by Doug Harvey
The Tigers ended up winning the game and the series. Whenever I see Brock, he’s quick to remind me that I cost him $13,000, the difference between the winners’ and losers’ share.
After the game we had to run like hell to catch our charter flight, since we were flying back to St. Louis. I was all worked up, sweating like a pig, so I took a quick shower, headed for the airport, and got on the plane.
In my seat I ordered a beer and sat there relaxing with my wife.
Baseball commissioner Eckert kept the plane waiting for forty-five minutes. I watched as he came charging on. Joe Reichler was with him. Reichler came over to my seat to see me. He began pounding on my shoulders to get my attention, and he was screaming “Harvey, Harvey” loud enough that he could have been using a bullhorn.
I looked up to see him looming over me.
“Harvey, Harvey,” Reichler said. “They can’t prove you wrong. We just spent a half hour reviewing the film of the Brock play at the plate, and they can’t prove you wrong.
“Try as we might,” he continued, “we couldn’t find anything wrong with your call. You got it right.”
Hell, I knew I had the play right.
My blood started to boil.
“Why the fuck are you trying to prove me wrong in the first place?” I said. “Now get the fuck away from me. Don’t come to me and tell me they couldn’t prove me wrong.”
I then felt like an idiot because my wife and Edna Stengel were sitting right across the aisle from me, and I don’t usually curse in front of my wife. I apologized to the ladies, and everyone around me gave me a hand.
Over the years I’d run into Lou Brock, and he’d say to me, “You cost me a lot of money.”
He still talks about that.
— 5 —
One of the worst days of my umpiring life came in Houston. I was umpiring behind the plate, and we walked out to home plate and took the lineup cards from the managers. I looked down to the bullpens where the starting pitchers were warming up. There in Houston’s bullpen was Joe Niekro, and when I looked down to the Braves bullpen, there was Phil Niekro. I had two knuckleballers to work, and catching a knuckleball is like trying to catch a gnat with a pair of tweezers. Umpiring a knuckleballer is just as bad as catching one. And in this game I had two of them pitching.
If you don’t wait for that ball to hit the glove, chances are good you’re going to kick the call, because the ball moves the most when it slows down.
Phil Niekro threw the greatest knuckleball I ever saw. We were in Atlanta—the Braves against Cincinnati. Tony Cloninger, the only pitcher ever to hit two grand-slam home runs in a game, was pitching for the Reds. The bases were loaded and Niekro had two strikes on the big pitcher, and he threw a knuckler.
The catcher leaped out to the right, and just as he leaped it was like the ball hit a magic wall. It came straight across and crossed home plate and hit me in the left shoulder and dropped down. The pitch was in the strike zone, so it was strike three, and Cloninger took off running.
The bases were loaded. The Atlanta catcher had enough sense to grab the ball and run over and step on home plate—a force-out.
But that was the greatest knuckleball I had ever seen, thrown by Phil Niekro.
— 6 —
The umpires in both the American and National Leagues formed a union in 1963, my second year in the league. Our pay was terrible. For my first few years my pay was $8,000 a year. We had no benefits and our pension was a joke. Our retirement pay was a crummy hundred dollars a year for every year of service. So after umpiring in major league baseball for thirty years, your retirement pay would be $3,000 a year. You can’t live on that.
I was willing to stand up and tell them they were wrong.
For years it was all Joy and I could do to keep from starving to death. It seemed that the umpires were always at the bottom of the pot. Everyone else got taken care of before they got to us. Major League Baseball didn’t really want to pay for integrity, hard work, or all that travel.
Today an umpire can make as much as $200,000 a year, but it was our organizing that got it all started. I’m proud to say I was a signer of the original charter for the umpires union. It was my second year and we met in Chicago. Mel Steiner came over to me and said, “Harvey, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Beg your pardon?” I said.
“You’re a two-year man,” said Steiner. “Are you sure you want to stick your neck into this?”
“Let me tell you something, Mel,” I said. “I believe in what they’re doing and I’m standing up for it. If I lose my job, I’ll get back on a truck next week.”
It was the attitude I took, because I knew something had to be done: The pay was terrible. In the American League the umpires were getting pension payments of $150 a year, because American League president Joe Cronin had given them a $50-a-year raise to keep them working. When that happened the American League umpires stopped going to our union meetings. When we hired a lawyer to represent us, only the National League umpires were paying him.
In 1970 we went on strike. By gosh, sixteen men went out, and it took a lot of guts to do it. Joy and I talked it over, and we agreed: We had nothing to lose because we were at the bottom of the pile. If we won, we’d have a chance for things to be better, and if we lost and I didn’t have a job, I would find another one in an instant.
I had always worked, and I’d just get another job and go on with my life.
Our first work stoppage took place back east in Pittsburgh. We put up a picket line at each entrance of the stadium. Pittsburgh is a great union town, which was the reason we did it there. Fans who had purchased tickets would come up to us and ask what was going on, and after we told them, they would rip up their tickets and go home. We could see they had strong union sentiments.
The electricians told management, “If the pickets set up before we get to the park, we will honor their picket line.” That meant there’d be no lights, and so management went out and brought in four giant generators to power the lights.
