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

by Lee Gutkind

  “Selected” is a rather inaccurate way of describing the process that leads to National and American League umpires’ appearances in World Series competition, however. Throughout baseball history, up until an agreement was reached with baseball’s bigwigs and the Major League Umpires Association, umpires were indeed “selected” to work All Star and postseason championships on the basis of their year-to-year accomplishments. As the playoffs and World Series continued to grow more financially rewarding, however, it became evident that the best or most popular umpires in the league were making far more money than the average, run-of-the-mill official. It hardly seems possible that this could have gone unnoticed for as long as twenty-five years, but the leaders of the Major League Umpires Association waited until 1971 before petitioning for and receiving permission from both the American and National League to establish a new system. Now each official, once receiving tenure, would be automatically placed in rotation from the All Star game to the playoffs and on to the World Series. Although Doug Harvey, Tom Gorman, and Andy Olsen, the three National League representatives, most definitely deserved the opportunity of working a World Series, the rotation system also made possible many inequities. Which is how Satch Davidson was “selected” to help officiate the 1974 National League playoffs.

  Not only did Doug Harvey begin to shape up during the last few weeks of the season, but so too did Doug Harvey’s problem pupil, Art Williams. Something had happened—something good—although Harvey was unable to pinpoint the reason. Perhaps it had been triggered by that bitter confrontation between Williams and Wendelstedt in Los Angeles, Harvey mused. Perhaps Williams had at last come to his senses and realized the vulnerability of his position. Perhaps the information planted throughout the season by Harvey and Wendelstedt had finally traveled from Williams’s ears, toward his brain and recognition had dawned. Whatever. Williams was not only bearing up under the pressure and tension of a major league pennant race, but was actually umpiring with crisp and thorough efficiency.

  “He’s showin’ me something,” Doug Harvey told Wendelstedt as they sat side by side on the swaying subway train clattering toward Shea Stadium. It was Sunday afternoon, September 30, the last time this year the four men would work together. Williams and Dale were being shipped to San Francisco to officiate two meaningless games with San Diego, while Harvey and Wendelstedt were joining Tom Gorman and Billy Williams for Cincinnati’s last-chance showdown with Atlanta.

  “I mean to tell ya,” Wendelstedt said, eyeing Williams, who had found a seat across the aisle, “he’s come alive in the past few weeks. I never would have believed it. I told him yesterday that the series we worked in St. Louis with the Pirates were his best four games of the year.”

  “Can you imagine?” asked Harvey. “Here we are down to the wire …”

  “I thought he’d buckle,” said Wendelstedt. “I thought he’d fall all apart, but just the opposite has happened. He seems to have discovered the meaning of the word courage. You know, Doug, he might have found himself.”

  “I hope so,” mumbled Harvey, shifting in his cushionless seat.

  “What?” Wendelstedt cupped his hand over his ear.

  “I said ‘I hope so,’” Harvey elevated his voice over the train’s rattle.

  Wendelstedt nodded, crossed his legs, and leaned back. “I do too,” he answered quietly. Then he sighed.

  So the season was just about over, he thought. Two more games and the fire would be out, the heat would be off, and he could pack up his poor old body, still hung over with a residue of dopiness, and carry it home. With longing and pleasure he thought of his four-year-old son Harry Hunter riding around in the backyard of their new home on his tricycle, then splashing in the water after an ill-fated, Evel Knievel-like attempt at hurtling the pool. Wendelstedt smiled silently and giggled.

  Harry Wendelstedt had never before felt the loneliness of family separation as keenly as he had through the end of this particular summer. The truth of that had hit him abruptly only twelve hours earlier when he had awakened suddenly, glanced at the discouraging emptiness of the four blank walls of his room, leapt out of bed, threw on some clothes, and literally hurled himself out of his room, swooped down the elevator, through the lobby, and out into the night like a bat.

  And then he stopped.

  Standing on the cold, windy, gray sidewalk, glancing hopefully for recognition at each and every hurrying passerby, Harry Wendelstedt realized he had nowhere to go. Nothing to do, no one to talk to, nowhere to go.

