This Wolf Hopes to Travel Long Road to Majors

What a thing it would be if Randy Wolf, the former Pepperdine left-hander who has won five of his first six decisions with the Philadelphia Phillies, were to be on the mound in a National League game with his brother behind the plate.

Not as a catcher, although that was the position Jim Wolf played at Pierce College, but as the man in blue, the umpire.

Incredible, said Jim Wolf, who was quick to add:

“My pride in Randy goes beyond words, but if I was umpiring in a game he was pitching, he would have to hit his spots like anybody else.”

Of course. No favors. Family loyalty stops at the door to the umpires’ room.

For Jim Wolf, on this weekend of his 30th birthday and the ongoing upheaval among umpires at the major league level, he is dressing in the umpires’ room at Franklin Covey Ballpark in Salt Lake City, a member of the crew working a Pacific Coast League series between the hometown Buzz and the Colorado Springs Sky Sox.

It is his sixth year as a minor league umpire, his first at triple A.

While brother Randy is making headlines, traveling on charters, staying in first-class hotels and earning the major league minimum of $200,000 a year, Jim Wolf is catching dawn flights, toiling in anonymity, taking abuse from the crowds, staying in comparatively cheap motels--well, at least they leave the light on--and planning for his Sept. 25 wedding to Lara Tannenbaum while receiving $20 per day in meal money and a salary of about $13,000 for a five-month season.

“I’m definitely not in this for the money because there’s none to make,” he said by phone. “I’m rich in road miles.”

Last year, working the double-A Texas League, he was rich, indeed.

A night game in Jackson, Miss., was separated from another in El Paso by about 900 miles and 15 hours for his three-man crew in a van leased by the league.

“A good league but the absolute worst travel-wise,” said Wolf, who knows he is on a long road that only a few negotiate successfully.

The Professional Baseball Umpires Corporation, a subsidiary of the minor league-governing National Assn. of Professional Baseball Leagues, employs about 230 umpires. The turnover at the major league level is so slow--glacier like, said PCL President Branch Rickey--that in the ‘90s only 20 National Assn. umpires had been hired to full-time positions in the majors--13 of those only because of the 1993 and ’98 expansions.

That was before Thursday, when the unforgiving commissioner’s office hired 10 minor league umpires as the first group of replacements for major league umpires who have submitted their resignations, effective Sept. 2. The resignation strategy is designed to get management to the bargaining table, but it is a high-risk concept that has divided the umpires’ union and will probably cost the resigning umpires their jobs.

Said one baseball official: “How in the world could these people be talked into jeopardizing positions that are available so infrequently and are so hard to achieve?”

The possibility of mass hirings--turning that glacier like movement into a landslide--would seem to be a major opportunity for minor league umpires, but Rickey said they face a “multitude of pressures . . . torn by loyalties to the major league umpires they have rubbed elbows with either in the spring or as vacation relief and the natural loyalties of the peers with whom they have been working.”

All of this also comes at a time when minor league umpires are voting on a plan to form their own union with Richie Phillips, the major league counsel, in the same role--a potential conflict.

“I think the minor league umpires are being used as part of a bigger war [by Phillips] and that’s unfortunate,” Pat O’Conner, vice president of the National Assn., said. “We have told our umpires we will not stand in their way if they have an opportunity to be hired by the major leagues as result of a job action, but we’re not going to accept a saber-rattling letter from Richie Phillips giving us seven days to recognize formation of a union as confirmation that a union exists.”

Jim Wolf said he has no problem with conditions generally but feels that minor league umpires would benefit by union solidarity. He is cautious, saying he does not know enough about the current major league situation to comment, but realistically, although he umpired a few National League exhibition games, does not feel he is ready for the major leagues after only one year in triple A, suggesting he is no different than a young player working his way up.

“I know that in the past there’s been little turnover and little chance for advancement,” he said. “That’s frustrating, but I’m prepared for it, and I’m going to give myself until they lose interest in me.

“I’m having fun and I love the job. I have great partners this year, which makes the season move a lot quicker. Really, I love umpiring more than I did playing. Of course, I couldn’t hit or run, so that may be a factor.”

Looking for a weekend job while attending Pierce, Wolf began to umpire at the West Hills youth fields, enjoyed it to the extent that he ultimately attended Harry Wendelstedt’s umpiring school in Daytona Beach, Fla., and was one of only 10 out of 140 to be given the opportunity to advance. His first full-season assignment in the low A South Atlantic League in 1995 paid $8,000, and he has since had various off-season jobs, such as pool cleaner, courier and personal trainer.

At $13,000, there will be no time for a honeymoon after the honeymoon this winter. He will be looking for work again, unless Randy concludes that brotherly love includes the umpire and is willing to make a loan.