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

by Lee Gutkind

  “In about the sixth inning,” Wendelstedt momentarily raised his voice to regain the floor, “she took off her mink stole. That’s right! She had on a silver mink stole, and the blouse she wore under that stole—or should I say the blouse she didn’t wear under that stole—was virtually non-existent.

  “Then, and I’m telling you, this is true, as sure as I’m standing here, she leaned her tits over the railing and started to call me. ‘Vendelstedt, hey Vendelstedt,’” Wendelstedt mimicked in his finest imitation French accent. ’Cum ’ere, Vendelstedt. Cum ’ere.’

  “Course I ain’t about to stop the game to go talk to a chick—no matter what the chick looks like—but I’m telling you she was getting me so worked up I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Every time I went down the line with a foul ball I could feel myself—I couldn’t stop myself—taking wider and wider circles along the sidelines near the railing so I could watch her more closely before returning to my position.

  “‘Hey Vendelstedt, Vendelstedt, cum ’ere.’ She wasn’t yelling or anything like that, but speaking in this nice little, sexy French voice. I’m sure only a few people besides me could hear.

  “I was going crazy,” said Wendelstedt, sighing and lowering his voice to a more confidential tone. “My wanger was so hard that a line drive to the crotch woulda cracked it in half. It was so big and stretched out it was crawling up my stomach and halfway to my throat. If I woulda pissed, I could have hit the sky.

  “So after the game,” said Wendelstedt, raising his voice once again, “instead of going into the dugout, I walked halfway to the sidelines just to see what she would do. And she was still sitting there, waiting for me. I’m not kidding! Just sitting and waiting. I went closer and she motioned me over with her finger.” He stuck out his forefinger and bent it five or six times.

  “‘Vendelstedt, cum ’ere.’” Now Wendelstedt was whispering sexily and puckering his lips. “‘Ho Vendelstedt! Vendelstedt! Cum ’ere!’ She was just cooing,” said Wendelstedt. “I’m not kidding! And I kept coming closer and closer, and she started making these sexy signs with her lips like she wanted to tell me a secret, so I leaned my ear over till it was almost touching her lips. I could smell her perfume and I could feel the warmth of her skin. Ohhhhh boy,” Wendelstedt moaned.

  “Then she said,” said Wendelstedt, “and her voice didn’t change one little bit when she said it …‘Vendelstedt, oh, Vendelstedt, Vendelstedt. YOU COCKSUCKER! YOU EAT SHEET!’

  “That’s exactly what she told me,” said Wendelstedt, throwing up his arms, feigning helplessness. “I’m telling you, there is no other umpire in the history of baseball that takes more abuse than me. That’s exactly what she said. I’m telling you the God’s truth.”

  Wendelstedt pulled his tight-fitting T-shirt up past his shoulders and dragged it over his head. He picked up a ballpoint pen from his suit jacket and carried the T-shirt and the pen into the bathroom, tightly closing the door of the stall. “How you doing, Art my boy?” he boomed.

  “Just fine, Harry, just fine,” Williams said, unable to match the joviality of his partner.

  Williams went into the dressing room and sat down in the chair in front of his large black suitcase, staring absent-mindedly and still somewhat dejectedly at his neatly pressed blue uniform.

  “What I want to know is,” said Harvey, splattering a chunk of tobacco juice into a cardboard box by his chair, “would you rather take the clap home to your wife or leave with it after you’ve been with her? Tell me that, Nick.”

  “I’d rather take a black man fishing,” said Colosi, winking secretly in Williams’s direction.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I like to use ‘shiners’ for bait.”

  “If I had it to do all over again,” Wendelstedt’s deep voice boomed from his stall in the bathroom, “I’d rather be a black umpire.”

  Wendelstedt waited, but Williams didn’t much feel like making a reply.

  “If I were a black umpire,” said Wendelstedt, “then I wouldn’t have to wash my hands after rubbing up the balls with mud.”

  “Sometimes,” said Harvey, “when I’m working the plate and I look out at Art standing behind second base, I swear I can’t tell where his uniform leaves off and his face and hands begin.”

