He’s Out! : It’s Last Call for Kibler After 25 Years as Umpire

There were no blaring headlines. No farewell tours. No retirement speeches. Heck, there wasn’t even a celebrity roast.

This guy was in the big leagues for 25 years, and few have drawn more respect and admiration from managers and players alike.

He played fair. He was level-headed. He was honest. And most of all, they’ll tell you, he was a gentleman.

He wore No. 9 on his uniform, and played for all 12 teams in the National League. He never asked for big money, and, in fact, didn’t make $100,000 until a year ago.

His anonymity explains why when the National League announced his retirement a week ago, it attracted no more than a couple of sentences buried in sports sections around the country.

Oh, fans have screamed and cursed at him plenty, and even players and managers have offered a few choice words for his decision-making at times, but few have bothered to get to know the 6-foot-1, 190-pound man behind the plate.

It’s a shame, but that’s the nature of John Kibler’s business.

You see, John Kibler happened to be an umpire.

The Dodgers, trying valiantly to stay in the pennant race, are playing the New York Mets on this warm August evening. Little is going right for Tommy Lasorda’s gang, and this night proves to be just a microcosm of their entire season.

Finally, the aggravation of it all is too much for Lasorda. Mike Marshall is called out by umpire Gerry Davis on a close play at first base and, the moment Davis’ fist is thrust in the air, Lasorda is standing inches from him, screaming obscenities in his face.

Kibler, who’s working behind the plate as crew chief, comes down the line and rescues his young umpire. He tells Lasorda that’s enough. Lasorda keeps screaming. Kibler’s shoulders hunch up.

“That’s the giveaway,” said umpire Eric Gregg, who spent the past two years on Kibler’s crew. “That’s when you know you finally riled him up.”

Lasorda also sees this, but it’s too late.

He’s ejected from the game.

Lasorda goes berserk. He storms by the pitcher’s mound, eyes a rosin bag and kicks it 30 feet into the air. He heads toward the dugout, but before ducking in, flings his cap into the stands.

“He kept saying what a terrible call it was,” Kibler said, “and how when we saw the films later, we’d see for ourselves how we blew it. I told him, ‘I think we got it right Tommy.’ ”

Well, the game ends. The Dodgers lose. Kibler and his crew have barely made it back to the umpire’s room when the phone rings.

It’s Lasorda.

“He saw the replay before we did,” Kibler said. “He told us we were right, and apologized.

“You know, it was nice of him to call and everything, but when you do all of that in front of 50,000 people, and then call and say, ‘Sorry, you were right,’ it doesn’t quite have the same meaning.”

Kibler laughs, rubbing his hands through his hair, wondering at recollections like this just how he was able to retain his sense of humor throughout the years.

“Everybody has bad moods,” Gregg said, “so I guess John has them too. But I’ve never seen him in one. I can honestly say that.”

Of course, one look at Kibler with his flattop haircut, piercing blue eyes, and square jaw, and you’d swear the man was born to be an umpire.

He exudes a certain dignity and reigns with quiet authority. He never much cared for theatrics and detested those among his peers who tried to become as big a part of the show as the players.

Ron Luciano, he ain’t.

“When you had a big game,” said Padre outfielder Tony Gwynn, “that’s the guy you wanted to see behind the plate. When times got hot, he always seemed to say or do the right thing.

“He was by far one of the best guys in this league, and really, I think all of us hate to see him go. We heard some talk during the season that they were going to make a lot of the old guys retire and bring the young guys in, and you hate to hear that.

“Guys like Kibler, (Doug) Harvey, and (Bruce) Froemming, they listen to you and hear what you’ve got to say. Then they’d say, ‘That’s enough, go sit down,’ and you knew it was time to sit down.

“But these young guys, they don’t even want to listen. You just look at them wrong and you’re out of the game. It’s like they want to show you right away who’s in charge.”

Said Padre Manager Jack McKeon: “When you’re an umpire, you’re in the people business, and he always had those great people skills. Everyone, I don’t care if you’re a player or a manager, we all respected John Kibler.”

Kibler never was much for showing off his power. When it became necessary to eject a manager or player from a game, he actually felt bad about it.

“I’ve always treated people just like the way I’d want them to treat me,” he said. “I’m not the type to swear at the managers and players, screaming and hollering at them during arguments. That’s just not right.”

The only time Kibler slipped and used profanity while arguing with a player was in the mid-1960s during a tiff with outfielder Bob Skinner. When Kibler filed his report that night and defined everything that was said, the league office fined him $200. Skinner was fined $100.

“I learned my lesson right there,” Kibler said, “and that was the end of that.”

In the meantime, Kibler developed into one of the game’s finest umpires, working four World Series and four All-Star games. He reached the pinnacle of his profession in 1987 when he was awarded the Major League Umpire of the Year award, a trophy that sits proudly in the office of his Oceanside home where he has lived the past 12 years.

The kid has come a long way since his first major league game in 1963, says Doug Harvey, 59, who was part of Kibler’s first umpiring crew.

“I’ll never forget one of the first games he ever umpired,” Harvey said. “John was still green, and Jocko Conlan, the crew chief, pulled him aside one day and told him, ‘Kid, it’s getting dark out, so when you’re ready, go ahead and turn on the lights.’