But when they came to turn on the generators, they found signs that said Danger. Explosives. Don’t touch.
A close friend of mine, Joey Diven, a union guy who had a hundred roles in a strong union city—a guy involved in politics who knew everyone—had put up the signs, making management wonder what would happen if they started up the generators.
After a one-day strike, Major League Baseball agreed to give us a much better per diem.
— 7 —
The next improvement we wanted was to get hospitalization. We didn’t have it when our two sons were born. I didn’t have it when Bob Gibson knocked out my two teeth in Pittsburgh and my gums became infected. Finally, we got hospitalization.
Why Major League Baseball always took a hard line against us was always a mystery. It was asinine. They could have settled the whole thing for cheaper than what they had to go through.
We struck for a day during the 1970 play-offs. All the umpires—this time National and American—went out. We were in the middle of negotiations and we weren’t getting anywhere. We felt we had no choice.
One time we went on strike, and baseball hired scabs and gave them five-year contracts. Meanwhile, we were getting only one-year contracts, and the league had the right to fire you at will. You know how it is with management and workers. You always hate your boss. But Joy would always say to me, “If you’re one of the best umpires, why are you treated so badly?”
It was only after Richie Phillips took over the union in 1978 that we got a decent salary and a modicum of respect. For many years before that we felt we got very little respect from anyone, including the baseball people in the league office.
In the beginning it was, “You’re lucky to have a job.” In fact, during one of our strikes, Joe Cronin, the American League president, said, “We could just go out and get a bunch of garbage-truck drivers to replace these people.” These people were the striking umpires.
With Richie Phillips�
��s help, Joy wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times in rebuttal. She wrote that every job has a measure of respect to it, including garbage-truck drivers, and for Cronin to try to denigrate one trade with another showed a great lack of respect for the work ethic of the American people.
Everyone has a job to do—and apparently everyone thinks your job is easier than his.
CHAPTER 14
CREW CHIEF
— 1 —
Baseball made me a crew chief in 1977, choosing me over two other umpires with more seniority, Paul Pryor and John McSherry. The league in the past had always assigned crew chiefs according to how much time they had served. Not this time. And Paul and John were both assigned to my crew, which I thought was an unfairness. It was as though the executives in charge of the umpires wanted to make my life as difficult as possible.
I took each of them aside.
“It was none of my doing,” I said. “I’m not an ass-kisser. I didn’t ask to be crew chief. It was handed to me, and I’m going to take it. If you want to be on my crew, that’s fine. If you don’t, I’m sure I can arrange to have you transferred.”
Both Paul and John accepted it, and we had a fine year. There wasn’t a single problem that we couldn’t handle.
Paul was a fine fellow and a very decent umpire. He did have one problem. Like so many others, he drank too much. His favorite drink was whiskey.
Paul’s problem surfaced in Pittsburgh. I was staying at a different hotel from my crew members. They liked to stay downtown, where the action was. I preferred quiet. I stayed at the Holiday Inn, about eight blocks from Forbes Field. I liked to stay there because I could walk to the park.
On this day I arrived early. The equipment man was in the locker room. He was hanging up our clothes for the game.
“Harvey, can I have a word with you?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
“Paul Pryor’s drinking so much,” he said, “that after a game when he’s working home plate, his uniform is soaked with sweat and it stinks something terrible. I’d wash it, but I can’t do that. It has to be dry-cleaned. Can you talk to him?”
I went to Paul and told him, “It stinks to high heaven.”
“Okay, Harv,” Paul said, “I’ll quit drinking whiskey.”
And he did, though he did switch to vodka, which wasn’t quite so bad.
- - -
John McSherry, a large man who weighed more than three hundred pounds, was a good fellow and a very good umpire. He not only had a drinking problem, he had an eating problem. On an off day during spring training I went to see him in his hotel room. When I walked in, he was lying in bed watching TV. Beside him was a case of Pepsi-Cola and an ice bucket. He was eating a full meal. It was ten o’clock in the morning. It was clear to me he had an eating habit he just couldn’t break.
Later John was promoted to crew chief. He was umpiring behind the plate on opening day in Cincinnati in 1996. He started to walk off, took a few steps, and collapsed and died.
Eric Gregg, who was on my crew and was the best of the African American umpires, also had a terrible problem with food. I was forever on Eric about it. Had he listened to me, he’d still be alive.
Eric was an outstanding umpire, but his weight became a problem. He could hardly move. There are pictures of him trying to work behind home plate. He had his legs spread out as far as he could get them because he couldn’t bend down.
One time Frank Pulli and Jerry Crawford, the other members of my crew, came to me and asked if on a certain play where Eric was supposed to run out to the outfield, one of them could come out instead and cover for him.
I told them no. I was hoping to force Eric to fix his eating problem.
One time after a night game our crew was invited out to dinner. Eric said he couldn’t go, he had something to do. The three of us went out to dinner and stayed out late, returning at about one thirty in the morning. We were walking to our hotel rooms when we saw the bellman pushing a big tray.
“Hold it, partner,” I said to him. We looked under the tray, and there was a slab of ribs, a whole chicken, and four beers.
