She’s Right At Home Behind the Plate : Pam Postema Is the Only Woman Umpiring in Pro Baseball; It’s a Tough Job That’s Not All That Pleasant for Men, Either

The umpire’s room at Nat Bailey Stadium, while not at all glamorous or spacious, nevertheless provides its occupants with all the necessities. Somehow, they have managed to wedge a shower, sink, three chairs and four coat hangers into a space not much bigger than a walk-in closet. Cramped as these accommodations may be, it is the only place at this Pacific Coast League park where the three umpires can find solace, drop their authoritative facades and replay the game’s highlights, just like the players do in their expansive locker rooms.

On this night, the hot subject among the umpiring crew was the incident in the late innings of the Vancouver Canadians’ 7-5 Triple-A win over the Edmonton Trappers. The first-base umpire had walked over to the Edmonton dugout and ejected a mouthy player who had caused problems all game.

Most in the crowd assumed that male

chauvinism had reared its hogly head and that the player targeted his derogatory remarks at first-base umpire Pam Postema, the only woman umpire currently in professional baseball and just the third in history. It turned out, however, that Postema was simply defending the honor of home-plate ump Craig Brittain, not responding to the sexist and sometimes vulgar comments she often hears.

“He called you horsebleep, Craig,” said a smirking Postema, her back leaning against one wall and feet propped on the other wall. “He said you’ve been horsebleep for years. He was right, but I still had to run him.”

Brittain, feigning concern, quickly replied: “Thanks for sticking up for me, Pam.”

He added: “If I had heard him, I’d have done it myself.”

You could tell, by the strangely satisfied look on Postema’s face, that it felt nice for a change to eject a player for something other than the usual women-don’t-belong-in-baseball comments. Not that those instances particularly bother her, but Postema says it does get old after all this time. Especially when you have to rehash it the next morning while filling out ejection reports for the league office.

Stashed away in PCL President Bill Cutler’s office in Tempe, Ariz., is a stack of reports that chronicle most of the abuse Postema has endured in her three seasons in the PCL. And that’s not counting her six years in Class-A and Double-A or the countless remarks fans have said over the years.

There was the time four years ago in El Paso, when Postema walked on the field and found a frying pan resting at home plate. “Little did they know I can’t cook,” she recalled.

At various times in the PCL, Postema has ejected managers and players for chauvinistic comments such as: “Go back to your needle and thread,” or “stick to doing the dishes.” Many comments, as one might expect, are too lewd to be included here. One of the more harmless jokes recently heard was: “What is a female ump? A call girl.”

The only time a confrontation became physical was last season, when Portland pitcher Mike Diaz unleashed a string of profanities at Postema. Then, he bumped her, spit tobacco juice in her face and called her names. Diaz had to be physically escorted from the field.

Such incidents did not take place in last weekend’s three-game series at Vancouver, described by Postema and partners Brittain and Bob Duncan as routine. Postema made the one ejection and had a shouting match with a manager following a balk call. But this was tame, Postema says, compared to the old days.

“I hate it,” she says when asked about the sexist comments. “I don’t have to take any personal abuse. They don’t have the right to say that to me. You have to assert some type of control over these players or else they’ll walk all over you.

“They can argue a call, but don’t prolong the argument and don’t try to show up the umpire. They can say a call is horsebleep, but not that the ump is horsebleep. Really, it doesn’t happen that much anymore.”

As hard as Postema, 31, tries to be just another umpire--and, it should be understood, an umpire’s goal is to be invisible on the field--she is almost always set apart because of her sex.

Such are the occupational hazards Postema faces, but she endures because of a long love for baseball.

“You get used to the attention,” she says.

From the cheap seats at Nat Bailey Stadium, it’s difficult to distinguish Postema from her two colleagues. All are dressed, not so stunningly, right out of the J.C. Penney men’s catalogue. The light-blue turtlenecks and shirts, gray polyester pants, oversized dark-blue sport coats and black shoes and caps make all three look rather androgynous.

