The Making of an Umpire : Before an Umpire Makes It to the Major Leagues, He Has to Learn to Take It as Well as Dish It Out

It is April, and umpires everywhere are being taunted by stadium organists playing “Three Blind Mice.” Two young umpires in the Class-A California League, one of baseball’s lowest levels, are taking their first road trip of the season. Roland Garza, a Mexican-American from Texas, and Jim Friedrichs, a Kansas farm boy, hadn’t met until a few days earlier, but for the next 5 1/2 months they will be constant companions. As a two-man umpiring team, they will travel together to games up and down the state, sharing hotel rooms and hot-dog dinners as well as loneliness, boredom and frustration.

After checking in at the Ventura Holiday Inn before a game between the hometown Gulls and the Salinas Spurs, Garza and Friedrichs try to get to know each other. It soon becomes evident that nothing as sophisticated as a computer has matched them. Both are 24 and began umpiring in high school, but they seem to have little in common except a fondness for baseball and movies. “We’re sort of the odd couple,” Friedrichs says. Garza, tall and gangly with a shock of black hair, is an outgoing city kid from the San Antonio barrio. The soft-spoken Friedrichs helped his family raise Holsteins in a predominantly German-American county where neither blacks nor Mexican-Americans lived.

Whatever fun they have during the season will depend on how well and how creatively they coexist. Garza has been in the minor leagues three years to Friedrichs’ two, and once had a partner “who was rough to get along with.” So he and Friedrichs agree to talk out problems in the hope of avoiding off-the-field conflicts that could jeopardize their working relationship. Teamwork is essential to their individual advancement, which they call “moving up the line.” At the end of the line is the “show”--the major leagues.

Mere mention of the majors gives Garza and Friedrichs a good-time feeling. The show is big cities and jet planes and first-class hotels, not to mention a pension plan, per diem expenses and more than four times the salary they’re making now. But it transcends money. When an umpire finally reaches the top of his profession, he will be in an exclusive club for the best 60 umpires in the world. And he will have paid a heavy price in his personal life, sacrificing relationships with family and friends.

Although the Major League Umpire Development Program says it doesn’t keep statistics on dropouts and turnover rates, both Garza and Friedrichs have heard that the odds of making the majors are 100 to 1. It took them two years of seasoning in the low minors just to get to Class-A. Early in an umpire’s career, advancement to Double-A usually takes place within three to four years, but then the pace slows considerably. The best of the minor leagues’ 183 umpires are in Triple-A vying for the one or two major-league openings every year. If an umpire doesn’t ascend to the majors after 10 years, he’s usually told to quit and make way for younger candidates.

Players, of course, have their own hardships to endure before they can hit the major-league jackpot. But a player with rare ability can travel swiftly up the line. Umpires have to put in their time and wait their turn. Players also have more incentive to stick it out: In the majors, they’ll get paid megabucks, date starlets and appear in People magazine. It’s harder to explain what motivates minor-league umpires to endure abuse and humiliation before hundreds of fans for the prospect of someday receiving the same treatment in front of millions.

Little kids usually don’t want to be major-league umpires when they grow up. Most men (only a handful of women have tried it) become umpires after they recognize their athletic limitations. Garza and Friedrichs admit to being only average high school baseball players. For extra money as teen-agers, they began umpiring sandlot and high school games for a few dollars. Although umpiring didn’t provide the same thrills as playing, they liked being involved with the game. To Garza and Friedrichs, an umpire’s life seemed glamorous, the travel alluring. And an umpire also has power. “I like being in control,” Garza says.

At the Ventura Holiday Inn, Friedrichs stood on the balcony high above the beach and saw the Pacific Ocean heaving in the distance, sunlight glistening on the breakers. He thought back to his first year of umpiring, when he figured he’d seen it all in places like Medicine Hat, Canada, and Walla Walla, Wash. Suddenly, he felt euphoric, made giddy by the postcard view, the high-rise resort hotel and the high-flying expectations.

“What a great feeling,” Friedrichs said. “Things don’t get any better than this.”

