Wayne Stewart - Youre the Umpire: 152 Scenarios to Test Your Baseball Knowledge

Also by Wayne Stewart:

Alex Rodriguez: A Biography

Americas Cradle of Quarterbacks: Western Pennsylvanias Football Factory

Babe Ruth: A Biography

Baffling Baseball Trivia (with Dom Forker and Michael J. Pellowski)

Baseball Bafflers

Baseball Dads

Baseball Oddities

Baseball Puzzlers

The Big Book of Baseball Brainteasers (with Dom Forker and Robert Obojski)

Fathers, Sons, & Baseball

The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotations (Editor)

Hitting Secrets of the Pros

Indians on the Game

The Little Giant Book of Basketball Facts

The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom (Editor)

Match Wits with Baseball Experts

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Out-of-Left-Field Baseball Trivia (with Robert Obojski)

Pitching Secrets of the Pros

Sit & Solve Baseball Trivia (with Dom Forker)

Stan the Man: The Life and Times of Stan Musial

Youre the Basketball Ref

Youre the Ref

Copyright 2010, 2016 by Wayne Stewart

Foreword 2016 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Names: Stewart, Wayne, 1951

Title: Youre the umpire : 152 scenarios to test your baseball knowledge / Wayne Stewart.

Description: Second edition. | New York : Skyhorse Publishing, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015046590| ISBN 9781634503488 (alk. paper) | ISBN

9781634509107 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Baseball--Umpiring.

Classification: LCC GV876 .S74 2016 | DDC 796.357/3--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046590

ISBN: 978-1-63450-348-8

e-ISBN: 978-1-63450-910-7

Printed in China

This book is dedicated to my wife of thirty-five plus years, Nancy, to our sons Scott and Sean, to our daughter-in-law Rachel, and to our grandson Nathan. Also to the memory of my father, O. J., who taught me to love words and their power, and my mother, Margaret, who taught me to love reading. Finally, this book is also respectfully dedicated to umpires everywhere.

Editors Note: Several of the scenarios mentioned in the pages that follow cite players or managers affiliations with teams when the incident occurred. In other words, some of these players and managers have since moved on to new organizations or retired from the game altogether.

CONTENTS

ALBERT PUJOLS

FOREWORD

R on Blomberg played eight seasons in the majors (19691978), and all but one year was spent with the New York Yankees. His personal season highs included: 22 doubles, 14 HR, and a .329 batting average.

If theres one rule in baseball that I can relate to, and its one that I am closely associated with, its the designated hitter rule. I guess that only makes sense because on April 6, 1973, I became the first man ever to appear in a big league game as a D.H. Do I like the rule? I think its great. Id rather watch somebody that is a great hitter bat than a pitcher. I like the rule, and I think its here to stay.

Some critics say I screwed up the game in 73 as the D.H., but Im very proud of it. To be honest with you, at first I never thought that the D.H. was going to stay in existence. I thought it was a glorified pinch hitter. When we did it in spring training that year, we didnt talk about the rule, we just said, Go hit for the pitcher, like we always said to pinch hitters. But it was now, Youre going to hit for the pitcher four times this game. They didnt say, Youre going to be the D.H. today.

Then, on Opening Day in Boston, I became the first D.H. in major league history against Luis Tiant. I saw my name on the score card before the game: Ron Blomberg, D.H. So Im looking at it like, So this is the D.H., I guess! In spring training the only reason I was the D.H. was because I pulled a hamstring. Before that I was playing first base.

I think the rule is great because even though there were a lot of pitchers when we played that were pretty good hitters, now these guys dont even pick up a bat because they played high school baseball, the minors, whatever, and someone else hit for them there. Watching most of them try to hit is no fun.

Since the D.H. came along more than 40 years ago, the only other big changes to the rulebook involve instant replay and the 2015 rules involving the speeding up of games.

The replay? The game is such a quick thing, with lots of bang-bang plays. I can understand using replay if theres a situation to resolve like whether or not a fan touched the ball, or whether something is a home run, but now its getting to be too much. Theyre looking at every play. You have to wait and wait, and umpires have to huddle, then finally make a call. Why do you think the game of baseball is so long now?

As for umpires and the job that they do, I think that being an umpire is like being a policeman. Their job is extremely tough; its almost a no-win situation. If they call somebody out, somebodys going to argue. If they call somebody safe, somebodys going to say something. Would I want to umpire? No.

Ive umpired Little League games, and thats tough enough, but when you get in front of guys now who are making, say, $15 million a year and everything that they do is 100 percent right (so they think), its not easy to do.

I have a lot of friends who are umpires, like Al Clark, Marty Springstead, and Ron Luciano. I have the utmost respect for umpires and what they dotheyve been trained just like professional athletes to do a job. They work as hard as we did to get where they are. Id say 98 percent of them do an outstanding job, and even counting their calls on balls and strikes, umpires get things right about 95 percent of the time. Everybodys human; theyre not going to be right 100% of the time.

Theres a fraternity in baseball and its not just players; its umpires, too. Theyre part of our family. Even though they dont go out to dinner with us and they dont travel with us, theyre a part of the game. They get booed just like we do.

In the 1955 World Series there was a very close play at the plate on a steal of home by Jackie Robinson. The umpire called him safe and the catcher, Yogi Berra, exploded, arguing that his tag beat Robinsons slide. Every time I see Yogi, I ask him, Was Jackie Robinson out or safe? To this day, he still says he was out. The Brooklyn Dodgers, of course, say he was safe.