Postema keeps her hair cropped short and her figure is hidden by a chest protector, mask and ball pouches. Being a former fast-pitch softball catcher, she never suffered from that dread affliction: throwing like a girl .

But her voice is the giveaway. Even though Postema’s voice is booming, it is higher pitched than her partners.

“You almost can’t tell her apart, but when the fans do, they get on her,” Cutler said. “That’s something my other umps don’t have to deal with.”

Even in the ‘80s, when sexual stereotypes have supposedly been knocked down, the attitude among the male professional baseball fraternity is that a woman’s role in the game should be either as a ballgirl or wife or groupie. Certainly, most men who make a living from baseball don’t want a woman telling them to sit down and shut up.

“Right off the bat, you notice that there’s a different gender out there,” Vancouver Coach Mike Paul said. “One remark I heard today busted everybody up. A guy said, ‘That was a ball, ump. It was boob high.’ To tell the truth, we all make snide remarks.”

After the guffaws died down, Vancouver Manager Tom Trebelhorn was asked to access Postema’s ability and her chances for promotion to the major leagues.

“No matter how good she is, I don’t think she’ll be the one (first woman in the major leagues),” Trebelhorn said. “As an umpire, I think she might be able to handle it. But I just think our sport’s not ready for her.”

No doubt, some ERA--that’s Equal Rights Amendment, not earned run average--supporters have considered Postema a pioneer. Not only does Postema flinch at the suggestion, but it’s wrong.

Postema was a teen-ager playing softball in the farming community of Willard, Ohio, when Bernice Gera, a Long Island housewife, took baseball to court in 1968 in an attempt to become an umpire. Some pioneer she turned out to be. After winning in court, Gera quit after her first game behind the plate and left the field crying.

It took seven years for another woman, Christine Wren, to invade the baseball world. Wren umpired for two seasons in Class-A before leaving, reportedly for a better-paying job. Wren also said she received no support from her crew and that catchers intentionally let balls hit her.

In an interview shortly before she quit, Wren issued a warning to any woman who desired to follow her: “If they only know what I’ve been through. Someday, some poor girl is going to try to follow me, and she’s going to have one hell of a task.”

Postema doesn’t consider her quest to become the first woman in blue in the big leagues any more of a struggle than for any other Triple-A umpire. Clearly, she doesn’t consider this an important quest for feminists.

“Don’t get me wrong, I probably wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for the feminist movement. I’m for that and I’m real disappointed that it (the Equal Rights Amendment) wasn’t passed. I love people like Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug.

“But I can’t put that pressure on me, call myself a symbol for all women. I tell you what, I wouldn’t want many of my friends, male or female, to be umpires.”

Growing up on her father’s farm in Ohio, Postema never even considered umpiring as a profession. In fact, sports for girls and women were almost non-existent. The local high school didn’t have teams for girls until the year after Postema graduated.

Still, Postema was drawn to sports. Her father, Phil, has described her as a tomboy but quickly adds that she’s “all girl, too.” Pam played on the local softball team, but at that time, no Willard girl ever thought about trying to break the sex barrier on the Little League baseball team.

“I was real good at softball,” Postema said. “But you can’t make a living out of it. I figured to go on to college and bigger and better things.”

Like many teen-agers, Postema didn’t know what she wanted after graduation. Rather than jump into college, she took a year off and worked in a rubber factory in Willard. She also did part-time work as a waitress and plumber.

The prospect of making balloons the rest of her life didn’t appeal to Postema. So, she moved to Florida with her sister and planned to enroll at the University of Florida. One day in the summer of 1976, Postema was reading the sports section of the local paper when a story on umpiring schools captured her attention.

The story so intrigued Postema that she decided to cancel college for a different calling--balls and strikes.

It wasn’t easy, though. At first, Postema was refused admission to the Al Somers Umpire School in Daytona Beach. Somers told her it was because she was a woman. Undaunted, Postema wrote, called and personally badgered Somers until he finally relented and let her in.

