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

by Lee Gutkind

  “But I reminded you,” Wendelstedt said. “I went right over and told you. Don’t you remember?”

  “And I pulled the watch out after that. He went to about eighteen and a half seconds and then he threw. He never hit twenty as I timed him.”

  “I counted thirty,” said Harvey.

  “I counted thirty and then started over again,” said Wendelstedt.

  “Now wait a minute,” Williams said. “I’m telling you I had the watch on him the last part of the last inning and he never went over eighteen and a half. I’m telling you.”

  “Well, he did before that,” said Harvey.

  “I didn’t have the watch on him before that.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to impress upon you,” said Wendelstedt, “the fact that you didn’t do what you were supposed to.”

  “I can’t understand it,” said Williams, shaking his head, “I just plain old forgot.”

  Now, a day later, Harry Wendelstedt pounded his fist against his chest protector and scowled. He never once considered that he was being overly sensitive to Art Williams’s mistakes or far too harsh toward the young umpire’s inadequacies. To Wendelstedt, an umpire was a perfectly functioning piece of human machinery. Although Wendelstedt granted that a physical breakdown was indeed possible in an umpire’s intricate system, a mental malfunction, in his narrow point of view, was decidedly not. “Greif (San Diego pitcher) is balking,” he said.

  “He’s starting and stopping,” Harvey nodded. “He’s walking into his stretch, then pulling himself out of it and starting over again.”

  “He’s done that about five times.”

  “It’s a clear balk,” Harvey said, “but Art’s not calling it.”

  “Well, he’s on first base. If we call it for him, it would discredit our whole crew. It’s his call.”

  “The only thing to do is wait and see if the Cardinals notice. If they start to bitch, we gotta call it.”

  “I hate to play that way,” said Wendelstedt.

  “It’s not right,” Harvey agreed, “but I can’t see what else there is to do.”

  Wendelstedt trotted back down the third base line, the spikes of his heavy golf shoes perforating the turf; he assumed his position, crouched low above the stooping catcher. He was angry and embarrassed—not necessarily angry at Art Williams as much as at the frustration of the situation, at his total inability to assert any influence over Williams or, without Williams’s help, to assume command of the game. He was embarrassed for himself and for Al Barlick and Bruce Froemming and Doug Harvey, for all other umpires who try so desperately hard to do the right thing, to be part of a well-oiled unit, to officiate a perfect game. “How could he be a part of me?” Wendelstedt asked himself again and again, as he watched pitch after pitch pop into the catcher’s glove or crack against a bat: “How could he be a part of me?”

  “I knowed it was a balk,” said Art Williams, in answer to Wendelstedt’s first query after the game.

  Wendelstedt spread his heavy arms, shrugged those mountainous shoulders, and looked over toward Harvey in exasperation. Dale, who had stripped down quickly, padded into the shower room without a word.

  “If you knew it was a balk, then why didn’t you call it?” asked Harvey. “With Harry at third and me behind the plate, we can’t see it as clearly as you. You’re the guy at first base that’s supposed to call the play.”

  “We could have called it,” said Wendelstedt. “We both suspected it. At least I did. But you’re the only man in a position to be sure.”

  “If me or Harry woulda called it, then the Padres woulda wanted to know why the hell you didn’t see it. It was your call to make.”

  “I should have called it,” said Williams, shaking his head, peering down at the floor.

  “What I can’t understand,” said Harvey, “is why you didn’t call it, if you knew it was a balk.”

  “My heart beats wrong when I see something like that,” said Wendelstedt, turning toward Williams. “I get a quick and unusual feeling in my heart even before a pitcher does it. A good umpire has to have that sixth sense.”

  “I knowed he did it as soon as it happened,” said Williams.

  “Then why in the hell didn’t you call it? I keep asking you,” said Harvey. He slammed his hat down onto the floor and kicked it across the room.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t think. It was too late when I realized …”

  “You couldn’t think!” Wendelstedt, still standing in the middle of the floor with his arms outstretched, shouted. “I can’t believe it.” He looked at Harvey.

  “You said you saw it four or five times,” said Harvey.