  He walked into the nearest bar, ordered, and drank one, two …five, six quick ones, then stumbled back to his hotel. The watch on his wrist told him not more than an hour had passed when he returned to his empty room. He cradled the telephone receiver between his cheek and shoulder, recited ten numbers to an operator who connected him with his wife in Florida for the third time that evening. And only after a long and erratic conversation with Cheryl and his groggy, bewildered son, had he been able to muffle the remainder of the night in sleep.

  Wendelstedt sighed, glancing across the aisle at the rushing darkness of the tunnel through a smeared and grimy window.

  Art Williams, slumped and seemingly dozing, half opened his eyes and silently watched his partners. With much satisfaction he had overheard a good deal of what they had said about him, but as sly as he was, he would never let on. He would wait for them to come to him and tell him. Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t, but in any case, he would remain silent. Although he wasn’t at all surprised.

  “I just knew—I know—I’m not as bad an umpire as they were claiming,” Art Williams said. “I knew if I just kept my mouth shut and worked to the best of my ability, they’d have to admit, they’d be forced to admit that I was doing a decent job. I know it, and Fred Fleig knows it, too, and when we talk together privately he tells me to cool it, not to complain, not to make waves, just cool it. So I do.

  “I know all about the jealousy and all about the prejudice among many of my fellow umpires in the league. How couldn’t I know about it? I feel it, I see it, I hear it. Some umpires tell me to my face that I’m horseshit and other umpires tell players. Then the players tell me. There were, in fact, three umpires in the National League who refused to work with me this year. Don’t you think it hurts me when I find these things out? But what can I do about it? Prejudice,” he says heavily, “prejudice against me, against my race exists. It’s a fact of life.”

  Williams, hunching forward, resting his elbows on his knees, cupping his chin in his large ebony hands, thought back.

  He was sitting in the living room of his home, his arm resting loosely on Shirley’s warm, soft shoulders, watching the films of a game he had umpired. Another umpire had joined the network commentator. Together, they criticized the way in which Williams officiated and his very jerky and “ineffective” style.

  Williams leaped up, grabbed his shoe, and hurled it at the screen. Shirley shrieked, watching the slivers of glass falling at her feet.

  “That umpire, a National League umpire, spent fifteen minutes on national television telling the world how bad I was,” said Williams. “I sat there in my living room, holding my wife’s hand, nervously fumbling with her shoulder. I took that shit until I couldn’t take it any more. If I hadn’t thrown that shoe, I would have exploded. I would have probably been able to control myself if other umpires were around. But in front of my wife? I was embarrassed. I was enraged.

  “It isn’t as if I didn’t expect this. Emmett Ashford warned me that I would be resented and berated up here. He was speaking from experience. They resented him because he clowned. That’s the way he umpired. The fans liked it and he didn’t do anything wrong. It was the way he was.”

  Williams remembers one time, standing in front of home plate last year before the start of a game, listening to the other three umpires talking.

  “Well, I’ve got six years in the minor leagues and six years in the majors,” the first umpire said.

  “I’ve g
ot eleven years in the major leagues and eight years in the minors,” the second umpire said.

  “I’ve got seventeen years in the major leagues and five years in the minors,” the third umpire said.

  “How many years you got in the game altogether, Art?”

  How to tell the difference between being put on, which is acceptable, and put down, which is not? How to know when you are being too sensitive? How to know when you are not being sensitive enough? Such questions had plagued Williams through the entire season. He was a trooper plodding through a minefield, a skater gliding over uncharted ice.

  “I try to make everybody think that I don’t care what they say about me,” says Williams, “because, goddamn it, I know I can’t be as bad an umpire as they claim. I know I’m not. I just can’t be. Certainly I don’t have as much experience as I should, and I have a lot to learn—especially behind the plate—although I’ve gotten pretty good around the bases this year. But all in all, I gotta be better than some of the older umpires in the game who are so confident and cocky that they hardly move for a play. I gotta be better than those guys. I gotta be better than them.