“There was another school that had women in it, and I could’ve gone there, but Al’s was the best,” Postema said. “I know Al thought I probably would’ve sued him if he hadn’t let me in, but I never would’ve done that.”

After graduating 17th in a class of 130 in the spring of 1977, Postema had to wait until 17 openings for Class-A umpires became available. The wait lasted until June, when Postema was assigned duty in the Gulf Coast League. Postema would like to forget her two seasons there.

“I made a lot of mistakes, like young umpires are supposed to,” she said. “It’s so far away from the big leagues, all you think about is surviving and getting through it.”

Postema made it through that tough time and was promoted to the Florida State League (Class-A). After a two-year stay, she made the jump to Double-A and the Texas League. It was the furthest any woman umpire had advanced.

As far as abuse, Postema says her two years in the Texas League were the most intense because of red-necked fans and sexist players.

“She knows she’s going to get a lot of static from players and fans, so she had to bear down harder,” said Vancouver catcher Mike Martin, who played in El Paso when Postema umpired in the Texas League. “I remember one play in which she really screwed up down in Little Rock in ’82. She was umping at third and she called a guy out when he was clearly safe. A fan from the stands threw a beer can intended for her. But it hit our pitcher in the eye, and it swelled up.”

Even though she didn’t have to dodge beer cans once in Triple-A in 1983, Postema wasn’t exactly greeted warmly, either.

“They always try to test out a rookie,” Postema says. Especially if it’s a woman.

By this time, though, Postema was making fewer mistakes. But because of the high exposure she gets umpiring in the PCL, which has teams in Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Honolulu and Portland, anything Postema does is magnified.

Last season, for instance, she made national headlines when she ejected a 14-year-old bat boy. It seems that Portland Manager Lee Elia, former Chicago Cub manager, had thrown a chair on the field in protest of a call. Postema motioned for the bat boy, Sam Morris, to retrieve the chair and place it in the dugout. Elia ordered Morris to halt.

The incident was even mentioned by Tony Kubek on NBC’s game of the week and brought Postema the type of recognition umpires dread.

Even a few fellow umpires have criticized Postema’s ability. Brittain, Postema’s partner the last two years, says that he’s heard whispers among other umpires--including big-league umpires--about not giving her support.

Brittain, however, is not one of the so-called conspirators. “Pam is a solid Triple-A umpire,” he says without prompting. “She has faults, but we all can improve. I think she needs to be more consistent, especially on the bases.”

Other than the fact she’s a woman, which, of course, she can do nothing about, the biggest knock on Postema has been that she’s weak as a base umpire. Despite what you might think, it is more difficult to work the bases than home plate.

“At the plate, everything is there for you,” Brittain says. “You have the strike zone and you call it. There are plays at the plate and you’re automatically there. But on the bases, you have to be in position, anticipate what might happen.”

Duncan, the other crew member, was asked his opinion of Postema’s work on the bases and said: “No comment.”

A league source said the probable reason for Duncan’s curt reply was because he has been publicly critical of her and also approached Postema about her work on the bases.

For the most part, the three-person crew gets along well. There didn’t seem to be any friction among them, even though they have been traveling and essentially living together since early spring.

“She does her job, day in and day out, just like Craig and I,” Duncan said. “Any woman who can do the job deserves to be here. But I feel a woman is at a disadvantage. Unless they grow up with it (baseball), like little boys do, they don’t have those baseball instincts.”

At one time, Postema admits, her base work was a bit shabby. But she quickly adds that it was during the days in the rookie leagues, when there was only one umpire in the infield and one behind the plate.

“I admit it,” she said. “I made all the mistakes you could make and I just squeaked by in the leagues I was in early on. Anymore, I’ve shown I can do it. I don’t think I miss that many plays on the bases. I guess I’m going to have to work harder to remove (the bad rap).”

Cutler has often been called upon to defend Postema from the baseball establishment. Last summer, for instance, Cutler received a call from Hall of Fame umpire Jocko Conlan, castigating him for having the gall to hire a woman.