  “He coulda done it a hundred times as far as we know,” Wendelstedt shouted. “The Cardinals are fighting for a pennant. You gotta be fair to them.”

  “Why didn’t you call it?” Harvey demanded.

  “I … I … I don’t know,” the black man stammered. “I knowed it was a balk, I knowed it right away, but …”

  “You knowed it! You knowed it!” Wendelstedt ranted. “That’s no fucking excuse for a good umpire. I’m telling you, you’re in big trouble. Even the boss (Fred Fleig) told you that three days ago in San Francisco, you’re in big trouble. What’d he say? What’d he say the first day I got back and we all got together for that big meeting?”

  Williams stared morosely at the floor without speaking. He looked like a big sack. He hardly moved.

  “He said you better listen to Harry and Doug, didn’t he? He said you better listen to what they tell you or your fucking job is down the drain, didn’t he? He said you better fucking shape up or ship out. That’s what he said. Now what the hell are you trying to pull three days later?”

  “If you knew it was a balk, you should have nailed his ass!” shouted Harvey. “An umpire can’t sit through a game with his hand on his crotch. What have I been trying to tell you this whole goddamn season?”

  Williams slammed his fist to his knee. “I knowed I shoulda called it right away. I just can’t understand what happened. I went blank.”

  “Went blank,” Wendelstedt repeated dully. “Of all the horseshit.”

  “A good umpire is not supposed to go blank,” said Harvey. “An umpire has got to maintain his concentration through every second of each goddamn game. An umpire who loses his concentration is a horseshit umpire. He’s not doing his job.”

  “No man lets his mind go blank,” said Wendelstedt. “No real man.”

  “Horseshit,” said Harvey, shaking his head again and again. “That’s really horseshit.”

  “We might as well throw the fucking rule book out the window for this crew,” said Wendelstedt.

  “I can’t explain it,” said Williams softly, hiding his eyes and studying the floor. “I just went blank. I try so hard all the time, but for an instant, I can’t quite understand it, I went blank.”

  “You’re going to blank yourself out of this game,” said Wendelstedt. “You let the players ignore the rules. That means they’re shitting on you, and that makes you a gutless human being for letting them do it. I’m telling you, you’re in big trouble. Even you won’t be able to hold a job if you keep this up another year. If you don’t listen to us and do what we say, you’ll be a burden to every crew you ever work with for your entire life.” He ripped off his jacket and hurled it onto his trunk, then quickly began pulling off the rest of his clothes—pants, shirt, socks, underwear, throwing them savagely on top. Breathlessly he turned to Williams, who sat, masking his eyes with his hand, still studying the floor.

  “Maybe you think we’re trying to embarrass you or shame you,” he said, “but that’s not true. What we want most from this world is what you want most from this world. And that’s to be a good umpire. To men like us, there’s nothing more difficult or more important than that.”

  His voice trailed off. There was nothing more to say, and nothing more for Wendelstedt, Harvey, and Williams to do but shed the rest of their clothes and drown their anger and
embarrassment under the scalding hot spray of shower water. Dale was already gone when the other three men dripping-wet, white towels hanging from waists and shoulders, emerged and moved across the quiet room. Their backs to one another, they rubbed themselves dry, dressed quickly, and left the room and the ballpark without as much as a sign of either forgiveness or farewell. They would let it pass. It had happened before, and it had passed. And it would happen again. And it would pass. So too would each game pass and each week pass. Even the season would pass, sometime and somehow.

  Wendelstedt rolled all the windows down in his rented car as he sped alone back to the hotel. The cold wind soothed his hot cheeks and dulled the thumping pain which seemed to start above his brow and encompass the entire back of his head. Before leaving his home in Florida to join the crew on the coast, the doctors had warned him about allowing himself to get too upset. They had also warned him about drinking and over-exertion and had advised him to continue to sleep as much as possible.