  Williams managed to shrug his shoulders and smile weakly, then he sighed and began the long process of dressing and preparing for a game behind the plate. First he dug into his suitcase until he found the bottoms to a pair of long gray knit underwear. He held the underwear, its legs dangling in his lap, up to the light. This was the same underwear he had worn for his first major league plate assignment almost two years ago. He had, in fact, worn these same longjohns for each plate appearance since that time, but today he felt as if he were in need of a new good luck charm. Or no good luck charm. For some reason he thought it best to confront this plate job wholly on his own. He rolled the underwear into a loose ball, brought it back nearly to his face, then set shot it at the large wide mouth of the corrugated metal trash can. The underwear unrolled in the air and slid into the trash can, legs tiredly flapping like soggy, weathered streamers.

  “Well, did you see that?” said Harvey. “It’s about time.”

  “I never minded what the underwear looked like,” said Colosi, “but he hasn’t washed them since I’ve known him.”

  “If I did that,” said Williams softly, “then the luck would have all been washed out.”

  “What you ought to do,” said Harvey, “if you need a good luck charm, is drill a hole in your nose and insert a ring or a bone in it.”

  “I’ll tell you what else he ought to do,” Wendelstedt hollered. “I think he ought to get a haircut.”

  “Good idea,” said Harvey, “I don’t want no goddamn Afros on my crew.”

  “If Art got a haircut, we’d all be rich,” said Colosi. “We could open up a Brillo factory with what he cut off.”

  With a deep breath Williams stifled a steely-eyed grimace, then turned to face Harvey and Colosi with a shy but satisfactory smile. This had only taken a quick second. With forty-two years’ practice, he was a master at masking his irritation.

  “Most of the time I laugh with Nick and Harry and Doug when they make jokes about my color or race because I think what they say is funny. I’m not so proud that I can’t laugh at myself once in a while,” Williams has said. “I laugh also because I trust them. There are other guys in this league—other umpires—who make racial comments and mean it. They believe that whites are different than blacks, better than blacks, but luckily, I’m in a crew with people who, I truly believe, feel that all men are equal.

  “Sometimes I laugh when I don’t think things are particularly funny,” he says. “I think it’s often better not to start trouble. I don’t want people talking about me behind my back, saying I can’t take a joke. Because I can take a joke, I can take a joke just as good, maybe better, than anybody.

  “Now, up to this point, no one on this crew has ever gotten personal with me. If they do they’ll be sorry for it, I can assure you of that.

  “What I like about this crew is that we’re all ribbing each other. I don’t rib anybody, actually, but everybody is throwing jokes in all different directions. Nick is a greaser. Doug is an Indian squaw. Harry is the Nazi racist pig. I like that. It brings things out in the open and relaxes me. I get a real good feeling inside of me when all of us are laughing together.

  “There are other umpire crews in this league,” says Williams, “who aren’t as close as us. They stay in separate hotels, eat dinners alone, and travel to the ballpark and from town to town individually. That’s not right. Living with one another day after day you get to know how each man shines his shoes, what kind of clothes he wears, when he needs a haircut. It’s like being in a family. It helps time pass. It’s something like a security blanket to me, I guess.”

  Thinking of his days in the minor leagues, both as a player and an umpire, he could almost feel those
mustard-soaked hot dogs and stale peanuts anchored permanently in the pit of his stomach; he remembered the embarrassment and shame of having his telephone service disconnected for lack of payment and, when it was paid at home, not having enough money in his pocket to make a long distance call to the family. Williams stared at his neatly-pressed blue uniform and his black, freshly polished shoes with the toes so shiny they looked like satin. He pictured the comfortable roll of five and ten dollar bills in his trouser pocket, and he savored the pleasure he would take tonight in calling home after the ball-game, the security of having credit cards and of having more than enough money in his checking account to cover his debts. I have earned these comforts, he said to himself. I have earned the authority of my position. I have earned the respect of other umpires and players. I like it when people give me special attention in hotels and in restaurants when they find out who I am. I like it when the little black boys wait for me outside of the ballpark, thrust a gritty, stubby pencil in my hand, and ask me to sign my name. I like it, I’ve earned it, I deserve it. God knows, I worked and prayed for this chance since 1953. Since long before that.