“Well, he turned around and went back behind the plate real quick to look for the switch. Then he stopped, and looked back at us. He realized we were at Wrigley Field.

“There were no lights.”

It has been 26 years since that first game, and now National League President Bill White has asked him to step aside at the age of 61.

Oh, if Kibler wanted, he could hang on and collect his paychecks, but White informed him that he would no longer be a crew chief and would have to take a cut in pay. Kibler wasn’t interested and, instead, decided to announce his retirement.

“It came as somewhat of a shock to me,” said Harvey, who now assumes the status of the game’s eldest umpire. “But the one thing that all umpires have is pride, and if you don’t have pride, you lose that edge.

“And John wasn’t about to lose that edge.

“You know, I’ve seen a lot of good umpires in my time, but John was one of the finest, and I don’t think there was a harder working man in baseball.”

It would be easy for Kibler to be bitter, to complain about age discrimination, arguing that he should be back on the field until he’s good and ready to retire.

But that’s not his style. Instead, he says he feels blessed to be part of the game he has loved for so long, feeling almost guilty that he has seen some 4,000 major league games for free.

He was there the night the ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs in the 1986 World Series . . . the night Reggie Jackson threw his hip into the ball in the 1978 World Series . . . the series when Pete Rose chased down Ty Cobb, setting the stage for baseball’s most historic moment of the decade.

“There have been some great times,” Kibler said, “but I think the most stressful was in 1986 when I was behind the plate for the seventh game of the World Series. People don’t realize the responsibility. You think of (Don) Denkinger and what happened in the ’85 World Series, and you think about what can happen to you.

“I mean, he misses one call, and nobody will let him forget it. I’ve talked to Donny and he says, ‘You know, I’ve been in this game for 20 years, and all people want to talk about is that one play.’ ”

Now don’t get Kibler wrong, he has had his share of embarrassing moments but, if it’s all right with you, he’d just as soon forget them.

Like that day in 1969 when he was umpiring second base and went out to center field to see if the catch was made. When Kibler was in the outfield, Bill Sudakis of the Dodgers tagged up from first and slid into second with Mike Shannon of the St. Louis Cardinals covering.

Ed Vargo, the home plate umpire, saw Kibler in the outfield and sprinted to second to make the call. Sudakis slid and looked up. To his right, Vargo was signaling safe; to his left, Kibler was calling him out.

“I remember Walter Alston running from the dugout,” said Kibler, “saying, ‘I want to yell at someone right now, but I really don’t know who to argue with.’ ”

A buddy of Kibler’s just so happened to take a snapshot of that play and an oil painting of the moment hangs in the hallway of Kibler’s house. Only it looks a little different from the way it happened.

“Well,” Kibler sheepishly shrugged, “I had him air-brush Vargo out of the picture. I didn’t want to be looking like an idiot.”

Then there was the time when Kibler was behind the plate in Philadelphia, and Richie Allen had a three-and-oh count on him.

Said Kibler: “Richie then turned around and said to me, ‘Now John, the count’s three-and-oh. Call the next one a strike, will you? Hell, I don’t want to walk.’

“I just said, ‘OK, whatever you say, Richie.’ ”

And, oh yeah, there were those back-to-back games in Houston during his rookie season in 1965 when he threw out Manager Luman Harris one game and third baseman Bob Aspromonte the next.

“The next thing I know,” Kibler says, “that huge center field scoreboard says, ‘Kibler, does it again.’

“You know, I still haven’t heard the end of that. It’s been 25 years, and I still hear fans there talking about it.”

It was nearly seven years ago when Kibler was lying flat on his back in the emergency room of a New York hospital. He felt like his chest was on fire and soon a stabbing pain shot through his left arm.

Kibler had suffered a heart attack.

First, Kibler removed his wedding ring. Then, a World Series ring. He gave them both to Froemming, who was at the foot of his bed, and told him to give the possessions to his wife, Dorothy.

Five days later, he was wearing the rings again. Three months later, he was back at work.

Then, in 1986, while taking a taxi to the airport, he drove by a wrecked car that looked just like his son Jeff’s.

He took a flight to Montreal, but learned upon arriving at his hotel that the car did indeed belong to Jeff. Worse, he was driving. Jeff broke his fibula in three different spots, along with his hip, heels and ankles.

Kibler, who stayed home for three months, didn’t know whether his son would live, much less walk again.

Jeff, who doesn’t even have so much as a limp, is now a production assistant for ABC Sports in New York.

Today, with no salt or red meat in his diet, Kibler figures he’s in the best shape of his life . . . and has no aftereffects since the heart attack.

“You know, I look back at this life of mine,” Kibler said, gazing out at the golf course below his deck, “and I think how the pay never was so good, the travel was tough and the time away from home was awful.

“God, I sure had a great time.”

KIBLER’S FAVORITES MANAGERS: 1. Preston Gomez; 2. John McNamara; 3. Sparky Anderson. PLAYERS: 1. Pete Rose; 2. Willie Stargell; 3. Willie Mays. CITIES: 1. San Diego; 2. Chicago; 3. St. Louis.