As it turned out, they didn’t. It isn’t long before the hopefulness of spring is replaced by the dog days of summer, and Garza and Friedrichs are having fleeting thoughts of quitting. “This is the time of year,” says Garza one hot August afternoon, “when umpiring becomes a job.”

The long season is taking its toll, physically and emotionally. One night Garza even punched a motel-room wall in frustration. He and Friedrichs were always hurting, forced much too often to “find the grass,” which is umpire lingo for crawling to a soft spot after being stung by a careening baseball. They had suffered indignities from managers, players and fans, including a blustering manager they called Spitty, for the way he freckled them with tobacco juice during arguments. And they had to tolerate being threatened, badgered, booed and belittled--sometimes all in the same inning.

The traveling was also getting old and tiresome. The small league cities across California such as Visalia, Salinas and Stockton had begun to meld into a confusion of neon billboards, fast-food joints and cheap motels.

“One day I woke up and I swear, I didn’t even know where I was,” Garza says. Another time, they discovered they’d been robbed in their sleep, their money snatched from their wallets.

But being an umpire also has its rewards--magic moments on the field when every call was the right one, and even the losing manager praised their competence. And there were a few nice friendships off the field: the little batboy named Fungo; the trainers who tended to their wounds with kindness and ethyl chloride; the equipment managers who washed their laundry. There were a few women, too, but not enough, and a lot of nameless bars and closing-time rejections.

While baseball fans are thinking of major-league pennant races in September, Garza and Friedrichs are concentrating on getting through the worst part of their season. When it’s over, they will either be fired, rehired or promoted, based on written evaluations by managers, scouts and the league’s supervisor of umpires. Besides ability, they are judged on how they respond to confrontation, pressure and sticky situations.

But in the waning days of the 144-game season, as Garza and Friedrichs pull into Palm Springs in Friedrichs’ dented ’81 Chevy Luv, they know that it is going to be difficult to be at their best. The contending Palm Springs Angels are playing 10 games in 10 days, including four games against the Bakersfield Dodgers, the worst team in the league. The umpires are expecting long games and sloppy play, which always makes their jobs tougher. They also know that hard feelings between them and the two clubs’ managers have been percolating for almost an entire season.

The weather won’t help anyone stay cool, either. Although the 10 days in the wealthy desert oasis is their longest stay in one place during the season, Garza and Friedrichs aren’t celebrating. Palm Springs becomes a sauna in the summer. The Angels, a farm team of the California Angels, play their games outdoors at night, when the temperature still hovers at 90 and only stale winds flutter across the Coachella Valley.

At their motel, Garza and Friedrichs settle into their usual pregame routine. Sleep past 11 in the morning. Watch soap operas. Eat a cheap meal. Watch more soaps. Write a letter home. Read a paperback. Watch a major-league ballgame (“It makes me feel good to see major-league umpires miss a call,” Garza grins). In the afternoon, sunbathing and swimming are impossible--the water in the motel pool is like warm coffee. So they see a lot of first-run movies, which is made easier in Palm Springs because the Angels supply them with free passes.

“The majority of things we’d like to do cost money,” Friedrichs says, “so we can’t always do what we’d like.” The 10 umpires in the California League get paid only during the season. With their salary of about $1,500 a month, they have to buy all their own equipment except for uniform shirts, and they pay their own expenses on the road. To economize during the season, all 10 umpires share a three-bedroom apartment in centrally located Modesto, each paying $50 a month, from which they commute to about half the games. Mindful of their money, Garza and Friedrichs think they’ll each manage to save a few hundred dollars by the end of the season. But in Palm Springs, even with summer rates, “we’re getting kicked in the pocketbook,” Garza says.

In their dark, cool motel room, Garza and Friedrichs are in their usual positions, which means they’re reclining on their beds, both dressed in shorts and T-shirts. The TV, as always, is on, but neither is paying attention. Friedrichs is too absorbed in a Stephen King book to hear Garza complain about a shrunken sports shirt, as he examines stacks of unfolded laundry. Clothes and suitcases are everywhere.

“We’re both slobs,” Friedrichs says, “so we’ve never had a problem.”