  “Overhustle,” says Art Williams, flashing a big, open-mouthed grin. “Although I’m sure other people have thought of it and used it, that’s a word I’ve made up on my own. “Overhustle,” he says again, still smiling. “It perfectly describes my outlook on life, the way I conduct myself on the field, off the field, on the road, or at home.

  “I don’t want nobody to talk about me in this league, you see, because the way things are, with me the first and only black umpire, if they talk about me, they talk about my race. That’s the way people are. I don’t want nobody talking about me. That’s the one thing I would hate, so I work real hard until I’m sure people know that I’m just one of the guys, ’cause that’s exactly what I want to be.

  “In everything I do, everywhere I go, in all of my life, I overhustle. That’s the word. A ball’s hit down the right field or left field line, or into center field, I run like the wind, faster than any umpire, ’cause I don’t want anyone to be able to say I’m lazy, that blacks are lazy.

  “When I’m supposed to meet somebody at six-thirty, I get there at six-twenty because I don’t want anyone to say that I’m always late, that blacks are always late.

  “When it comes to sharing a taxi fare, or picking up a tab in a restaurant, I always try to buy more than my share, two beers to everyone else’s one, because I don’t want anyone to say I’m cheap, or that blacks are cheap.

  “I overhustle. I want to carry my load and I want everyone in the whole goddamn league, in the whole country, to know I’m doing it. That’s what I want.

  “Even when I’m home, I try to make an extra effort to carry double my load, to do things specifically to please my family. After a long road trip, I’m tired. I might have worked three or four double-headers in a row, or twenty games in twenty days in seven different cities, but I always try to remind myself that my wife has certain rights too. I want to sleep. Oh, sometimes I want to sleep so badly that while I’m sitting and watching television and talking to my kids, I dream about being asleep…. Then, after the kids go to bed, I take my wife out. She deserves a little fun, too, and it’s my responsibility to do the best I can.

  “You better believe I overhustle,” says Art Williams, shaking his head and gesturing with his arms. He is smiling so openly that even the sternest of interrogators would want to smile with him. Then suddenly Williams’s grin fades and his eyes become hard and stern.

  “There are a lot of umpires in the minor leagues, and right up here in the majors, who are jealous of me because I’m black and have gotten a few breaks because of it. But they don’t know, don’t realize, that I’ve also lost out on many opportunities earlier in life for the same blackness. They don’t understand, furthermore, that I can’t help my color one way or another. I am what I am.

  “I resent being called a ‘token black’ by reporters,” he says. “I get that all the time. ‘Don’t you feel uncomfortable, or how does it feel to be the token black umpire in the major leagues?’ they ask me.

  “‘I’m not a token anything,’ I tell them. ‘I’m an umpire. It’s pure and simple as that.’

  “They smile and nod, but they never write my answer down. I guess my honesty doesn’t have any news value.”

  Williams denies that black men in baseball are like gladiators performing for a white crowd. He believes that baseball is a game for white and black alike, wholeheartedly equal—as equal as unconscious prejudice will permit, that is.

  “Sometimes I call a black player out on a close play and they look up at me, surprised. They are actually surprised,” he says, shaking his head in astonishment, “and they say to me, ‘Hey brother, you could have given me a break.’

  “Well, I don’t like that. They ain’t doing me any good and they ain’t doing my race any good. They are jeopardizing my authority, my position, and my job. On the field, I ain’t nobody’s brother. They’re players and I’m an umpire, and it don’t go no farther than that.

  “In a way,” says Williams, “umpires and black people have been lifted out of the same mold. We’re both outcasts. We both find comfort and friendship only with our own kind.

