by Lee Gutkind
Art Williams could not understand what he was doing wrong. He was trying. Maybe he didn’t do everything exactly the way they said, but they told him so many things, so often, that it was becoming increasingly difficult to work under the strain of criticism, and to fit together at one time all of the advice and directions they tried to cram into him. But he was trying. He was trying so hard to hustle and to concentrate and to do the right thing sometimes he felt as tight as a banjo string. Even tighter. Sometimes he felt he was so tight that the slightest bit of pressure, the slightest movement, a twitch, would pop him all apart.
“Yessir,” said Harvey, stepping out of the shower and beginning to towel himself off. “A lot of guys with a quick mind and good reflexes can learn how to officiate adequately, but the real test is, can he handle situations of dissent? Can he control fifty athletes and thousands of fans and still maintain his cool enough to quote from the rule book and keep the game moving? Can he handle players, no matter what they’re beefing about? Does he have the courage to take the criticism and abuse, to stand his ground and to thumb a guy out? That’s the test of a good umpire.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” said Harvey. “Most people don’t realize that the umpires are under as much pressure as the players—especially late in the season—maybe even more. We know that the futures of teams and individual players are often riding on our decisions. We know we gotta do right. I mean, look at us here in this dressing room. We’re not arguing or anything like that, but let’s face it, there’s not as much kidding and fooling around as there used to be. We’re tired from five months of a season, damn tired, and we’re just now entering into the hardest part of the year. I’ll tell you, it’s tough and it’s going to get tougher. And you gotta be ready, Art. If you know what’s good for you, you gotta steel yourself, you just gotta be ready when the shit hits the fan.”
Williams nodded, stepped out of the shower and walked into the dressing room. He saw that Dale was gone and that Wendelstedt had just undressed. They passed each other as the big man walked gravely into the shower room. “One of the hardest calls for me to get,” Williams told Harvey, “is that swipe call. You know? There’s a ground ball to short, the ball is thrown wild, and the first baseman leaps, catches the ball, and swipes at the runner when he’s crossing the bag.”
Harvey sat down on a stool and began wiping his feet, toe after red, swollen, painful toe. If only he could be sure he was doing some good, if only he hadn’t gone over these same points with Williams again and again, three, four, five times before …“You gotta watch the bag,” he said, “that’s first of all, and you gotta watch the runner, the fielder’s glove, and the fielder’s foot. But like I always tell you, if you’re in the right position, in the slot, up on the balls of your feet, legs in tight, instantly ready to move, yet concentrating on exactly what’s going on, you shouldn’t have any trouble. It’s only tough when you’re loafing or out of position, or when you allow a fielder to get in front of you and block your vision of the play. That’s the reason we want you to change that fancy footwork style of yours. Because once you make your call, you’re out of position if a back-up call is necessary. You can’t be sure each play is going to go like you first see it.
“Now I admit that umpires miss a call once in a while because we’re human. We make mistakes. But there’s no physical or practical reason for it. If we’re in the right position, and we’re completely concentrating, we should make every call right. An umpire has ears as well as eyes, you know, and if we’re not completely sure of what we see, we should use our earpower to confirm our judgment. You should listen for the slap of the ball in the glove, and the thump of the runner’s spike against the canvas. Now which came first? That’s for your eyes to confirm. Or vice versa.
“Some base runners, I call them out, and they come up after the play and they say, ‘Listen. I know as well as the umpires do whether I’m safe or out because I was right there with you. In fact, I was even closer. It happened to me! I felt the tag and I felt my foot touch the base.’”
Williams smiled and shook his head. “I get that lots of times, from honest players who really believe they’re right.”
“I’m not saying all ballplayers cheat,” said Harvey, “but they don’t understand the different factors that enter into each and every play. First off, a runner will feel his foot against the bag a minisecond before he hears the pop of the ball.”
“Sound travels slower than contact,” said Williams.
“Hell yes. The guys on the field hear the national anthem before the people in the stands, don’t they? Sound travels slower. And how about when a player is sliding into a base?” said Harvey. “Let me ask you that?”
Williams shrugged. “What’s the difference?”
“The most important thing there,” said Harvey, “is that the runner’s nerves are centered at his point of contact between the ground and his body. The rest of his body is somewhat numbed by the slide. His main thrust of concentration is on the pain or abrasion against the skin so he can never be sure exactly when his foot touches the bag. Consequently, he complains. But I can assure you, the player doesn’t know, not for certain. There are far too many influencing factors.”
Doug Harvey took a deep breath. With Williams around, he sometimes felt like a college professor babbling incessantly in front of a blackboard. Yet, in many ways, he had to admit that he liked the role he was attempting to play in Art Williams’s development. He loved the game so much, took such pride in being the best, and worked so hard to maintain that position that he could, and would, go on talking about the intricacies and eccentricities of umpiring indefinitely—or at least as long as there was a moderately willing ear to listen. “Now you take instant replay,” he said.
“You take instant replay,” Wendelstedt said, his wet bare feet squeaking on the linoleum floor.
“Well,” said Harvey, smiling broadly, “welcome back from the land of the dead. What got your ass so hot and quiet tonight?”
