it in the major leagues, you have to have a pitcher’s strike zone. You have to open up your strike zone.” To me that means you’re cheating for the pitcher, and I don’t know how to cheat in any direction. I absolutely made the ball touch the plate if it was going to be a strike. And, of course, it also had to be the right height.

  I’m a great believer in fairness. I absolutely was a fair umpire, and yet when I see another umpire opening up his strike zone, I understand why he’s doing it. He wants the game to go faster, and I don’t mind it. But I wouldn’t do that. My heart wouldn’t let me do it, because it wouldn’t be fair to the batter. I always made sure the pitcher had fairness and the batter had fairness.

  “If you’re a pitcher’s umpire, you won’t have as many arguments,” I was advised. In other words, the batter will only be up there a short time, but the pitcher will be around for as many as nine innings, and if he isn’t happy, he could be screaming at you for nine innings.

  Screw it, I said to myself. I’ll take their arguments and stand on my own.

  Arguments are part of baseball. The players and managers need to vent. Anyone who doesn’t understand why players get upset and argue has never played the game. I played, so I understand how the players feel. I know what drives them.

  — 3 —

  My first year I also learned there were gentlemen in the league. One player who was completely fair was Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale. In one of my first plate jobs during my first season, the Dodgers were playing St. Louis in Sportsman’s Park, and Don threw a pitch that the Cards’ Stan Musial hit over the big screen in front of the stands and clear over the stands. It was a blast.

  Drysdale walked down from the mound and said, “Hey, Doug,” which impressed me, because he had taken the time to learn my name.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Ask Musial if that hurt his hands, will you?” said Drysdale.

  I had expected him to ask, “Where was the pitch?” But he never did that. Don and Sandy Koufax were two of the greatest professionals ever to play the game.

  — 4 —

  One of the most important lessons I learned as an umpire occurred during my rookie season. Gene Mauch was the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, and he fancied himself a genius with the rules. It was a night game, and I was umpiring at third, and there was a close play. Don Hoak, whom the Phils had acquired from Pittsburgh toward the end of his career, got the ball in time ahead of the sliding runner. He put his glove down, and when the runner came within two feet of him he pulled the glove back, missing the tag, and I called the runner safe.

  Mauch came running out to raise hell with me, so I had to run him, and I had to run Hoak as well.

  At the end of the evening I had a sore throat from all the hollering. Mauch and I must have stood there for twenty minutes hollering at each other. Finally Al Barlick came over, took charge, and got Mauch to leave the field.

  Sitting in a bar that night, I asked myself, I wonder what would happen if I refused to argue with him?

  The next night I was at second base. There was a slide play there. Phillies second baseman Cookie Rojas caught the ball in time, but I called the runner safe, and out came Mauch again.

  This time I stood there with my arms crossed and stared at him. I started counting to twenty to myself—one, two, three, four . . . until I got to eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and when Mauch started repeating himself, I said to him, “Gene, I’ve listened to you. Why don’t you listen to me?”

  Mauch shut up.

  “Cookie had the ball in time,” I said, “but he had a slow glove and missed the tag.”

  Gene turned toward Rojas—I was wondering what Cookie was going to say—and with his Spanish accent Rojas said, “He’s right, skeeper.”

  I turned and saw Mauch loping across the infield back to the dugout. He jumped over the foul line and went into the dugout, and that was the last argument I ever had with him. He accepted the fact that I knew what I was doing.


  I understand that years later, when Mauch was managing Montreal, he got in a big fight on the field and told the umpiring crew, “I’ll trade one Doug Harvey for all of you.”

  Bless his heart, when I saw Cookie at a Baseball Assistance Team dinner a few years ago, I told him I’d never forget his backing me up as long as I live.

  “You could’ve hung me out to dry,” I said. “And if you had, I’d have run your ass too.”

  We both had a good laugh about it.

  But after that, I adopted what I call the Harvey Twenty-Second Rule. It relates to demeanor, something I teach to young umpires, though not everyone can carry it off.

  When I see a young umpire out there screaming and hollering at a manager or a player, I say to him, “What are you screaming about, son? What are you so uptight about? I’m watching you and you’re screaming and hollering.”

  “Well, he’s screaming and hollering at me,” the answer always comes back.

  “And how many men does it take to make an argument?” I ask.

  “Well, it takes two.”

  And then I say, “One option is for you to refuse to argue. Just stand there and count to twenty. He will have exhausted himself screaming and hollering. Let him do it. But don’t let him get up in your face. Tell him, ‘Hold it. Hold it.’ He will look at you funny.

  “Tell him, ‘I’m listening to you, but back up or I’m going to jerk your ass out of here.’ And you’ll be surprised. Never once did a manager or player tell me, ‘I’m not backing up.’ You tell him, ‘I can hear. My hearing is very good, but I refuse to listen to you if you’re going to scream and holler in my face. Now what is it you want to tell me?’

  “And that’s when you give him twenty seconds to talk. After that you say, ‘Now it’s my turn. I’ve listened to you, haven’t I?’

  “ ‘Yeah, you listened to me.’

  “ ‘Well, I think it’s only right that you listen to me.’