by Lee Gutkind
Perhaps because of their size or the stiff, almost surly way in which they carry themselves, the umpires were recognized by the guards at Shea and passed through without having to show their identification. The three men walked down a narrow corridor, then turned down a long concrete tunnel, passed the visiting team’s locker room, periodically nodding or mumbling a friendly word or two to a player or coach lounging with a cigarette or talking to a reporter in the passageway. The visiting team’s headquarters are usually located near the umpires’ room in each ballpark, while the home team remains isolated on the opposite side of the field.
Umpires and players try to maintain silence or a polite facade of peace when they run into each other off the field, but usually umpires go out of their way to give players a wide berth. Mostly they don’t like the players, can’t quite forgive the heartache the players give them most days out on the field. Infinitely more important, though, is that the press and the public can and will justifiably question an umpire’s integrity if he is seen often enough with the people about whom he is supposed to be so impartial.
“What happens if I blow a play?” explains Lee Weyer, twelve-year National League veteran. “I make a mistake and call it wrong, and it may turn out that a player I was seen with the night before is safe when he should have been out. What are people going to think? Whatever they think it’s not going to be good, and they’d be right for thinking that way.”
The league officers do not publicly demand that umpires maintain their distance from ballplayers, but it is an unwritten and strictly enforced rule that they do. This is far from a sacrifice for most major league umpires, however: “The players are all creeps,” says Dick Stello of Tom Gorman’s crew. “Who the hell wants to spend any time with them anyway?”
“They’re punks,” says Billy Williams, second man on Gorman’s crew. “The players are crudballs. I don’t say I dislike all players, but by and large, if they had batting averages as big as their egos, they’d be superstars, each and every one of them.”
Umpires have very little in common with players, usually. Umpires don’t care who wins ball games, who gets the hits, or who strikes out whom. They’re not concerned with the recipient of the Cy Young Award, the home-run crown, or the Most Valuable Player title. Umpires are concerned only with league attendance, for the league pays their salaries, ranging from $15,500 for a first-year official for the seven-month season, to $35,000 for a twenty-three-year veteran like Tom Gorman; only with keeping the game under control, getting it started and moving it along smoothly and swiftly; only with their own continued impartiality and ability to concentrate completely from the first pitch to the last.
Pipes painted a pale military green splay down from the ceiling like the legs of a grasshopper. Cream-colored paint only barely covers the high, concrete block walls. There are four doorless cubbyholes the size of telephone booths, with uniforms hung neatly in each of them and half-empty, open suitcases covering the floor. Running through the center of the room is a rectangular, brown plywood table with a gray metal folding chair at each side and a collection of athletic socks and underwear rolled like large, puffy balls of cotton on top in the middle. A 19-inch black and white television flickers silently in the corner near a doorway that leads to a room with toilets, sinks, and showers. From front to back, both rooms are carpeted like the sidewalks of New York—in gray, drab concrete.
Although spartan compared to the conditions in the New York Mets’ club dining room two floors above, such facilities signify a vast improvement from the way it used to be for umpires not too many years ago. Some umpires still remember having to dress in their hotel rooms and walk through the crowds wearing their hated blue uniforms before and after the game—a particularly bad experience after the game, when some fans always want blood. Some umpires still remember the rooms with no toilets, when they had to urinate in sewers or invade the visiting team’s locker room to ask a player’s permission to move their bowels. Such conditions still exist in many minor league ballparks, especially in the South. After spending anywhere from five to fifteen years in the minor leagues, most umpires never forget dressing with the cockroaches and the stench, and they thank their lucky stars for the facilities, no matter how meager, that are provided in the majors. An orderly is also assigned to each umpires’ room in the major leagues to run errands, bring the food, provided free of charge, from the refreshment stands and cafeterias, clean the room, and oversee the laundering and shipping of uniforms, underclothes, and equipment. Some orderlies are better than others, but their presence makes the time before the game easier and more pleasant. Each umpire tips the orderly three dollars per man per game.
Harvey, Wendelstedt, and Williams troop into the room somberly, slowly peel off and hang up their street clothes, then sink gingerly into cold metal folding chairs. Leaning forward, Harvey gropes blindly under a pile of clothes in his equipment case, eventually emerging with a metal foil pouch of Red-Foxx chewing tobacco; he stuffs two fingers full into his mouth. Still leaning forward, he moves the dry tobacco back and forth from cheek to cheek, soaking it in saliva; then, when it has gained the necessary gummy consistency, he tucks the soggy wad back into the far corner of his mouth. He hooks a wastebasket with his foot, drags it beside his chair and hawkers into it. Then he leans back; now he can relax.
For a while they sit in their white jockey shorts and T shirts, their feet up on the table, watching the silent television flutter. “I guess somebody should turn up the sound,” said Wendelstedt, pulling his left foot onto his right knee to examine his wounded toe. His toenail had been smashed and partially stripped and a blue blood pocket had swelled up under the remainder of the nail, but he guessed he would live through the season. Another smash in the same toe, though, wouldn’t help his cause any.
“Yeah, somebody sure should turn that television sound up,” said Harvey, chewing intently.
