CODE BLUE : Phillips’ Flawed Strategy Was Greeted With Little Compassion by Baseball

Make no mistake, major league umpires are where they are because of union counsel Richie Phillips.

His ill-conceived strategy has split the union along a bitter fault line, pitting partner against partner, wife against wife, while leading to the dismissal of 22 umpires, effective Sept. 2, the date their resignations were to have been implemented.

It’s this simple:

Given management’s distaste for his confrontational style during a long history of labor disputes and its desire to establish greater accountability and control through centralization of the umpires under the commissioner’s office, Phillips had to know that submitting mass resignations was like feeding sirloin to a pit bull.

The question is:

Did baseball have to respond quite so voraciously, hiring 25 minor league umpires as full-time replacements and accepting the resignations of 13 National and nine American League umpires--crossing both seniority and ability lines in the process?

The question, further, is:

If Phillips’ strategy was truly designed to get management to the bargaining table--their agreement expires Dec. 31--then couldn’t baseball have accepted it for what it was, expressed annoyance, but responded more compassionately?

After all, at some point baseball will have to negotiate a new working agreement with some type of umpires’ union, whether it is headed by Phillips or not, and at this particular point, baseball was in position to be magnanimous--and still is.

After all, management has Phillips on the ropes, his union divided and most legal and public opinion on its side, providing fans care at all if a group often perceived as arrogant, as bigger than the game, chooses to resign en masse.

The point is:

Instead of inviting a new round of legal battles, of suits and countersuits, baseball was in position to withhold the haymaker that is 22 dismissals in favor of a feint, a jab and a negotiated armistice. Couldn’t that have been the course? Shouldn’t that have been the course?

History pervades the situation--as it does the relationship between players and management--and baseball never seems to learn from history.

In this case, baseball officials said, Phillips had gone right for the throat again and they weren’t going to negotiate in response to a threat. Nor could they risk coming up to Sept. 2 without an umpiring staff.

“There were at least eight days between the time Richie submitted the resignations and baseball began to hire replacements,” a source said. “It was not as if we jumped immediately and accepted them all as some sort of windfall.”

Forty-two umpires, an illustration of the failed strategy, rescinded their resignations last Tuesday.

Several others had done so earlier and were saved from the ax.

How did 57 umpires agree to the tactic to start with?

“We assumed too much,” said one, referring to the meeting July 14 at which Phillips recommended it. “We were all stupid to not have asked more questions, but Richie never indicated he intended to submit the resignations the next day.

“We assumed he would use it only as a threat or that there would be more discussions about it between himself and our board. We assumed that the resignations could always be rescinded if they were submitted. He didn’t tell us that baseball was under no legal obligation to accept a rescinding. In my case, I found out about that from my own lawyer a few days later.”

Phillips has helped lift the umpires’ salaries, pensions and per diem payments to levels where none of that is a major negotiating issue anymore.

Umpires, in general, are more concerned with what they perceive to be management’s deteriorating respect and the ongoing absence of a code of conduct promised in the aftermath of the Roberto Alomar-John Hirschbeck spitting incident two years ago. They have specific concerns with the strike-zone issue, the fact that home teams were asked to monitor ball and strike calls this year and that amateur umpires are used as supervisors in the minor leagues.

There also is no question but that National League umpires strongly oppose the centralization that management deems critical to establishing greater accountability. Umpires now are virtually immune to demotion and termination.

“They still don’t want to hear anything about accountability,” a baseball source said. “They still don’t get it. There’s a culture of distrust that clearly comes from their leadership.”

Phillips contends that the umpires’ bargaining contract is with the two leagues and has generally rejected overtures from Sandy Alderson, who is Commissioner Bud Selig’s executive vice president for baseball operations and the man who would supervise the umpires if centralized.

Alderson had notified Jerry Crawford, a National League umpire and president of the union, that he would have a bargaining proposal ready by July 1. He later called Crawford and said the proposal wasn’t finished but that he was hopeful of presenting it by mid-July or early August.

The umpires didn’t wait. They met July 14 and submitted resignations the next day, extinguishing any desire by management to negotiate. Some umpires labeled it a preemptive strike designed to thwart management’s use of a hit list against lower-ranked umpires--a list management insists never existed.

“The whole idea [of the resignations] was to force a dialogue and get management to the table,” Bruce Froemming, a National League umpire who survived the dismissals, said by phone Monday.

“We expected a proposal by the All-Star game that wasn’t there. We felt baseball was sending war signals. People have to understand that we love the game as much as the players and the fans do. We need to get to the table. We need for cooler heads to prevail. We have to find a way for both sides to get out of it honorably and save these 22 guys. If we can settle world wars, we can settle this.”

Wars may be easier. There is no indication that baseball wants to negotiate with Phillips or save the 22.

New York Met Manager Bobby Valentine recently expressed concern about playing the season’s most important games with inexperienced umpires and was fined $2,000 by the league office, a source said.

The situation is nasty and could get worse.

It was learned Monday that windows at Alderson’s house in Marin County were pelted by marbles last week. One was broken. Alderson, whose wife was alone at the time, wouldn’t comment, but a source familiar with the situation said the timing was suspicious, since there had never been vandalism in that neighborhood.

Froemming, a strong union supporter, works on a crew with Wally Bell, Jeff Nelson and Mark Hirschbeck, the three National League umpires who either rescinded early or did not submit their resignations, making for an uneasy relationship. In fact, Bell, Nelson and Hirschbeck left Froemming stranded and waiting for his luggage at an airport last week as they took off in their own transportation.

In recent memos to the umpires, National League President Leonard Coleman and American League counterpart Gene Budig said they had received reports suggesting that umpires might have been involved in “illegal threats, intimidation or harassment” of other umpires who may have different views of the issues raised by the union’s “illegal mass resignation plan” and anyone “found to have engaged in such conduct will be disciplined immediately.”

National League umpire Ed Montague, a Phillips supporter, may be the first. He faces possible disciplining for a letter his wife, Marcia, sent to Denise Hirschbeck, the wife of American League umpire John Hirschbeck, accusing Hirschbeck, through his opposition to Phillips, of “undermining 20 years of work from an association that has reaped him so many benefits.” She wrote that Hirschbeck was a “traitor and coward.”

If it’s bad now, the schism figures to intensify when the full complement of new umpires arrives and the new guys are assigned to work with holdover union supporters. Maybe cooler heads will prevail, but baseball officials have never thought of Richie Phillips in terms of cooler, which is why 22 major league umpires are headed for unemployment in a month--victims of their counsel’s strategy.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Key Dates in the Umpire Dispute

July 2: National League President Leonard Coleman suspends umpire Tom Hallion for three games for bumping a player,

July 14: Umpires vote to resign Sept. 2 and not work the last month of season. Union counsel Richie Phillips submits resignation letters to baseball the next day.

July 23: 23 of the 68 umpires who had resigned reconsider and rescind their resignations.

July 27: All the umpires rescind their resignations, but are informed by Commissioner Bud Selig some will lose their jobs anyway because baseball has already hired 25 replacement umpires.

July 28: 22 umpires are informed that their resignations have been accepted and can’t work past Sept. 2