Not to say they haven’t occasionally frazzled each other’s nerves. Garza is more easygoing than Friedrichs, who is usually gentle and shy but has a quick temper. Garza is also less responsible than his partner and relies on him to get them to places on time. And there was the time when Garza once again forgot to pay half the gas money and Friedrichs not so tenderly reminded him. Garza’s nonstop commentary during a movie once drove Friedrichs to contemplate homicide.

On trips, Garza does the laundry and Friedrichs always drives. Garza, in fact, has never had a car in the minors. Sometimes, they’ve been so bored with each other on the road that they went for hours in silence, unable to think of a thing to say. Other times, Friedrichs has had to listen to Garza singing along with the rock songs on the radio. “I should have been a singer,” Garza says, making Friedrichs flinch.

“We’ve had disagreements,” Garza says, “but what’s the use of screaming and yelling? We have enough people yelling at us.” While some umpiring crews have had to split up to prevent bloodshed, Garza and Friedrichs have hung together.

“We’ve never come close to blows,” Friedrichs says. “Roland

knows I can kick his ass.”

“Jim has a great sense of humor,” Garza counters, “but a real bad imagination.”

Minor-league umpires are required to attend one of the three recognized umpiring schools in the country. The cost is $1,000 for five weeks of intense instruction by major-league umpires. Students are taught rules, mechanics, technique and positioning. They develop a consistent strike zone and learn to react in a microsecond without anticipating the call. They are put in difficult game situations and shown how to deal with them. Perhaps their most practical lesson is how to handle an enraged manager. Instructors play the role, charging the novice umpire, screaming in his face, sometimes kicking dirt on his shoes.

“We were told not to shrink away, to state our point and not to scream with him,” says Friedrichs.

In January, 1984, Friedrichs attended the Joe Brinkman Umpire School in Cocoa, Fla., after dropping out of Kansas State University with one semester to go. He was an agriculture major, but farming “didn’t have a future,” he says, laughing at the irony of choosing umpiring. He was one of 112 hopefuls at umpire school, and he says he considered quitting after two weeks. “I thought it was a stupid idea to stay. I didn’t think I’d make it.” But he was one of only 15 students who qualified to advance to baseball’s umpiring facility at Bradenton, Fla., a kind of “Top Gun” school for the best 30 or so graduates of the three umpire schools. That spring, after two weeks at Bradenton, he was assigned to the Class-A Pioneer League, often referred to as Short-A for its 70-game season.

Two years earlier, Garza began a slightly different route. A 19-year-old freshman at San Antonio College, he read a newspaper article about a woman umpire who said she attended umpire school. “I said, ‘Wow, a school for umps,’ ” Garza recalls. So he quit junior college and signed up at the Bill Kinnamon Umpire School in San Bernardino (now part of the Brinkman school in Cocoa). Eight of 53 students were judged good enough for Bradenton. Garza was not among them, but, he says, “I decided I liked umpiring and wanted to give it another shot.” He returned for an additional term and wound up with a job in the Short-A Northwest League.

During their first season in the minors, Garza and Friedrichs had similar experiences. Each had recurring dreams in which he was standing behind the plate, endlessly calling balls and strikes. When nobody else was around, each liked to crouch in front of mirrors practicing and stylizing techniques. And neither, they admit, was a very good umpire.

“I was bad,” Garza says. “I wouldn’t have lasted if I’d made it at 19. They would have chewed me up and spit me out. My whole first year was scary, but it was enlightening. At home I was the youngest of three kids, and my mom babied me. I was a naive kid. I’d never been away from home. I couldn’t even iron a shirt. Thank God for permanent press.”

Friedrichs shakes his head as he recalls his first year. “I wasn’t prepared at all. I made a lot of really big mistakes. I was nervous every day from noon to the last out. The first pitch I ever called bounced in the dirt, and I called it a strike. All the pitchers yelled, ‘Hey, we like this guy!’ I must have felt like quitting every other day.”