“So what’s wrong with you?” asked Wendelstedt. “I’m a wounded man.”
“Me?” said Harvey, slightly smiling. “I’m the Chief.”
“And chiefs don’t do menial labor, I suppose?”
“You suppose right. We give the orders. You underlings do the job.”
“You hear that, Art?” said Wendelstedt. “Underlings are supposed to do the menial labor. Can you beat that?”
“I hear it,” said Williams, his eyes half-closed, seemingly oblivious.
“All I get is abuse around here,” said Wendelstedt, shaking his head and pursing his lips. Wendelstedt had an absolutely infallible way of feigning righteous indignation. He would make his face go red and his cheeks puff out as if he were going to burst, then he would shake his head gravely and emphatically back and forth. He never smiled after faking his anger. A stranger could never tell whether he was joking or telling the truth.
“Abuse,” Williams mumbled.
“Well, somebody ought to turn up the sound on that damn TV,” Wendelstedt said.
“The Untouchables going to be on soon,” Williams added.
“You really like that show, Art?” asked Harvey.
“Always good to see a bunch of white motherfuckers killing each other off.”
“Goddamn lack of respect,” said Wendelstedt.
“Art, you been so quiet tonight I didn’t know you were around,” Harvey said.
“I always know when he’s around,” Wendelstedt said. “Every time he walks into the room, it gets spooky.”
Williams sat up, suddenly laughing, and turned to Harvey. “You hear that, Chief?” He pointed at Wendelstedt. “You gonna let him talk to me that way?”
Harvey spat into the basket and shrugged. “What can you expect from a goddamn Nazi racist pig? A person with a name like Wendelstedt don’t know any better.”
“All them Africans like The Untouchables,” Wendelstedt continued, “cause they like the sight of blood.”
“It’s part of their past,” said Harvey. “They got the voodoo in them. You got the voodoo in you, don’t you, A
rt?”
“Still in me,” said Williams, “so you better watch out. I got plenty of curses conjured up for you.” He ran his fingers through his black springy hair, neatly cut into a well modified Afro, smiled, and played idly with a patch of gray about the size of a domino. A former minor league pitcher whose career was cut short by a sore arm, Williams had rich, dark brown skin, broad shoulders and a wide chest, somewhat softened now from inactivity. All around he was a good twenty pounds overweight, although he still looked much younger than his forty-three years.
Harvey rolled his head over to the side, spat with deadly accuracy into the basket, then closed his eyes. Only during the past few weeks had he felt completely comfortable joking with Williams this way. In fact, the joking had turned into fun for all four of the lonely men. Harvey knew that the by-play was a safety valve, more so for Art than anyone else, although it helped them all get by and kept them from each other’s throats, something which is a constant danger when four men work together day after day for seven straight months.
Along with his appointment as chief this year, Harvey had been assigned the difficult problem of dealing with Williams, the man the National League owners and coaches had last year called the worst umpire in the league. Number twenty-four. Nor were there racial overtones in this judgment, as far as Harvey could make out. Pure and simple, Williams was not a very good umpire and Harvey and Wendelstedt, the two best in the league, had been teamed specifically to work with Williams and help him improve.
For sure, Williams had the talent and the desire to become a good major league umpire, but he lacked the confidence and experience the normal six or eight years of major league ball gives an ump. Williams was in the major leagues today because he was black, not because he had learned enough to be justifiably promoted, according to Harvey’s sources. The National League office had very little choice in the matter. The government had demanded that there be a black umpire in the National League before the end of the 1972 season and the league had complied by picking the best of a small and relatively inexperienced crop. It was the league’s own fault. Not until after the government’s verdict did professional baseball begin an active and wholehearted recruiting drive to attract black prospects. And even that move had so far been a failure. The number of black officials in minor league baseball could be counted on the fingers of both hands.
As early as spring training Wendelstedt and Harvey had fashioned a set of rough signals to help guide Williams during the coming season. If he was calling pitches too high or low, lacking consistency, Wendelstedt would rock back and forth on his heels. If the game wasn’t moving as fast or as smoothly as it might, Wendelstedt would tip his hat. If Williams took too much back-talk from players disputing his calls, Wendelstedt would dig his shoe into the dirt. Not that Williams needed instruction all of the time, but if and when he did, the signals had been established.
Harvey and Wendelstedt, discussing the problem at the beginning of the season, were well aware of the pressure under which Art worked each game and of their responsibility, partially at least, to help ease it. Williams was the first black umpire in the National League and only the second black umpire in the history of major league baseball. The recent racial difficulties of superstar Hank Aaron, who had been threatened and verbally attacked by people resenting his bettering Babe Ruth’s home-run record, was a perfect and frightening example of the problems Williams might well be forced to confront.
“By the end of this season he should be all right,” Harvey said, “but we’ve got to keep the kid loose while we’re teaching him.”
“One way to keep him loose is to start by hitting him where it hurts,” said Wendelstedt, “right at his color. Then we hit ourselves back twice as hard. We leave ourselves open for him to hit us, too, which will teach him to strike back at others as well. We can’t let him take abuse from players, managers, fans, or even other umpires. He’s got to learn to stand up under pressure.”