  “So what I do, whenever I can, what I do, is cool it. I cool it. I don’t make waves. I don’t let these things bother me. I funnel it through one ear and pour it out the other. Because I’m an umpire. I can’t afford to think about criticism. I can’t afford to worry about hate.”

  “How many years have you got in this game altogether. Art?” the question was repeated.

  Art Williams turned his back on his fellow crew members, stooped, and flicked the dust off home plate with the bristles of his whisk broom. Then he sighed and straightened up, glancing first at the pea-green outfield, then at the turd-brown infield, spotted with four squares of sparkling white. He peered into the dugouts crammed with fidgety and apprehensive players, dolls of different colors in identical costumes, then looked through the artificial glow of the lights into the stands. Here were the people. Here was his life. Here was what the whole game, the whole country, the entire world was all about. He turned back around, lowered his eyes, transforming a faint glimmer of hope and satisfaction that had momentarily crept onto his face into that characteristically hard-assed umpire’s frown.

  “PLAY BALL!” he yelled.

  Author’s Note: Adventures of a Horse Blanket

  MY FIRST BOOK WAS about motorcycles, detailing my experiences tripping back and forth across the United States on a two-wheeled machine. I never needed a suit, a tie, an Arrow shirt for such adventures and, consequently, when I entered the world of umpires and baseball, my wardrobe consisted of a number of pairs of Levis, some of which fit tight, and others that fit much tighter. I had four denim jackets, one with the sleeves cut to the shoulders, another at the elbows, a third with frayed cuffs, and a fourth with a skull and crossbones sewn jauntily on the back. For more formal occasions, I had a burgundy leather suit, with silver-studded shoulders, zippered sleeves, and pegged pants with an embroidered seat.

  The umpires, however, very traditional men, wore suits with straight-leg pants, small cuffs, low-heeled oxfords or loafers, and white shirts with narrow ties. I soon discovered that to umpires there were only two kinds of men in this world: denim-clad dirt-balls and respectable, red-blooded, well-dressed, good old-fashioned, downhome American boys. So I set out to change my image and embellish my wardrobe so that I would fit in.

  I purchased a green silk shirt, a pair of black loafers, two pair of linen pants, one yellow, one navy, and a wide blue tie with embroidered white horses. The piece de resistance was a Pierre Cardin jacket, a sharp plaid of blues, greens, yellows, and reds over an off-white background, styled like a corset so that my shoulders looked broad, my waist thin. The jacket cost $165. With the exception of my burgundy leather suit, that figure represented more than double the worth of my entire wardrobe, collected with great care over my first thirty years. I wore sunglasses with this outfit as well, so that I would look like a movie star, or failing that, so that I wouldn’t be easily recognized by my motorcycle friends.

  Proud and beaming, I opened the door of the umpires’ dressing room at Shea Stadium one evening early in May and paused dramatically, my arms outstretched, cavalier-like, so that Wendelstedt, Harvey, Colosi, and Williams could see me in all my splendor in the proper light. Then I walked inside. I walked all the way across the room, twirled around nonchalantly, then sat down near the coffeepot, unbuttoned my jacket, and crossed my linen legs, awaiting their praise. I was half expecting applause.

  Wendelstedt blew up his cheeks as round and red as a circus balloon. He looked at me and then at Harvey. Flaring his nostrils belligerently, Harvey looked at Wendelstedt; then he looked at me.

  “He’s wearing a fucking horse blanket,” Harvey shook his head and said.

  Wendelstedt sneered: “This is the first time I have ever seen a patchwork kike.”

  My worth increased significantly in the umpires’ eyes when they discovered that I was Jewish. (“Hey Abie! A nice Jewish boy!”) With Art Williams and me around, the umpires could vary their routine, intermingling their never-ending barrage of racial slurs with some pretty awful ethnic insults. When Harvey and Wendelstedt didn’t call me Horse Blanket, they would refer to me as The Pittsburgh Piker, The Galloping Yid, or Roger the Rabbi. Wendelstedt had this song he would sing to the tune of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s, “Sixteen Tons.” It began a number of ways:

  Six million Jews and what do you get?

  Twelve million shoes and deeper in debt.

  or

  Some folks say a man is made out of mud.

