The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand!: The Game as Umpires See It (Writing Baseball)

by Lee Gutkind

  Blackburne’s family charges the ballclubs $150 per three-pound coffee tin, but this “super mud” is so efficient that each team only uses a container a year.

  As Wendelstedt rubbed each ball, he inspected it carefully for cuts, scrapes, or sloppy workmanship at the seams. Balls of questionable quality were put to one side to be used by the home team for batting practice. He thought back to his season in the Class A Northwest League in 1963, or the year before that in the Georgia-Florida Class D League, when virtually any ball, as long as it was loosely covered with a substance resembling leather, was judged fit for play. Any of the balls he had eliminated from these ball bags in the major leagues were at least ten times better than the best of the balls used in the minors. He remembered watching many of the team owners scoop up the used balls at the end of each game and take them home where their children would use red rubber pencil erasers to rub out the grass and dirt stains and their wives would wash and scrub each ball with soap. The next day the owners would try to convince the umpires that these were the “new balls.”

  Back then, twelve years ago, when he first entered professional baseball, he had considered the minor league team owners the most corrupt and disgusting excuses for human beings possible. That was before he came to know the major league team owners, administrators, and managers. At Wrigley Field in Chicago, Pat Pfeiffer, the stadium announcer who seemed to have been with the Cubs for centuries, would position himself and his microphone directly beside the ball bag. When the home plate umpire wasn’t looking, Pfeiffer would go through the balls, throwing out the best balls to be used when the Cubbies were at bat and the worst for when the visitors were at the plate. The ball boy, also a Cub employee, never interfered. It got so bad that the umpires had to mark each ball that was thrown out of the game with a ballpoint pen so that Pfeiffer couldn’t slip them back in when the opposition was at bat.

  In 1970, when Pfeiffer was moved up to the press box, the umpires were relieved, but not for long. Although he could have used the phone, Pfeiffer would visit the umpires’ room before each game to check their current rotation. Each day he would ask for a free baseball for his grandchildren. (“You must be the most productive cocksucker in all of Chicago,” Wendelstedt once told him.) The umpires would hand over a ball, usually, thinking it would promote good relations, much as they would give a ball to friends, once in a while, or to policemen for their children, but Pfeiffer would then take the ball directly to the club general manager. “See,” he would say, “the umpires are stealing. They’re giving away your new baseballs!”

  Wendelstedt lifted a ball, partially split at the seam, and shook his head. This was the first year the major leagues had switched from a horsehide to a cowhide-covered baseball and none of the players were very happy about it. The ball looked and weighed the same or just about, but although neither the league administrators nor owners would admit it, the cowhide was most definitely inferior. For one thing, the cover was frequently knocked off the ball. This happened once every other game, not where the stitching was sewn in, but on the leather right around it; the leather would have been stretched and weakened during the sewing process, and that’s where it would split. With the advent of the cowhide ball the major leagues had been sending the materials for stitching to Haiti to save labor costs. Since then the stitches had been far from even, often as much as an inch or inch and a half off balance. For another thing, the ball would die in the air. He had seen many well hit balls that would probably have been home runs in horsehide that suddenly just died and dropped in the wind on the field. Even the pitchers weren’t too pleased. Privately, they claimed they couldn’t control the ball nearly as well. But the cowhide ball provided each owner a savings of about two thousand dollars a year. And in baseball, when it’s money versus a better game, the former will always win out.

  Wendelstedt threw the last ball into the box, leaned back and breathed deeply. “Well, are we going to play or not?”

  “It’s raining like hell,” said Colosi.

  Harvey said, “I just called Jim Thompson, the business manager. The game’s supposed to start at eight o’clock and he says they talked to the Weather Bureau and they said the rain would stop by nine.”

  “My son’s out there,” said Colosi.

  “Goddamn,” said Williams.

  “Well, Straight Arrow, old chief,” said Wendelstedt to Harvey, “deal out the cards.”

  By then, it was fifteen minutes before eight.

  “I wish we could do something about changing that rain-out rule,” said Harvey, picking up the king of diamonds Wendelstedt had just discarded and splattering a glob of briney tobacco juice into the waste basket. “Here we are, sitting and waiting for the damn rain to stop, and more than likely it’s not going to stop. So the umpires have to sit and wait, the players have to sit and wait, and the fans are getting soaked to the gills. The rule says the home team has control until the game starts, then the umpires take over. I think we should have control all the way down the line.”

  “But the fans think it’s us,” said Colosi, shaking his head. “They’re sitting there freezing their asses off ’cause we won’t call the game. That’s what they think.”

  “Right,” said Wendelstedt, surveying his hand studiously before discarding. “This rule allows the home team too much leeway to play their silly games.”

  “They’re not impartial like we are,” said Harvey, nodding. If the home team is on a winning streak, the owners will do anything possible—put the fans and the players through hell—to get the game played. If the home team has been losing, they’ll call it way before they have a right to.”

  “Or if the home team has been playing a lot of games lately,” said Williams, “they’ll call it just to give their players the rest.”

  “It all depends on money,” said Colosi. “If they think they can get a lot of fans out for a twinight double-header the next night, they’ll call a game for that reason alone.”