“Are you going to Eric Gregg’s room?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said.
I gave the guy ten bucks and took one of my cards and wrote Eric a note.
Enjoy your snack, I wrote, and I put it on the tray.
We stood out by Eric’s door. The bellman left the tray and exited, tossing a baseball up and down. Eric had given it to him as a tip.
Two minutes later the door opened and the tray came flying out. Eric, caught red-handed stuffing his face at one thirty in the morning, had thrown everything on the tray out the hotel window into the parking lot.
I loved Eric. I thought the world of him. He was fun. Eric was sure he was bulletproof as far as his job security.
“Because of my color,” he told me, “I’ll always be here. I’ll be the one they keep.”
He was wrong. After the umpires went on strike in 1992, they kept Charlie Williams, the other African American umpire, and they let Eric go. It broke his heart. Broke mine too.
Another of the umpires who worked on my crew was Dick Stello, a really terrific guy. Everyone loved him. Dick was a lot of fun, a good guy. He was married to Lillian, who at one time had worked as an exotic dancer under the name of Chesty Morgan. We called her Zsa Zsa; a nice lady. He would tell us about some of the things she’d do, and we’d laugh. When they were married, Dick was her manager. After they divorced, they still remained close. He loved bling. He had a big watch and chain and always had jewelry around his neck.
Dick was killed in a freak car accident in November 1987. He and Lillian lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, and after buying a classic car at a car auction he needed to put a license plate on it. He pulled over to the side of the road and was putting on the tag when a car came out of nowhere and hit him and crushed him. It was awful.
Dick is really missed. It was a shame.
In all, I was crew chief between 1974 and 1992, and I wouldn’t have traded a minute of it.
- - -
The Cincinnati Reds, featuring Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Bernie Carbo, Bobby Tolan, and Tony Pérez, among others, won 102 ball games in 1970. The Reds’ manager was Sparky Anderson.
You had to be careful with Sparky. Sparky always tried to put the hat on you. He’d try to get you to say something he could use against you. If you got flustered and got to talking too fast, you might say something where he’d say, “Wait a minute. You said . . .” And you couldn’t deny it, because you said it.
And Sparky, unlike most managers, prided himself on knowing the rules. Well, Sparky didn’t know them compared to Doug Harvey. There were times I would listen to Sparky talk, then I’d tell him, “You’re wrong, Sparky.”
“What do you mean?”
“What you’re trying to spout is rule so-and-so, and you’re spouting it wrong.”
I would put him down, and he’d just stomp off upset.
Sparky was a good manager. He enjoyed a good argument, but many times he didn’t heed my rule about calling me sir or Mr. Umpire or Mr. Harvey, and Sparky’d get ejected for being disrespectful.
Sparky’s Reds were playing the San Francisco Giants. I was at second base and Jerry Crawford was at first. Bill Plummer, the Reds’ catcher, was at bat. He had two strikes on him and he checked his swing. The plate umpire, Andy Olsen, nodded to Jerry, and he rang Plummer up.
Plummer raised his arms and yelled at Jerry, and Jerry threw him out.
Sparky came out of the dugout on a dead run.
“Son, I don’t think you like Bill Plummer,” he said to Jerry. “It’s the second time you’ve ejected him this year.”
Sparky had his finger out, pointing, giving Jerry a lecture.
“Sparky,” said Jerry, “I don’t have anything against Plummer. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, and everything would have been all right.”
The Reds took the field. A Giant base runner went to steal
second. The throw from the catcher went to Reds shortstop Dave Concepción, who caught the ball, brought it down, and tagged the runner. I called him safe. He had slid under the tag.
Here comes Sparky on a dead run. We argued pretty good, though I never raised my voice. One of the things Sparky said to me was, “The reason you called him safe was to get the team off Crawford’s ass.”
I was furious. That he would think I would cheat just to get the crowd off another umpire’s butt was insulting and infuriating.
When Sparky walked away he turned to Dave Concepción and patted his belly.
“No guts,” he said, pointing, talking about me.
Sparky was better than halfway to the dugout, and I took to running after him. He was in the habit of jumping over the foul line, and I caught him in the middle of his jump. I nailed him in the shoulder and almost knocked him down.
“Get the fuck out of here, and don’t you say one word,” I said. “I’ll show you guts. One way or another I’ll pick everyone off your ball club and throw them out. Now get out of here.”
And he did.
About six weeks later we were in Cincinnati, and Dave Concepción came into our dressing room to inform me that the Reds ball club had voted it the ejection of the century.
“That was the greatest ejection we ever saw,” he said.
I laughed like hell over that.
— 2 —
I was involved in two World Series between the Dodgers and Oakland. I was behind the plate in 1988 when Kirk Gibson hit his dramatic home run off Dennis Eckersley. As a baseball purist who always hated it when the game wasn’t played right, I was upset because Mike Davis, who got on before Kirk, stole second to put the tying run in scoring position, and the A’s didn’t even try to make a play on him. Now a bloop single would score him. I understand the fielders had a lot of confidence in Eckersley, but damn, I was mad at that. And then the big guy, Gibson, came up to bat.