“When are you going to get rid of that damn broad?” Conlan screamed into the receiver. “Women have no place in our game. You ought to know that.”

“The old-timers still feel that way,” Cutler said. “Pam rates in about the middle of the 15 (PCL) umpires we have, based on the data we had last year. I think it’s time for the old-timers to realize times has changed.”

Doesn’t it always happen this way? As soon as they removed the tarp from the slightly damp infield at Nat Bailey Stadium, a steady rain started. The first-game of the Vancouver-Edmonton series was in danger of being postponed.

In the corridor leading to the field, Postema turned to Brittain and a gleam came into her eyes.

“Keep raining,” Postema commanded with a laugh. “This is unplayable. Let’s bag it. We could be back relaxing at the hotel by now.”

One could easily forgive the umpiring crew for wanting a rainout. Here it was, the second week of August, and they haven’t had a full day off since May. Barring rainouts, earthquakes or volcanoes--there is always hope, since a team is based in Tacoma, Wash.--they won’t have another break, except for travel days, before the season ends in early September.

After a 50-minute rain delay, during which the umpires spent holed up in their cramped dwelling, they ended up working until almost midnight.

What bothers Postema most about her job, and what might eventually drive her away, is not the sexist comments or the job stress or the pay ($1,900 a month). It’s the constant grind of being on the road.

“We don’t have a home,” Postema says. “I like to travel, as I think most umpires do, but it gets tiring. You get tired of hotels and not having home-cooked meals. But then, a month after the season ends, you’re ready to go back again.”

To help keep her sanity on the road, Postema has a routine to keep from being sequestered in the hotel room. She runs in the morning, walks through malls and shopping centers and, weather permitting, lounges around the pool. “I don’t want to get in the habit of lying in my room all day watching soap operas,” she said. “A lot of umps and players do that. Some umpires don’t wake up until 3 in the afternoon, eat, and then go to the game. That’s why you see many umpires who are fat.”

Being the subject of many newspaper and magazine stories, as well as television reports, Postema has an added burden of always being on display even when she isn’t on the field. Pam hasn’t turned down media requests yet, but she said she has considered it.

An umpire’s anonymity is one of her strongest beliefs.

“I don’t feel right about me getting attention,” she said. “We (umpires) are best seen but not heard. I just don’t think you should write about me. As long as I’m doing my job, I don’t need to be heard from. I just don’t think you should write about me. On the other hand, I’m a novelty right now, unique.”

Postema said she has been asked the same questions so many times that she has memorized her exact responses. Indeed, she seemed ill-at-ease and merely answering questions on automatic pilot during a lunch-time conversation.

“If you only knew how many times I’ve had to say the same things,” Postema said, somewhat exasperated. “I have set lines. The showers. Always, they ask me if I shower with the other umps, which, of course, I don’t do. And the sexist comments, those, too.”

The most asked question, however is this: Will Postema make it to the big leagues?

The odds aren’t good. But then, they aren’t good for most of the 15 PCL umpires. On the average, there are only one or two openings for major league umpires a year, and the American and National league officials can select from either the Pacific Coast League, the International League or the American Assn. Occasionally, top minor league umpires also are selected to fill vacation relief roles in the big leagues.

“It’s difficult to crack into it,” Cutler said. “We only keep our Triple-A umpires here about six or seven years because you can’t make a career out of it in this league. The pay is bad. And if you don’t make the big leagues by then, forget it.”

In all likelihood, Postema will be back in Triple-A next season, her fourth. Her goal is the same as it always has been: to umpire in the major leagues.

It would be so much easier, Postema says, if there were other women umpires. But you won’t see Postema recruiting other women into the field. She doesn’t want to put others through it, unless they really desire to call balls and strikes.

“It’s a very, very tough life,” Postema said. “Go home and do what you want. Have a 9-to-5 job and settle down. I’m 31. If I don’t make it to the big leagues soon, I’ve got nothing to fall back on. I don’t even have a car. I’m using my dad’s. I don’t own a house. I’d have to start from scratch to learn a skill. But still, I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”