  “Everything depends on money,” said Harvey, “and on winning. The home team is supposed to take the weather forecast and the condition of the grounds into equal consideration before making a decision on calling a game for rain or fog or whatever. They don’t do that. They say to themselves, ‘Do we have a better chance of winning today or tomorrow? Will we make more money calling the game or playing it?’ That’s what they want to know first.”

  “When the visiting team isn’t coming back into town for the rest of the season, the umpires have the authority. Don’t we override the home team in that instance?” asked Williams.

  “That’s true,” Wendelstedt nodded, then turned to Harvey. “But look, Doug, you gotta be fair. You can’t blame the Mets for this.”

  “I’m not blaming the Mets, alone,” said Harvey, “every team does it. I’m just saying it’s not good sportsmanship, that’s all.”

  “The fans suffer the most,” said Colosi, “and everybody blames the umpires.”

  Clucking his tongue, Harvey arranged some cards in his hand, then threw out the three of spades. Wendelstedt snatched it up quickly, then discarded the king of clubs. He had very big hands and hard, heavy fingers, each like the barrel of a gun.

  Harvey said, “More than anything, the starting pitchers affect the decision. I remember when Koufax was pitching. The Dodgers would go out of their way to start a game. They’d wait two hours, maybe more. Otherwise Koufax, who had already heated up, would lose a turn. With Koufax in his prime, it was almost a guaranteed win for the Dodgers.”

  “Sandy Koufax was the best pitcher I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing,” said Wendelstedt. “Even better than Seaver. And Seaver is tops today.”

  “Walter Alston was a smart manager. He brought Koufax along real slow, didn’t rush the kid. He knew that when Koufax found his control he’d be the best pitcher in baseball.”

  “What do you mean was a smart manager, Nick?” Wendelstedt asked. “Alston still is the best manager in baseball. One time I ran into Hank Aaron at an ai
rport. This was a few years ago, but the Dodgers had just won the pennant the year before and Alston had been named to manage the National League All Star team. Aaron was on his way to join the team, but we got to talking about all the honors he’d had in his career. ‘The most important thing to happen to me is still coming up,’ he said. (He wasn’t so close to Ruth’s record back then.) ‘The most important thing is working under Walter Alston this week,’ he said, ‘I respect him more than any other man in baseball.’”

  Harvey said, “I was working the plate a couple of years ago on the West Coast in a game in which the Dodgers were getting clobbered. It was something like the third inning and the Dodger pitcher, Don Sutton, had already given up eight runs—three in home runs. He was really stinkin’. Finally, Alston comes out and walks up to me real slow, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, looking really disgusted. ‘I’m taking this man out,’ he says to me, real gruff-like, nasty, motioning over at Sutton. ‘And you want to know why?’ he said. I just stared at him, didn’t say a word. ‘I’ll tell ya why,’ he said. ‘Because I’m sick and tired of you umpires fucking over my pitchers.’ I stood there in shock. I mean, I didn’t do anything to deserve that. Sutton just didn’t have it that day. On his way back from the pitcher’s mound, after Sutton had left the field, Alston poked me in the ribs and winked, then walked back into the dugout.”

  “Now there’s a man with a dry sense of humor,” said Wendelstedt smiling wryly, turning his attention back to his hand.

  “By the same token,” said Colosi, “getting back to Koufax, the home team would call the game against Koufax, too. One time in Pittsburgh, I think it was my first year in the league, the game was supposed to start at two o’clock and Koufax was supposed to be the starting pitcher. Well, it had rained through the whole night before, so at ten-thirty the next morning they called the game. By noon the sun was out, and it turned out to be a beautiful day, but it was too late then. The Pirates thought they were real slick, calling the game so early, but they ended up looking like idiots.”

  “The artificial surfaces have made the whole proposition of calling the games because of bad weather more difficult,” said Harvey. “Used to be if the game was stopped because of rain for a long enough time, all we had to do was walk out and take a look at the field. If the infield was too muddy or the outfield was submerged in ten feet of water, our decision was easy. Now the whole situation is different. Those automatic rollers can get a tarp over the infield three times faster than a bunch of men could—even when they worked like hell. And the grounds crew has got those machines now that suck up water riding all around the outfield during the rain. I forget what you call them.”

  “Game Savers,” said Wendelstedt.

  “Something like that,” said Harvey. “So anywhere with artificial surfaces—and most National League clubs have them these days—the field is going to be fit to play on. The way the rule book reads, you gotta wait an hour every time the game is stopped because of rain. Then you gotta determine if the field’s in good condition—which it always is. So the decision comes down to whether you think the rain is going to stop or it isn’t. The only way to know that is to wait and find out.”

  “And if we get the game going again, and it starts raining again, then we got to wait another hour,” said Colosi, “before we can call it.”

  “That’s about right unless we have reason to think it won’t clear up. Good reason,” said Wendelstedt.

  “As I say,” said Harvey, “we should try to get the rule changed or clarified.”