“I think he’ll be a good umpire in another year or two,” said Harvey. “He’s got the size, he’s got the natural instincts. I think he can be damn good, but we gotta keep him loose. We build up his confidence off the field, it will affect his confidence on the field. That’s half the battle of being a good umpire, isn’t it? I mean, the first thing is, you have to be right. The second thing is, you have to know you’re right. Art is usually right, the problem is he doesn’t always know it.”
Now, two months later, Williams had progressed, but he was still far from the kind of umpire a major leaguer ought to be, Harvey realized. A good deal of work and training was still going to be needed. Williams’s problem was less a question of knowing the plays and calls and more a question of experience, and confidence. He just wasn’t sharp or consistent enough in making his calls. Worse, he backed down under the pressure of belligerent players and intimidating managers. For an umpire interested in establishing respect, this was not good.
Harvey leaned his head back and raised his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to listen through the floor above for the patter of rain. “You oughta use some of that voodoo on this weather,” he said to Williams. “If the rain stops or even lets up for two and a half, three hours, we’ll get in this game.”
“Ain’t a bad idea,” said Williams, propping up his calloused feet and nodding.
“I sure don’t want to come back to this town any more than I can help it,” said Harvey. He thought about his home in San Diego, his wife by the pool stretched out casually in a redwood chair, his children playing in the grass with their blue and red plastic toys. In the cooler part of the evening, after dinner, Joy would brush the dog, clean its ears tenderly with an alcohol-soaked cotton dabber, then run with him. She was a master breeder and was hoping to someday become a show dog judge. She moved fluidly with her dog, her two legs in constant and gentle synchronization with the dog’s four as they practiced together for an upcoming show. The image faded. He had been away from his family for so long, he couldn’t keep them in mind for too long at any one time.
“Gotta come back here two, three more times anyway,” said Wendelstedt.
“Yeah, but listen Harry, we play this one, that’s one that’s been played. You know that well as I do. Besides, what else do we have to do? Game starts at what? Eight? We got to wait at least an hour, maybe more, before they’ll call it because of the weather. Then we get dressed and subway back into town. By then, it’s ten o’clock; not much time to do anything after that anyway.”
Harvey sat up, leaned forward and spat. Then he shook his head and waved his arms. “People think we like these rainouts. Gives us a day off. They forget we have to stay here half the night while the home team tries to decide when and if the rain’s going to stop. And so what happens if the game is called?”
“I’ll tell you what happens,” said Williams. “We come back here and make the game up at the end of the season. At least some umpires will have to, if not us.”
Harvey nodded. “’Stead of single games in August and September, we get double-headers. What’d we have last year? Six, seven in a row?”
“Seven,” says Wendelstedt. “I remember because it was fucking ninety-five degrees out. We were in Philadelphia for four games on a Saturday and Sunday, then moved to Chicago for double-headers Monday and Tuesday, then finally, St. Louis. By that time. the heat wave left Philadelphia and moved west. We probably took it with us on the plane. Wherever we went, it was hot. Damn, six, seven hours in the sun, seven days running. I wouldn’t want to do that any more than once a year. It was really hot.”
“So were the tempers,” said Williams. “Last year we had that five team race in the east and any one of those teams could have won it. Man, last year in Atlanta I thought I was going to melt out there, and those damn players were bitching about every call. Every call.” Williams shook his head. “Pitcher could have heaved the ball into center field and if I wouldn’t have called ‘strike’ he’d be on my ass in a flash.”
“They’re under a lot
of pressure,” said Harvey. “We gotta try to understand that.”
“So are we under pressure,” said Wendelstedt. “Who the hell are you kidding? While they’re sitting in the dugout half of each inning bitching at us, we’re out in the sun, wilting. We know there’s plenty of money riding on each call. Damn players think we don’t realize …”
“You don’t have to tell me. They’re all a bunch of crybabies,” said Harvey, “especially the small change hitters.”
“Like Grote,” Williams said, grinning toward Wendelstedt.
“Yeah like Grote, like any of them. They hit for two, two and a quarter, lucky to be on base one out of five times and they got the nerve to bitch on every call.
“They’re trying to steal first base,” continued Wendelstedt,
“’cause they can’t get there on their own.”
“The good players never complain, only the lousy ones. Mays, Aaron, Stargell, Billy Williams, they never say a word.”
“Mays is working for the Mets now,” said Williams, “sort of a glorified batting coach and scout. A little bit of public relations probably in there, too.”
Wendelstedt shook his head. “Boy, you talk about Mays. I worked that World Series last year—the Mets and the A’s—and it was pitiful to watch him. It was really awful to see the great Willy Mays tripping all over himself, couldn’t catch a ball, couldn’t run the goddamn bases. I was embarrassed for him.”
“Man didn’t know when it was time to quit,” said Williams.
“Well my grandmother coulda told him. I tell ya, it was pitiful.”
“He never complained though,” said Harvey, “in all his years in baseball, he never gave umpires any trouble. He knew you were doing the best job possible and he was doing the best job possible. All the really good ones are like that, except maybe Cedeno in Houston.”