“I was just thinking,” said Wendelstedt.
“As crew chief,” said Harvey, “I demand to be the only umpire in this crew permitted to think.”
“Well, it looks like you might get your wish,” said Wendelstedt, casting a glance in Williams’s direction.
Williams shrugged and began dressing, while Harvey continued. “They throw that instant replay up at us all the time, but how in the hell can a camera, no matter how powerful, be positioned at the best angle for each and every play? Why, you’d need a million cameras out on the field.”
“And a million microphones,” said Wendelstedt.
“You better believe it,” said Harvey. “The sportswriters sit two tiers above us in the press box drinking beer and eating hot dogs and they think they can call pitches better than we do. Why, they can’t even tell what kind of a pitch it is. Curve ball, fast ball, they haven’t the slightest idea, yet you hear them on television second-guessing you all the time.”
“I tell you what,” said Wendelstedt, “if those goddamn cameras are so good, why don’t they replace us? It’d be a lot cheaper and more sensible to use cameras instead of four live men.”
“They’ve got a goddamn machine,” said Harvey, “can call balls and strikes. I’ve seen it work before, but I ask you, can it call foul tips? Can it call obstructions? Let’s face it, we’re necessary evils. If you gave people a sensible way to replace us they would. But the owners and players and managers and even the fans have got to realize that we’re irreplaceable. There ain’t no machine that can do an umpire’s job.”
“Even if they did get a machine to replace us,” said Wendelstedt, “you know what would happen to it? Why, the players would bust it to pieces every time it ruled against them. They’d clobber it with a bat.”
“Ain’t no machine can call a half-swing,” said Harvey. “Far as I’m concerned, that’s the hardest call for any umpire to make.”
“The hardest call an umpire makes,” said Wendelstedt, �
�is after he receives his new schedule and he has to call his wife to tell her he won’t be home for four months.”
“Couple years ago,” said Harvey, “I bet Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh a keg of beer that a call I made was right. We were standing out near first base and he was bitching at me, said I had blown the play, so I made the proposition and he sent one of his coaches—I think it was Leppert—up to the press box to check out the replay. Well, Leppert gets back after a little while, he comes back and scrambles into the dugout, and he and Murtaugh start to talk. They talk for a whole goddamn inning, and Murtaugh looks mad as hell. At the end of the inning, Leppert came out, hanging his head like a goddamn sheep, he’s so embarrassed. ‘So?’ I said.
“‘They didn’t have the film of that play,’ Leppert blurts out.
“‘Bullshit,’ I told him, ‘they film the whole game.’
“‘Well, they didn’t have it,’ Leppert tells me, then runs back to the dugout.
“Can you imagine that? Goddamn Murtaugh was too cheap to pay me the keg of beer!
“The managers and sportswriters can’t stand it,” continued Harvey, “’cause the cameras are showing the fans that the umpires are right almost every time.”
“Cameras,” said Wendelstedt, shaking his head and hurling his wet towel down into the corner in disgust. “You show me a camera that can tell the difference between a brush-back pitch and a beanball. You show me a camera that can judge whether a guy is throwing a spitter, a fork ball, or a slip pitch.”
“Far as I’m concerned,” said Harvey, “the rule outlawing the spitter is useless anyway. The reason they outlawed the spitter in the first place was because it was too difficult to control, but these days, you got knuckle balls and fork balls that are just as hard to handle. A good forkball acts like a spitter. A spitter drops and a forkball drops the same way, then shoots out. That’s the only difference.”
“Of course, it depends on how you hold the ball,” said Wendelstedt. “The further back in the fork of your hand, the more it’s going to shoot out.”
“It’s a completely explosive pitch,” said Harvey, “like (Pirate pitcher) Bruce Kison’s slip pitch. He musta hit ten batters in 1974 with that pitch.”
“Someday he’s going to hurt somebody good,” said Wendelstedt.
“He can’t control it,” said Harvey.
“Goddamn Kison can’t control himself,” said Wendelstedt. “He’s the dumbest ballplayer in the major leagues. Why, I’ll betcha they have to point him in the direction of the pitcher’s mound at the beginning of every inning. Kison’s so dumb, he’s null and void. You see him on the street, he looks deranged.”
“There’s so much to learn,” Harvey said, turning back to Williams. “That’s the reason I keep saying, it takes anywhere from five to eight years to make a good major league umpire. I mean five to eight years in the major leagues before a guy can do a truly excellent job. You know what I mean, Art? The world wasn’t made in a day. You gotta expect things to go wrong. You can’t assume that you’re nearly as good as we are. After all, we’re established. We have respect.”
Williams, sitting and quietly listening to the conversation was now dressed in a light blue suit with a muted plaid design and a brown turtleneck sweater. He sat on his stool in the corner of the room, his elbows resting on his knees and his chin cupped in his hand, trying as hard as he possibly could to absorb all of the information being indirectly transferred through Harvey and Wendelstedt. But there was so much, he thought to himself, so much to digest, so much to remember. And there was so little time. He wished he could take a course or read a book, but he knew he was past that stage. He had leapfrogged into the big leagues and now every scrap of knowledge he managed to consume was further insurance that he would remain there. Williams squinted so that his brows rolled over his eyes, looked up at Harvey, and nodded intensely.