Friedrichs looks at his watch. The umpires like to arrive at the park an hour before the game. “It’s time,” he says, springing off the bed. Anticipating a postgame foray to a local club called Zelda’s, they change into their lady-killer uniforms: khakis, short-sleeve dress shirts and Topsiders, and take off in the Chevy. Since Friedrichs left Herkimer, Kan., last spring, he has put about 16,000 miles on the truck, which is not air-conditioned. The league pays him 20 cents a mile for road trips. On the journey to Angel Stadium, he figures, he grosses 40 cents.

The stadium is just beginning to stir as the souvenir stand goes up and the ticket window opens. A vivacious 18-year-old usherette rushes up to the umpires. The Palm Springs version of a Valley girl, she has attached herself to them all week. One day she invented a new term by combining “men in blue” with “umps.” She called them “blumps,” and soon they began using the term themselves. After games they laughed with her and took her to Shakey’s, but romance was never in the picture.

Garza hit it off with a girl three days before he left San Antonio for spring training this year, but the relationship fizzled. The road, Garza and Friedrichs have discovered, is no place to find meaningful relationships or even one-night stands. Friedrichs admits, “I’m not good at meeting girls. My social life sucks.” Usually, Garza has to persuade Friedrichs to chase women after games, but while Garza is more gregarious than his partner, he is no lounge lizard himself.

Early in the season, they charged into single bars like sailors on leave. But as the weeks went by, not only did their jobs take a toll on their libido, but the pick-up scene became monotonous and predictable. “When my job is eating me up,” Garza says, “I don’t want to deal with women.” Baseball’s unofficial code of ethics prevents them from socializing with players or managers. So they began drinking alone, the two of them with their Corona long-necks at a table in empty hotel bars.

When Garza and Friedrichs get to their dressing room inside Angels Stadium, they must attend to a duty so important to the game that it cannot be trusted to anyone else: rubbing up baseballs with mud. Major-league umpires import their mud from Delaware, but Friedrichs, at the start of every series at each ballpark, digs up a divot along the right-field foul line and stores it in a Tupperware container. Muddying three dozen MacGregor baseballs takes less than 10 minutes, but it is not something you want to do before eating fried chicken: With a teaspoon of semi-dried mud in your palm, work in a dab of saliva, then rotate the ball in your hands.

“It takes the shine off and gives it more of a grip,” Friedrichs explains. But why couldn’t the job be relegated to some 4-year-old who’d enjoy it? “I guess they figure umpires wouldn’t doctor the balls,” Friedrichs says.

When they finish, Garza and Friedrichs begin the long process of getting dressed, Garza superstitiously doing his left side first. The room is cramped, about the size of a walk-in closet. It isn’t air-conditioned, either, so after a few days, the aroma from unwashed uniforms tends to discourage visitors. Garza and Friedrichs are soaking wet even before putting on long johns, three pairs of sweat socks and two shirts--for insulation that they say helps keep them cool. Since it is Friedrichs’ turn at home plate, he must also wear a five-pound steel mask, a two-pound foam chest protector and probably his most important safeguard, a hard plastic cup. Blowouts with managers are aggravating, bad calls embarrassing, but getting hit in the genitals with a foul ball is an umpire’s worst nightmare. Some umpires have been hit so hard that the cup split. Garza and Friedrichs have each been hit there four times in the last two years.

Outside, a few hundred fans relax on bleacher seats, lulled by the gentle rhythms of the ballpark. In contrast to the majors, baseball in the minors generates little pregame excitement or anticipation. Nobody is on the field except Tom Osowski, the Angels’ 26-year-old general manager, who is raking the mound. John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” is playing over the loudspeaker. It is one of many songs about baseball that will keep fans from drifting off during the game.

When it is time to start, the umpires adjust their hats and walk through the tunnel toward the twilight, all spit and polish. In the stands, the fans are waiting for them. “Where’s your Seeing-Eye dog?” yells a man in his early 20s. “You guys blew it the other night.” In a previous game, Friedrichs had thrown out Angel Manager Tom Kotchman for objecting too strongly after a close call, and Garza had made some controversial calls. The umpires took a lot of heat from the fans, but it’s nothing they haven’t experienced before.

