Gorman Ready to Replace the Replacements : Baseball: Camarillo resident ready to return to umpiring after a 120-day lockout.

National League umpire Brian Gorman has a simple message for the replacement umpires whose brief big-league careers ended Tuesday night: Thank you. Now get lost.

Baseball owners Monday ended their 120-day lockout of the umpires, who return to work today after ratifying a five-year contract that includes salary increases and improved benefits. The salary scale will range from $75,000 to $225,000, up from $60,000 to $175,000.

The agreement was hastened, Gorman said, by the growing number of blown calls and general ineptitude by the non-union umpires, who worked since the start of the season last week.

“We knew how bad these guys would do,” Gorman said. “They were walking billboards for us. You couldn’t watch (ESPN’s) SportsCenter for 10 minutes without hearing the word umpire.

“I’m sure these guys are adequate college or high school umpires, but move to the bright lights and the ball moves a little faster.”

Gorman, 35, who lives in Camarillo and has been a full-time major league umpire since 1993, was particularly amused after watching a replacement umpire who had worked as a police officer in Texas deal with irate players after a disputed call.

“I hope he has better judgment shooting his gun,” Gorman said sarcastically.

But Gorman owes a backhanded debt to the replacements, who he said vindicated him and the 63 other major league umpires who have nearly 1,000 years of major league experience among them.

“We’re more than a blue shirt and pair of gray pants out there,” he said. “There’s a thinking process we have that you only get through experience. You can’t get it unless you’ve spent 10 to 15 years in the minors like a lot of us have.

“I think this agreement shows that the major league owners realize we have a contribution to make to the game.”

The agreement also proved that the collective bargaining agreement works, Gorman said.

“At least baseball can solve some of its labor disputes,” he said. “I’m glad it’s all behind us.”

The dispute has left its scars, however. Two of Gorman’s former partners in the minors--Craig Compton and Frank Sylvester--became replacement umpires, a decision Gorman, a staunch union man who twice walked picket lines this year, will not forgive.

“If I was a scab, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror,” he said. “It’s a matter of principle, a matter of what’s right and wrong.

“It’s disappointing that guys I worked with before would do this. I was friends with them and now they can fall off the face of the earth as far as I’m concerned.”

Gorman, whose father, Tom, was a National League umpire for 27 years, actually starts this season on vacation and will work his first game Monday in St. Louis. Umpires have three weeks of vacation a year and those with seniority typically take their breaks midway through the season, leaving the newer umpires the first weeks of the season for one of their vacations.

The umpires will jump into the season without benefit of spring training. Gorman insists he has remained in shape, actually duplicating the movements of a home plate umpire while watching videotapes of games. Still, he acknowledges that umpires will carry some rust onto the field tonight.

“We usually work three of four home plate jobs during spring training to get our timing back,” he said.

But Gorman vows that everyone will notice the change from the replacement umps.

“We will still be a hundred thousand times better than what everyone saw last week,” he said.