  “And how we going to do that?” said Wendelstedt. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. There are forty-eight umpires in charge of enforcing all the rules in baseball and there’s not one damn umpire on the major league Rules Committee. You tell me if that makes sense.”

  “We gotta do something about that,” said Colosi. “This winter an umpire better be on it.”

  “The owners want to control the committee. They like to design the rules with loopholes so they won’t have to abide by them. That’s real sportsmanship,” said Harvey, shaking his head and frowning.

  “You talk about sportsmanship,” said Wendelstedt. “Last year after the last game of the World Series, I ran into Chub Feeney down in the dressing room. Now here we got the president of the goddamn National League at the end of a successful season. Right? Me? I’m real happy, ’cause I’m going home to see my wife and kid. ‘Well, Chub,’ I say, ‘hope you have a real great winter.’

  “‘Great winter? Great winter?’ he says. “‘How the fuck can I have a great winter when the Mets lost the World Series? They were my team!’

  “‘Well thanks a lot, sports fan,’ I told him, and walked on out. You call that sportsmanship from the president of the National League? He jumped all over me.”

  “Gin,” said Harvey, smiling broadly and plopping a card face down on the discard pile.

  “Damn, I told you there’s no sportsmanship around here. I’m telling a story and while my back is turned, suddenly the old Indian squaw over here gins. I don’t get no justice.”

  When the phone rang, Wendelstedt moved over beside Williams at the television, watching Met announcer Ralph Kiner doing an elongated pregame show to fill in the network time. “Look at that dumb bastard,” Williams said, shaking his head. “He keeps trying to get people to say things they don’t mean.”

  “No different than any other sportscaster,” said Wendelstedt.

  “I been listening,” said Williams. “He gets an older ballplayer or a former ballplayer on like Willie Mays, and he tries to get Mays to say that the major leagues are bringing ballplayers up too early. He keeps hinting around at this so Mays will say it. Then he goes to a commercial and when they come back afterwards, Mays is gone and Dave Schneck, a rookie, is there in his place. Then Kiner tells Schneck there’s a better crop of young ballplayers in the majors than ever before. He’s a two-faced bastard.”

  “One thing about Kiner,” said Wendelstedt, “he’ll give you a nickel for a dime anytime. That’s the kind of guy he is. Only guy worst than Kiner that’s been associated with baseball is Leo Durocher.”

  “Remember that old joke,” said Harvey, hanging up the phone.

  “‘Call me anything,’” Wendelstedt nodded, “‘call me motherfucker, but don’t call me Durocher.’”

  “What’s the definition of a Durocher?”

  “A Durocher,” said Wendelstedt, “is the lowest form of living matter.”

  “Goddamn, it’s nine-fifteen,” said Colosi, “I wish to hell I hadn’t brought my kid out here. What’s the story on the game?”

  “They’re going to wait another fifteen minutes.”

  The game was postponed officially at 9:45 PM, precisely three and a half hours after the umpires had entered Shea Stadium and two hours after most of the fans had arrived. Colosi dressed quickly and left to pick up his son while the remaining three men slipped unnoticed out of the stadium and into the crowd. Then they stood in the subway train silently, jangling and bouncing the forty-five minutes back to their side of town.

  Willie Rooks’s Shirt

  WHENEVER THE SUN MADE a brief, albeit frosty, appearance over Wrigley Field that bleary spring, almost everyone in the sparse, spartan crowd pulled himself out of his hunching cocoon of wool and fur to pay homage with a standing ovation. During the three games Doug Harvey and his crew officiated in Chicago on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth of May, the temperature never once went over forty-seven degrees and the wind coming off the choppy waters of Lake Michigan blew at no less than 30 miles per hour.

  Even though Harvey, Wendelstedt, Colosi, and Williams layered themselves with four-ply long-johns, black turtleneck sweaters, and canvas windbreakers for the weekend contests between the Cubbies and the Mets, they still returned from the field after each nine-inning set, stiff and brittle-boned, blue from the tips of their fingers to the tops of their toes.

  Despite the discomfort, however, Chicago has a
lways been if not a home away from home for umpires, at least one of their very favorite cities.

  “Old man Wrigley doesn’t want to install lights in his ballpark,” explains Colosi, “so we don’t have to work night games. This means we have our evenings to ourselves. ‘Most everywhere, ninety percent of our games, except those played on Sunday, are at night, but here, we can go to a show, have a good dinner, live a more normal life.”

  “As normal as possible,” said Wendelstedt, “considering this is the mugging capital of the world. Why, I wouldn’t go across the street at night in Chicago without taking a cab.”

  “That’s all right with me,” said Willie Rooks, who sat stolidly behind the wheel of his green and white taxi, twisting and turning his body while his 1972 Checker wove through the lanes of buses and homeward-bound cars on Madison Street. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I ain’t afraid of nuthin’ ’round here.”

  “You mean,” said Wendelstedt, “there ain’t nuthin’ ’round here you ain’t afraid of.”

  “Shit,” chuckled Rooks, hastily applying his brakes for a red light, “I’se fearless.”

  “Yeah, fearless. One time I asked Willie to take me to the graveyard, but he wouldn’t do it. How’s that for fearless?”