“You remember that game in Pittsburgh?” Harvey said. “Lasted about five hours even though we had to call it in the eighth inning ’count of rain. You were working the plate, Art, and I know we had to stop the game a couple times because of the weather, but still I calculate that you cost us at least twenty unnecessary minutes out on the field. Simply because you insisted on wiping the ball dry every time it hit the ground. You wiped it dry, then threw it to the pitcher and he rubbed it up with his hands. What I keep trying to tell you is that, for the fans’ sake, if not our own, you gotta keep that game moving. We got five dozen balls and a ball boy with a towel. If there’s any reason you think the ball’s no good, you throw out a new one. That saves us ten, twenty seconds, maybe more, for each batter.
“The other thing is, I notice you like to watch those foul balls hit back into the stands. I know it’s interesting to see if one of the fans catches it or not, but that’s not an umpire’s concern. He’s not there to enjoy the game, he’s there to officiate it. If someone hits a ball back foul, throw out a new one immediately. The pitcher ought to have a new ball before the old one reaches the stands. We gotta keep this game moving. Baseball is long enough as it is.”
“I can see that,” said Williams, still nodding, “it only makes sense.”
“There’s so much to learn,” Harvey said again. “People think we go to school for a few weeks, spend a couple years in the minor leagues, and an umpire is ready for the big time. That’s not even near the truth.”
“And how about catchers?” said Wendelstedt. “You gotta know how to adjust to each and every catcher behind the plate. You gotta know, for example, that a guy like Manny Sanguillen is fidgety, moving around all the time. If you don’t know that beforehand so that you can easily adjust to it, he’s going to block you out of a couple of calls in the first few innings of every game.”
“And McCarver (of the Cardinals),” said Harvey. “He’s getting old now and he can’t stoop down as far as he used to. So you have got to learn to call the game sometimes standing sort of halfway beside him, rather than behind. If you can’t train your eye to do that, to adjust under any and all circumstances, then you’ll lack all consistency.”
“Grote goes down real low,” said Williams.
“Yeah, and he’s also moving the ball in his glove all the time back to the strike zone.”
“Just like a little leaguer,” said Wendelstedt. “Some catchers don’t understand that when they keep moving the ball back into the center of the strike zone, they’re costing the pitchers, because on any close pitch, with the catcher trying to hide the ball, the umpire has got to assume that it was bad. I’ll bet Grote costs a pitcher ten strikes a game.”
Harvey pulled on a pair of white, patent leather boots and zipped them up the side. He stood and began buttoning his sweater. “Seems all we do in this game is dress and undress,” he said.
“Boy, I’ll tell you, there’s a hell of a lot to learn, and all we’re trying to do is teach you, Art,” said Wendelstedt.
“I know that,” said Williams, standing up to face Harvey.
“Long about this time in the season,” said Harvey, “players start telling me about how red-assed I’ve become. Well, that’s right. I am red-assed. I’m as mean as a grizzly, as ferocious as a lion. And it’s the goddamn players who are making me that way.
“I’m telling you here and now, Art, and Harry is my witness, black as you are, that if you expect to keep your job next season, then you better become red-assed right away. That’s the only way you’re going to survive this fucking tight race for the playoffs. And if you aren’t red-assed, if you let the ballplayers shit all over you during a game, then you’re making it tough for the other umpires, not only in this crew, but all over the league. Goddamn players find out they can throw horseshit at you, then they figure they can throw horseshit at all other umpires. Makes our job ten times, twenty times more difficult.” Harvey paused to yell and lift a fist. “You see what I mean? You see what I mean, don’t you, goddamn it?”
Williams, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed as he studied the squares of tile on
the floor, nodded almost imperceptibly.
“There’s one thing I’m trying to drill into you, one thing you got to remember,” said Harvey loudly, stepping close enough to Williams to touch him. “What I’m going to say now is the most important thing I have ever tried to tell you. This is the key to being a good umpire. This is what separates the men from the boys. This is what makes a man’s man out of a mortal man.
“Now listen to me, Art,” said Harvey, spreading his arms and raising his voice as if he were delivering a sermon on a Sunday morning pulpit. “Art, I tell you now like I was your father, I talk to you with the warmth of a brother, so you listen to me closely and you listen good ’cause here it is: Don’t let anybody ever call you horseshit. That’s the rule one of umpiring. Don’t let anybody ever call you horseshit, Art. Anybody calls you horseshit, you throw his ass the hell out of the game.
“As red-assed as I become during August and September, I tell those goddamn players, ‘Don’t you ever call me horseshit. Don’t call me horseshit,’ I tell them,” Harvey quivered. “‘Goddamn it, don’t call me horseshit. You can say I made a horseshit call. That’s all right.’” He paused and raised the palms of his hands, then continued expounding. “‘I can call you a horseshit player. That’s all right, too. But I’m telling you right now, I don’t want anybody calling me something I wouldn’t call them. And that’s horseshit,’” said Harvey, his wet silver hair reflecting under the bare lightbulb.