  But Harry Wendelstedt wasn’t tired; he was angry. He pulled a cold can of beer from the side pocket of his suit jacket, snapped the top and drank it down furiously as he drove with one hand. He wasn’t hungry, but thirsty. He lifted a second cold can from his side pocket and drank that too, then crushed both empty cans with his gigantic right hand and flipped them over into the back seat. By the time he stopped the car in front of his room at the Mission Valley Inn he was feeling better, a little better, but far from good.

  Wendelstedt knew that Ed Vargo’s crew of Bruce Froemming, Andy Olsen, and Paul Runge had already arrived at Mission Valley to officiate the Padres’ series with the Giants the following day. He phoned Froemming, snatched a bottle of J & B Scotch from his suitcase and headed for his friend’s room.

  If Harry Wendelstedt reminded some people of a German baker, then Bruce Froemming was surely, unmistakably a Dutch brewmaster. A small man with brownish-blond hair cut in straight bangs across his forehead and heavy round features, Froemming had a rusty, raspy voice and an infectious laugh that erupted like a machine gun. In contrast, Andy Olsen is gangling, lanky, and bony, with distinctively chiseled features, a long broad nose, a jutting chin, and shiny black hair combed back without a part. Olsen had a bright and winning smile, and when he smiled, which was often, he looked more like a farmer from the midwestern corn belt than an umpire with seven years service in the major leagues.

  They sat for a while, talking quietly, Wendelstedt sipping from a cup full of Scotch and Froemming and Olsen drinking steadily from water glasses filled to the brim with ice and German brandy. Froemming opened the bottle of brandy a few minutes after Wendelstedt arrived, but within an hour the bottle was only half full, and within two and a half hours it was completely empty. Wendelstedt had entered the room with a half bottle of J&B which, during the course of the evening, he fully drained.

  “I tell ya, Bruce,” Wendelstedt said, slouching down amongst the cushions of the padded arm chair and shaking his head, “I’m trying and Harvey’s trying, but neither of us know what the hell to do any more. He’s just not listening to us. You tell him something and he says he knows it already. But when he gets out on the goddamn field, he’s not doing his job.”

  “It’s not right,” said Froemming.

  “Of course it’s not right.”

  “I mean it’s not right that a goddamn guy gets his job because of his color. Especially when he’s a horseshit umpire.”

  “Especially,” said Wendelstedt, “when there’s a bunch of kids down in the minors who deserve to be up here, who’re screaming to be up here, they want it so bad.”

  “It’s not right,” said Froemming, who was sitting in a straight-backed chair in front of a blond wood desk.

  Lying on the bed, his head propped behind a mound of pillows, Olsen could see one side of Froemming’s face, round and full and slightly rosy, while the other side, ostensibly hidden from him, was reflected in the mirror above the desk. “Maybe he’s just scared,” said Olsen. “Maybe he wants to do the right thing, but gets so scared he can’t perform.”

  “Yeah, and maybe I’m a racist,” said Wendelstedt, lifting his drink and clinking the ice in his cup.

  “Well maybe you are,” said Olsen, “I don’t know. All I’m saying is, maybe you guys have scared him so much he can’t do a decent job.”

  “Horseshit,” said Froemming.

  “A good umpire can’t be scared,” Wendelstedt said loudly. “An umpire has got to be a man, and a man, a real man, is never scared. He faces up to his fucking responsibilities.” Wendelstedt shook his head and sighed. “I told him tonight he was a gutless human being. I told him he’s letting the players shit all over him.”

  “You did!” Olsen asked, surprised.

  “And what’d he say,” said Froemming.

  “‘I knowed I should have called a balk! I knowed it! I knowed it!’”

  “Goddamn,” said Froemming. “It ain’t right, Harry. It ain’t right. A man’s color has nothing to do with how good he can umpire. You tell me it’s right, Harry, with all those poor guys down waiting in the minors. I spent thirteen fucking years in the minors, I know.” Froemming waved his arm and shook his head. He reached over, yanked the bottle from his desk, filled his glass, and drank deeply.

  “I told you I didn’t think it was right, Bruce. I don’t agree with it. Maybe someday he’ll make a good umpire, but he’s just not ready yet.”

  “You’re goddamn right, it’s not right!”