“San Jose is the worst,” Garza says. “They have a couple of fans who yell at us instead of staying home and beating their wives. They get really ugly. There’s a guy we call the droner. He’s on us all game long. ‘Your dad called. He called you a bum.’ Sometimes we’d just like to go over and kill the guy. But let’s face it. We’re the bad guys, and we have to deal with it.”

“Fans can be cruel,” says Friedrichs. “When they yell at me, I can hear them, and I listen to what they say, but it’s like they’re yelling at someone else.”

Friedrichs takes his place at home plate and watches the pitcher warm up. Garza walks to first base. Class-A is the only level where only two umpires are used. Double-A went from two to three umpires this year, creating a lot of job openings, including one that Garza’s former partner got. While major-league umpires have the luxury of four-man crews, Class-A umpires are forced to split the field and cover a lot of territory, especially with men on base. A lot of disputed calls occur when the umpire is unable to hustle close enough to a play.

For the first few innings, perhaps because of the heat, the game proceeds at a soporific pace, causing potential problems for the umpires, who have to stay on the field at all times. “My biggest worry is missing an obvious call,” Friedrichs says. Even under the best conditions, staying pumped up for every play in a minor-league game can often be a chore. “It gets real hard in a double-header,” Friedrichs says. “You have to pace yourself. You have to know when to concentrate. Between innings, when I’m not behind the plate, I like to walk out to the center-field grass and think about other things. If you tried to concentrate on the game for six hours you’d go crazy.”

Friedrichs is having a good game calling balls and strikes. As he crouches behind the catcher, hands rakishly on his hips, his eyes are tracking the ball like radar. When a batter takes a pitch on a 3-and-2 count with the bases loaded, Friedrichs doesn’t hesitate. His right hand shoots out emphatically, and he barks, “Steeriiiike!” There is no argument. In baseballspeak, he has “sold the call,” his decisiveness deterring any chance of an argument. Like players, umpires can have days when the baseball seems as big as a watermelon, and other days when it “looks like an aspirin,” Garza says.

Part of baseball’s appeal is its unpredictability. When Friedrichs least expects it, his easy game abruptly ends when a routine play in the fourth inning suddenly escalates to a raging confrontation. After a Palm Springs runner scrambles back to second base following a fly-ball out, Bakersfield Manager Ducky LeJohn springs from the dugout, ready to rumble with Friedrichs, claiming that the runner should be out for going past third base and failing to touch it on his retreat to second. It’s a technicality, but LeJohn is a crafty old veteran who likes to catch young umpires napping. He knows he has a case, especially because Friedrichs had to view the play from home plate, 90 feet away. Friedrichs, however, says he saw everything and tells LeJohn that the runner did not cross the bag. They argue briefly. LeJohn, neither convinced nor happy, raises a cloud of dust as he marches back to the dugout.

But LeJohn isn’t finished. During the next inning, he makes snide remarks about Friedrichs’ ability to call balls and strikes. Friedrichs is beginning to get riled. When LeJohn goes to the mound to talk to his pitcher and stays out there too long, a grim Friedrichs walks over to him, and the battle begins.

Friedrichs and LeJohn are nose to nose, erupting in anger. Garza knows it is their argument, and he stays away. Forgetting his lesson about not screaming at managers, Friedrichs lets his feelings fly, a kid having to be tough with an old man. Then he makes a tactical error. “Ducky,” he snarls, “you’re behaving like an ass!” A manager is allowed to curse, bellow and disagree without getting personal, but anytime he says “you” or “you’re” to an umpire, it’s an automatic ejection. LeJohn takes Friedrichs’ comment as an indication that the rules are off and snaps back, “You’re an ass too!” Friedrichs doesn’t throw out managers often--fewer than two dozen times in three seasons--but he banishes LeJohn.

But Friedrichs’ troubles aren’t over. In the seventh inning, a ricocheting foul belts him in the throat. Umpires seemingly wear enough armor to protect themselves from an attack dog, but they still are always getting dinged, pinged and damaged by flying bats and balls. Earlier in his career, Garza was embossed by a foul ball that left stitch marks on his elbow and sent him to the hospital with bone chips. Not until this season have California League umpires been covered by health insurance. They used to depend on workers’ compensation if they were too banged up to work, and usually resorted to self-treatment with hotel ice buckets.