  A Jew is made out of other folks’ blood.

  I’m sure that their forty-seven dollars and fifty cents per diem has a lot to do with it, but to a man, umpires are the most generous people I have ever met. At first I tried to pay my share of bar and restaurant bills, taxi fares, and porters’ tips, but invariably they would grapple for the check. I joined in this grappling, but never fought hard. In fact, it got to the point where I stopped even trying to pay for anything. I would eat, drink, and be merry; I was just along for the ride. Once in a while, maybe two or three times a month, Wendelstedt would feign indignation and say: “You goddamn lazy miser Jew, why don’t you pay for something?” And I would.

  Moderation is a word for which Harry Wendelstedt has no use. He doesn’t eat or drink, but rather inhales food and liquor. I remember once going into the hotel bar with him in Chicago, ordering a drink, then excusing myself to go to the men’s room. When I returned he had already gone through two more Scotches. That made three drinks lined up on the bar in front of my stool. After-dinner snacks for Harry Wendelstedt often included a quart of soup, a half pound of roast beef, a triple decker hot pastrami sandwich, a dozen pickles, six bottles of beer, a few orders of french fries, and half a blueberry pie.

  A good deal of the information gathered for this book came from Harry Wendelstedt, as we drank and talked and staggered from bar to everlasting bar each night. He had unquenchable energy. I once believed myself a pretty good hand with a beer bottle, but there is no way in the world to keep up with Harry Wendelstedt when he gets started. It was important to me to maintain a semblance of sobriety so that he, as my subject, would still feel that we were having a lucid conversation, so that he would tell me things. I devised as many ways as possible to bluff my way through drink after drink. For example, I began drinking whatever poison he would be drinking that night, and when he went to the bathroom or over to another table to visit somebody, I would pour half of my measure into his. I tried to sit near potted plants and would periodically and somewhat shamefully water the roots with bourbon. Sometimes I would take a big sip of my drink, move quickly to the john, and spit the mouthful into the sink. He must have suspected that I had some kind of terrible bladder infection because I spent an enormous amount of time in bar bathrooms dousing my face with water, or hiding in a stall, jotting down a few notes. A writer’s notebook makes many people uncomfortable, so I kept mine hidden
most of the time, whipping it out only when my penchant for accuracy might impress my subject.

  I sat through that frantic conversation between Froemming, Wendelstedt, and Olsen in the second to last chapter, pretending I was drunk and asleep. Once I got up and staggered outside, leaving the door slightly and unnoticeably ajar, and sat down on the curb to record my notes.

  “What about that fucking writer?” Froemming asked. “Can you trust him to tell the truth?”

  “The Horse Blanket? I don’t trust him completely. I don’t trust any man, for that matter,” I heard Wendelstedt saying. “Except for umpires. And only some umpires. Not all.”

  “You can get into a lot of trouble, telling him these things,” said Olsen.

  “Andy,” said Wendelstedt, “those fuckers in the league are going to crucify me. I know it. I live in Florida and nine chances out of ten when they see this book, they’ll send my ass to spring training in Arizona. Fleig, Feeney, Bowie Kuhn, they’re going to get me. I’m not going to get a day off next season. They’ll be sending me all over the fucking country doing exhibition games, but I’ll tell ya, I don’t give a shit. It’s about time people find out what umpires go through.”

  When every bar and private club had closed from one end of the city to another, and the dawn was beginning to glow, we would stop somewhere and have breakfast. Then Wendelstedt would return to his hotel room and sleep through the rest of the day while I, in my room, would confront my typewriter with my notes. At ten thirty I would meet Harvey for breakfast. At noon, I would attempt to catch a few hours’ sleep. I could always count on seeing each of the umpires at certain places at the exact same time. Like Harvey, who never misses ten-thirty breakfast. Umpires thrive on schedules and rely on certain habits the way Linus needs his blanket. That’s their way of passing through all of that dull and deadly time.

  There came the day at Shea Stadium, the second to last game of the season, when Harvey, Wendelstedt, Williams (and perhaps even Dale) shared a moment of closeness.