  “Maybe I am a racist, like Andy says.”

  “I didn’t say that, Harry, I said maybe you’re a racist. I don’t know.”

  “The trouble with you, Andy,” said Wendelstedt, “is that you’re too fucking nice. You’re always willing to give somebody the benefit of the doubt. You can’t look at the bad side of people, you’re always looking for the good side.”

  “So what if I do?”

  “’Cause when people talk about you Andy, players or coaches or managers or anybody, you know what they say? They say you’re a nice guy.”

  “So? So?” Olsen leaned forward in the bed toward Wendelstedt. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”

  “Do they ever say you’re a good umpire? Do they ever say you’re a man who don’t take shit from anybody? No, they say you’re a goddamn nice guy. What fuckin’ umpire wants to be known as a nice guy? Goddamn players, they think you’re a nice guy, they’ll shit all over you, that’s why.”

  Said Froemming: “Some writer told me he’s been taking a poll on umpires in the press box. He said every fucking sportscaster and reporter he talked to thought I was a son of a bitch. Now to me, that’s a compliment.” Froemming ran a set of stubby fingers through his dark blond hair. “We’re umpires, Andy,” he said, “we’re not supposed to be nice guys. We’re supposed to be honest and fair and totally impartial, and there’s no way in the world we can be nice guys and do that.”

  Froemming stood up, grabbed the neck of the bottle and poured more brandy into his half-full glass. “What about Harvey,” he said, “what about Doug Harvey? He talks to players more than anybody else out on the field.”

  “Well, that don’t make him a bad umpire,” said Olsen. “You can’t take that away from him.”

  “I admit the fucking guy can umpire. I’m not saying anything against that. He’s the one exception as far as that goes. But how the fuck does he get his goddamn top rating in the player poll of umpires? By sucking in, that’s how. He gets on the field …” Froemming walked across the room and waved his arms, “‘Hey Joe! Hi Bill! How’s your wife? How’s your kids? How’s your mother in Fort Worth?’ Well, screw that. The goddamn player poll of umpires is a popularity contest. What the hell do they know about umpires? They watch the game, they watch the other players, they’re never watching you. There’s only two ways players can judge umpires. When the calls go for them, they say a guy is a good umpire. When the calls go against them, they say he’s horseshit. Harvey got on top of that poll because he ingratiates him
self out on the field.”

  “Harvey’s first on the National League’s manager-general manager poll of umpires they take at the end of the season. He was first last year,” said Olsen.

  “Horseshit,” said Wendelstedt. “What the hell do managers and general managers know about umpires?”

  “I’m just telling you what we all know to be true,” said Olsen.

  “You’re such a goddamn nice guy, Andy, it’s sickening,” said Wendelstedt. “If somebody murdered your best friend, you’d want to take the murderer to a psychiatrist.”

  Olsen slammed his glass down on the night table, splashing liquor and scattering ice cubes on the bed and raised up his arm. “I would not, Harry. Goddamn it! You’re getting me mad. I would not!”

  “Harvey’s first on the manager-general manager poll because he ingratiates himself,” said Froemming, “that’s why. He gets into town every year and calls up the manager or general manager of the ballclub and takes the guy to lunch. His wife is president of the Madres—the women’s booster organization for the San Diego Padres. What do you think of a goddamn umpire who lets his wife do that? You know as well as I do, Andy, we’re not supposed to be taking sides.”

  Wendelstedt filled his cup to the brim with Scotch, drank half of it down, then shook his head. It had been months since he had been able to pour out his pent-up anger and the gnawing frustrations of his work on friendly, willing ears. “Doug Harvey’s my friend,” he said, “and I’ll never say anything behind his back that I wouldn’t tell him, or haven’t already told him to his face.”

  “He’s a suck-in,” Froemming mumbled.

  “Now wait a minute, you don’t understand about Doug. Doug Harvey wants to be the best umpire in the world. He’s obsessed with that idea—and he’s going to play all the angles to get himself and keep himself at that point year after year. You gotta understand, he wants it that bad. He’s not trying to screw us. He just wants to be known as the best umpire in baseball.”