Umpire Luciano Found Dead in Garage at Home : Baseball: Colorful career for showman included ‘shooting down’ runners on base, face-to-face arguments with Oriole manager Weaver.

Ron Luciano, a former major league umpire who brought great showmanship to the job, was found dead Wednesday in the garage of his home.

He was 57.

Police said Luciano was discovered at about 3:50 p.m. in the garage area of his home in Endicott, just west of Binghamton.

Broome County coroner Dr. Michael McCarville ordered Luciano’s body taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton for an autopsy.

A preliminary investigation showed no apparent signs of foul play, said Endicott police Lt. Harlan Ayers. Police released no other details.

An American League umpire for 11 years, Luciano worked the 1974 World Series and the AL championship series in 1971, 1975 and 1978. In a profession that traditionally demanded an unobtrusive presence, Luciano was among the first umpires to go about his work with flair and animation.

He was a big, lumbering man who waddled across the field. He gesticulated strongly on the bases, calling out runners with a flick of his fingers as if gunning them down with an imaginary pistol.

“Somebody asked me once,” he recalled after leaving baseball, “if I practiced my calls in front of a mirror. I said, ‘Look at this body. Would you want to stand in front of a mirror all the time if you looked like this?’ ”

While other umpires backed off confrontations with managers and players, Luciano reveled in the theatrics, going nose to nose with some of the best.

His raucous, chest-thumping battles with Earl Weaver, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, were the stuff of highlight films. He once ejected Weaver from both ends of a 1975 doubleheader.

“Ahh, Weaver,” Luciano said in 1982. “We’re not really enemies, though. We were in a golf tournament in Vegas over the winter. I was happy he didn’t win and he was elated that I came in last.”

A 300-pound former football lineman at Syracuse, Luciano retired from baseball in 1980. He worked as a television commentator for NBC and wrote two books about his baseball experiences, “The Umpire Strikes Back,” a best-seller in 1982, and “Strike Two.” He made the talk-show circuit at that time, spinning one baseball anecdote after another.

He talked of times he would get catchers to help him call balls and strikes. Ed Herrmann, the former Chicago White Sox catcher, was one of his favorites.

“He was great,” Luciano said. “Most catchers try to steal calls on you, but Ed would be honest with me. If I was under the weather, I’d tell him I needed some help and he’d call them for me. I liked it best when he’d tell me the pitch was out of the strike zone, I’d call it a ball and the pitcher would beef.”

Luciano’s first umpiring job began in 1964 in the Florida State League. The following year, he moved to the Eastern League, then spent three years in the International League.