To protect his throat, Friedrichs wears a plastic flap that dangles from the bottom rung of his mask. Had he been wearing Garza’s model--a mask with steel bars that extend below the neck, he probably would not have been hurt. Like all plate umpires, Friedrichs leans forward as he awaits the next pitch. The flap hangs straight down, away from his chest protector, leaving a gap of about three inches. Like Achilles, he is vulnerable to a freak shot.

And that’s exactly what happens when a Bakersfield batter fouls a pitch into the dirt. One bounce and--thud. Like a guided missile, the ball somehow finds the exposed throat. Friedrichs does what wrestlers call the “floppy chicken” as he collapses to the ground and tries to find the grass, the wind knocked out of him. Garza races over from his position at first base, bends down and puts a consoling hand on his partner’s back. From the stands come mocking whimpers from a few unrepentant umpire haters. A player in the Bakersfield dugout chortles, “Waaa, poor baby.”

Friedrichs, coughing and wincing, his eyes tearing, slowly gets to his knees, then stands. Most of the fans applaud. After Palm Springs trainer Paul Bilak examines his neck, Friedrichs takes a deep breath and a few tentative steps, forces a smile, then motions for the show to go on.

After the game ends with a Bakersfield victory, LeJohn tells the press his version of their screaming match. “He called me an ass, so why can’t I call him one? Look, the only time I argue is when I feel I’m right. But even when you know you’re right, and you know he’s wrong, he still looks you in the eye and says he’s right. That’s the most aggravating thing. Once in a while, I’d like to hear an umpire say, ‘I blew it.’ But it never happens.”

In the umpires’ room, Friedrichs is sitting in his underwear, occasionally caressing the crimson splotch on his neck. Internal bruises are soothed with beer. Garza has dropped his sweat-drenched clothing on the floor and is replaying the situation at third base. As he steps naked around an imaginary base, a sportswriter comes in and relays LeJohn’s comments. Friedrichs scowls and snaps, “Maybe I didn’t handle the situation as well as I should, but he blew his cool. I’ve admitted mistakes to managers if they ask me in a nice way, but not when they’re out of control. In this case, not only was Ducky out of control, but he was wrong.”

By the time the umpires finish dressing, it is after 11 p.m. Tired, sore and irritable, Friedrichs decides not to go to Zelda’s. “I’m not in the mood to spend $4 to get into a packed place and pay $3 for beers and get hot and sweaty all over again,” he says. “Besides, all we’re going to do is get turned down by women.” So he and Garza wind up back in the hotel bar drinking Coronas, talking about their jobs and rehashing the game, as they often do.

“It’s really frustrating when you’re having a good game and you’re still hearing noise and everybody is still getting on you,” Garza says. “When that happens you just want to blow up.”

“You know what’s really good?” Friedrichs asks. “When you finish a game and feel like your calls didn’t affect anything. You got the plays right and you know it. When that happens I say, ‘I love baseball. I want to be in baseball all my life.’ That’s what keeps me going. But it really sucks when I’m doing a good job and I’m still getting no respect from managers and players who are not that good themselves.”

Sometime in December, the league will send out registered letters to those umpires whose contracts are not being renewed. By February, the remaining umpires will find out if they’ve moved up the line. Friedrichs, who plans to finish college in the off-season, seems better prepared to accept bad news than Garza.

“If they fire me, I can handle it,” Friedrichs says. “Even if they don’t, and I see that after a few years I’m not really moving, I’ll say, ‘This isn’t for me.’ It’s a pipe dream anyway. My goal is to make the majors, but to be realistic, my chances just aren’t that good.”

“It scares the hell out of me,” Garza says. “I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t umpiring. I’ve held office jobs and gone stir crazy. I know I don’t want to dig ditches. More than likely I’d go back to school.”

Garza takes a swallow of beer and says quietly: “There’s a lot that gets me down about this life, but I still love it, I really do. I want to say I gave umpiring a shot. And I just pray to God to be in Double-A next year.”