  “People don’t understand that umpires as well as blacks have human feelings and normal functions. Most people don’t think there’s anything underneath our uniforms. We’re just faces, masks, ghosts in blue. They don’t understand that we eat and sleep, we feel pain and love, we shit and piss and fart like most everybody else. We’re human beings. Black and white. In uniforms and street clothes. Flesh and blood and bone.”

  He unwrapped a fresh set of underwear, tossed the cellophane wrapping toward the corrugated metal can, then stood and dragged the elasticized cotton material up his muscular legs and over his athletic supporter. Although it was to be a warm and muggy night, Williams sat back down and pulled on a pair of knee-high woolen socks, then strapped on a pair of catcher’s shin guards made of shiny blue heavy-duty plastic. Umpires wear such undergarments for a number of sensible reasons. First, the long underwear will not only soak up the heavy perspiration flowing freely under the heat-attracting blue uniforms, but will also prevent large quantities of dust from sweeping up their loosely-fitting pant legs. The socks and the underwear also help avoid potential chafing caused by the tightly drawn straps of the shin guards. In addition, the triple layer of material serves as a cushion in case an umpire is struck by a ball or bat, or is spiked behind the calf or around his relatively unprotected thigh.

  Over the underwear, Williams pulled on his pants. He slipped into a pair of black, plain-toed oxfords, laced them tightly, and got to his feet. His shoes had half-inch, nail-like but dull-tipped spikes protruding from the soles and heels, similar to those on golf shoes. The shoes had an elongated, leather-wrapped steel tongue, which extended from the base of the toe and over the laces, and climbed up the bottom part of the ankle, meeting the lower portion of the shin guard. Most umpires purchase these shoes from retailers specializing in coal miner’s gear.

  He pulled his padded chest protector down from the top shelf of his cubbyhole, its heavy-duty plastic shoulder pads clattering, straps dangling, and paused for a second. “Shirts or jackets tonight, Chief?”

  “Jackets.”

  Williams nodded, buckled his chest protector over his undershirt, slipped on a short-sleeved, light blue shirt over the protector, then pulled on his navy blue suit coat. Williams looked as if he were wearing a 1940s-style zoot suit.

  Preparing for a game behind the plate, American League umpires dress themselves essentially the same way, except that the American League umpires use a larger, highly-inflated outside, or over-the-uniform, chest protector called a “balloon.”

  “Balloons are fairly easy to use,” explains Doug Harvey. “There are two straps that go over your shoulders and slide down your arm, so when you relax, the balloon hangs loosely in front of you. This protector is light and provides
a fair amount of mobility. There’s a slot or indentation at the top of the protector. When calling strikes behind the plate you bend over as far as you can behind the catcher, lining the protector straight up and down, parallel to the catcher’s back. Then you put your neck into that indentation and peer over the catcher’s shoulder. It’s basically an awkward position to get used to. It’s almost like you’re bending down, craning your neck upward, all the while holding a mattress up in front of you.”

  The balloon provides an umpire with much more protection than the National League protector against a wild pitch or sharply hit foul ball. It is not only longer, wider, and more thickly padded, but it can be lifted to protect the face or lowered to protect the upper thighs. On the other hand, it is fairly unwieldy and, to a certain extent, reduces an umpire’s mobility.

  Minor league umpires still have the option of using either the inside or outside protector. “I worked my first five years in the minors using the balloon,” says Colosi. “I had been told some time before that the American League was interested in me, so naturally I tried to familiarize myself as thoroughly as possible with the way they liked to do things. All of a sudden, a year and a half before I made the majors, I discovered that the National League had purchased my contract, so I made a fast switch. Most young umpires will do that. They might use both the first couple of years—if they can afford to buy two chest protectors—but as soon as they receive any indication one particular league is more interested in them than the other, then they’ll switch. Naturally, they’ll do anything in their power to ingratiate themselves.”

  “What most people don’t realize,” says Doug Harvey, “is that the differences in the protectors significantly change the game. The National League umpire, with his inside protector, leans way over the catcher’s shoulder. He can see the plate better and, consequently, call a much more accurate pitch.