Chill Out, Umpires : It’s the Men in Blue You Want to Keep Away From Anyone Whose Ears Are Tender Things

Late in the 1961 season, umpire Nestor Chylak worked the plate as a formation of Canada geese flew over Detroit’s Tiger Stadium. The hitter, Roger Maris, stepped out, took off his cap, wiped his brow and watched the lovely sight. Chylak did nothing to hurry the harried man, to whom serendipity had delivered a moment’s peace. Then Maris stepped in and hit the 58th of his 61 home runs, this one into the right-field upper deck. It passed just below the geese.

The gracious Chylak, then, was an umpire who got it right.

So was old Bill Klem. The man who never missed one in his heart believed Babe Ruth to be a great player and a swell guy. But, gee, Klem said, as swell as the Babe was, it would be risky business to turn him loose in a room full of sheltered ladies. They surely would hear of things they’d never heard of before and certainly they would hear it in language fit for pool tables, not tea tables.

Today, the way it’s going, it’s the umpires you want to keep away from anyone whose ears are tender things.

Lip readers across America have been mightily offended by moving pictures they’ve seen on the nightly news. These pictures show baseball’s umpires screaming at players and managers who have been so impudent as to question questionable decisions.

Umpires, as the game’s impartial judges, have no business screaming from the bench at the defendants and yet it’s done every night. Heaven only knows why, but the umpire as screaming judge is an accepted piece of baseball tradition. Furthermore, it’s clear the screaming is encouraged--or by now baseball would have ordered its fools in blue to make the call, walk away and shut up.

In a perfect world of reasonable people, players themselves would not argue an umpire’s decision. But in this half-cracked world, unreasoning players under a game’s pressure often vocalize their plaints. And we make allowances for them. After all, they are spoiled millionaire kids looking to pass the blame. We expect and forgive their emotional excesses. Brats will be brats.

An umpire is old enough to know better. He should make the call, listen courteously to reasonable arguments and then walk away. He should especially shut up. Let the millionaire crybaby squall his brains out. You, Mr. Umpire, walk away in imperious silence, confident that once again an umpire has done the right thing.

Alas. Few umpires are so secure. Complete forests have fallen to provide the chips that go on these guys’ shoulders. Joe West body-slammed a player two summers ago (and Fay Vincent emasculated National League President Bill White by rescinding the ump’s suspension). Mark Hirschbeck went after Pittsburgh manager Jim Leyland so angrily this spring that another umpire had to wrap his arms around him, straitjacket-style. Rich Garcia hasn’t chased anyone down the dugout steps lately, but he assures us he would if the brat deserved it.

Most recently, in San Diego, umpire Jerry Crawford couldn’t walk away from a bad call. Atlanta’s Ron Gant, called out stealing (when replays showed him safe), threw his helmet to the ground. Seeing that violation of good manners, Crawford whipped his left arm straight at Gant and announced a $100 fine, making the rhubarb more sour than necessary.

A $100 fine doesn’t much hurt a man earning $2.65 million. Still, in the heat of the moment, Gant turned up the volume of his debate.

Here the umpire should have walked away and left Gant to hold his breath until he turned blue. Instead, Crawford screamed back. He got in Gant’s face. The men seemed locked in some weird test of macho: Who could pop his neck veins out the farthest?

About this time, Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox did an unusual thing that tells you all you need to know about umpires these days. You’ve seen managers put a shoulder into a player’s chest and ride him away from an argument. Cox did that this time--only he did it with the umpire. But Crawford wouldn’t go, and after a few more words he threw Gant out of the game.

Nothing new in this foolishness. Earl Weaver long ago decided umpires were vigilantes seeking vengeance. The Baltimore bantam recalled better times when umpires worked with cool professionalism: “They’d say something like, ‘What are you doing, Earl?’ in a way that made you feel embarrassed for coming out to question a call they were so positive about. You’d feel ridiculous. . . . I don’t know why this posture has disappeared.”

Weaver has proposed wiring umpires to produce a record of on-field conversations, so we’d know who, player or umpire, was at fault. Weaver would fire any umpire found wrong consistently: “I’d get the umpire situation straightened out very soon.”

Weaver once ate a candy cigarette in front of an umpire who had fined him the night before for smoking in the dugout. Outta here! In an umpire’s face, screaming, Weaver hit the fellow with his cap bill. Outta here! Later Weaver began an argument only after turning his cap backward. Outta here!

After one ejection he saw the umpire Steve Palermo straddling home plate, sweeping it clean, and Weaver couldn’t resist. He took aim, as if to kick Palermo in the rear, but cut the kick short and only dirtied up Palermo’s platter. Reporters asked Weaver about a possible suspension and he said, “No, those umpires shouldn’t be suspended. The poor guys are doing the best they can.”

Umpires, even bad ones, can take solace in the kindly and forgiving nature of man. Only one umpire has been put to death after working a game. Historian Robert Smith: “That was in Carson City, Nevada, where a condemned murderer named Casey persuaded the authorities to let him indulge his favorite hobby--umpiring--as a ‘last request.’ He umpired a full game in the prison yard before going before the firing squad.”