Harvey Doug - They called me god : the best umpire who ever lived

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Gallery Books

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2014 by Doug Harvey and Peter Golenbock

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition March 2014

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by Jason Gabbert Design LLC

Jacket photograph from the Doug Harvey Collection

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013048063

ISBN 978-1-4767-4878-8

ISBN 978-1-4767-4881-8 (ebook)

To my wife, Joy, who made it all possible

Ive had a wonderful life. I was an umpire in the major leagues for thirty-one years, from 1962, when John F. Kennedy was president, until 1992, the end of the George H. W. Bush presidency. Thats a lot of games: 4,673, to be exact. During that time I dont believe I ever made a wrong call. Perhaps thats why the players lovingly referred to me as God.

The Society for American Baseball Research voted me the second-best umpire in the last hundred and something years, taking a backseat only to Bill Klem, who was known by his admirers as the Old Arbitrator and by his detractors as Catfish, because they said he looked like one.

When they called to tell me that I had finished second only to Mr. Klem, rather than acting pleased, I told them I was offended.

Dig him up, I told them. Lets have a go at it. I said that because I like to think I dont take second place to anybody. If they brought back Bill Klem, Id be happy to go head-to-head with him anytime. Have a little contest.

Theres an old saying that they hire you to be the best, and then they expect you to be even better. For me, thats what umpiring is all about. Its a tough racket, believe me.

Often Im asked to give young umpires advice, and heres my most important piece of advice: When youre umpiring behind the plate, stop trying to be perfect right now, because if youre that hard on yourself, youre not going to make it. Youll have a nervous breakdown before you get out of high school ball. There was just one perfect umpire, and they put him on the cross. At the end of the day, the hardest part of the job of umpiring behind the plate is not beating yourself up when the game is over. Ive seen guysprofessionalswalk around in a panic for three days straight because they know on the fourth day theyll be behind the plate again. Umpiring behind the plate is, after all, the hardest part of the game.

I can tell you this because I was as guilty of doing this as anyone. Every day I knocked myself out, trying to be as perfect as possible. When a pitcher wound up, I would watch him, and it was just me and the ball. Watching that pitchwatching every pitchwould take so much out of me. When I strode onto the field, the outside world would disappear, especially that last month of the season when it really tore at your guts. You didnt want to miss a thing. During games toward the end of the season I had a feeling of being mesmerized.

I gave it everything I had, and when I stepped off the airplane coming home at the end of the season, my wife, Joy, said I looked like walking death. Id be completely worn out.

I am very proud of my profession. Without the umpires, the game wouldnt survive. I can remember during one of my early years in Major League Baseball I umpired a spring-training game in Arizona between the San Diego Padres and the Cleveland Indians. After the game was over, one of the managers came to me and asked if my crew and I would stay and umpire three more innings. This took place in the early 1960s, when major league umpires were barely making a living wage. I didnt think it right that we should be asked to work overtime for nothing, and so I told them wed do it for $25 each. It wasnt like I was asking for the moon.

Screw it, the manager told me. We dont need you. The catcher for each team can do it just as easily.

This was the sort of disrespect we were used to back then. Our crew walked toward the backstop, and as we were starting to walk off the field, a riot broke out. Twenty players were in a stack. It hadnt taken ten minutes.

The Padres catcher was calling balls and strikes, and he called a pitch a strike, and the Cleveland batter said, Are you shitting me?

No, said the catcher, who stood up and took off his mask, and the batter slugged him. Before I knew it, both teams were mixing it up on the field. All because there were no umpires. Baseball, you see, isnt a game you play on the honor system.

The umpire is there for one reason and one reason only: to make sure one team doesnt gain an unfair advantage. In tougher words, to make sure one side doesnt cheat. Its that simple. For the game to have meaning, it has to be fair. The only thing standing between fairness and chaos is the umpiring crew.

Throughout my entire career, my emphasis was on integrity. I never wanted to be accused of bias, and I never wanted to be charged with giving anything less than my best, no matter whether it was the first week of the season or the last, whether the two teams were fighting for a pennant or whether the game had no meaning in the standings.

It was the last week of the 1975 season, and I was umpiring a series in which the first-place Cincinnati Reds were playing the last-place Houston Astros. The Reds had clinched it, and Sparky Anderson, the manager, announced he was going to play his second-stringers.

I was the crew chief and I was umpiring on the bases that day. I called my crew together. I wanted to make sure none of the other guys decided to make calls with the purpose of speeding up the game and getting us back to the hotel.

Hey, fellas, I said. You may have a guy on the bad club, if he bats .240 he gets twice the raise. You have no right to mess with that. Just call the game the way it is.

I didnt want to do what I had seen other crews do: Just call strikes in order to get this meaningless game over as fast as they could. I could see who was in a hurry and who wasnt, who had a good strike zone and who didnt. And so could the players.

To be an umpire you have to be willing to sacrifice, and those sacrifices can be physical as well as mental. In my first year umpiring, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson threw a pitch and the catcher missed it, and the ball caromed under my mask and broke off two teeth, which I spit onto the ground.