They Called Me God

by Doug Harvey

  Joe made the call, and it went in Don’s favor. But here was Don screaming and hollering.

  We couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  I went running over, and Don said, “Get the fuck away from me.” Oh, shit.

  Joe and I—because I was his crew chief—had to go to the league office and explain what Joe was doing throwing a coach on his head.

  “He was in my way,” Joe said.

  How can you make a call if a guy is standing right in your way? He threw him out of the way.

  Joe was my guy. Joe and Jerry Crawford were special people. Shag, of course, and the guys who broke me in were in a class all their own.

  — 18 —

  I have more respect for Walter Alston than for any man I ever umpired for. Walter absolutely had common sense. One time he walked out and said, “Harv, this guy is balking.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Walter,” I told him, “but what makes you think he’s balking?”

  “I’m watching him,” he said.

  “Walter,” I said, “if I really thought I could see better from the dugout, I’d come and sit with you. But I’m watching him, and he’s not balking.”

  “Keep an eye on him, Harv.”

  He turned and walked back to the dugout.

  If that had been Leo Durocher, he’d have come out—“Jesus Christ, can’t you tell a fucking balk when you see the fucking thing?” That was the difference.

  — 19 —

  One year I went through an entire season without tossing a single player or manager. I was afraid the league moguls would think I wasn’t tough enough, so in the last week of the season I tossed Walter Alston toward the end of a game in which the Dodgers were getting blown out just to show the brass I wasn’t a pushover.

  The Dodgers were playing Montreal, and a little left-hander pitching for the Expos picked off three Dodgers at first base. Walter was upset about it. He kept coming out, wanting us to call a balk, and I kept telling him, “No, Walter. They’re all right.”

  In the eighth inning Don Sutton of the Dodgers was on the mound. He jerked three different ways, and we called a balk. Walter came out to argue again.

  The Dodgers were losing 8–2, and as he was walking back to the dugout, a lightbulb came on in my head. It was late in the season, and I hadn’t had an ejection all year long. I said to Alston, “The problem with you, Walter, is you’re a little balk crazy.”

  Walter turned around. We were standing near home plate. He kicked a little dirt on the plate, and I ejected him.

  After the game I was getting into the elevator leaving the umpires’ room, and I heard, “Hold it. Hold it.” I looked up and it was Walter and his wife.

  We rode up in the elevator together.

  “Walter,” I said, “I have to tell you. I set you up.” And I told him the story of how I ejected him and why, that I had needed someone to eject to keep from getting criticized by the baseball executives.

  Walter laughed.

  “Hell,” he said, “as bad as we’re going, I thought maybe it was good for us, that maybe it would pump the guys up a little bit. But it didn’t.”

  Walter understood. I always liked him. He was a terrific guy.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE COMMISSIONERS

  — 1 —

  When Marvin Miller took over as the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, I knew he was going to be a success the minute he was hired. Before him, the guys who came in to run the union were fans who kept trying to keep the teams playing while they were negotiating with the owners.

  Most people are fans. When a player goes to an outside arbitrator who rules on whether you’re going to get a raise, nine out of ten times the ballplayer wins, because nine out of ten of the arbitrators are fans. They want to get to know these players. They want these players to leave tickets for them.

  When Marvin Miller walked in, he wasn’t a fan. He had been a tough-nosed head of the steelworkers union. He knew if he took the players and had them walk, baseball would be stuck with Triple-A players, and the fans wouldn’t want that. He had them go on strike over and over again to get what he wanted for the players. And he won big concessions.

  Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner when Marvin came into baseball, was—to put it mildly—overmatched. Bowie seemed uptight and unsure of what to do. I was umpiring the All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, and in the middle of the game the lights dimmed. We stood around for five minutes. I was the first-base umpire, and I could see Bill Kunkel, the home-plate umpire, talking to Bowie in the stands. Finally I walked over there.

  “Bill,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”

  “The lights are all dim,” Bill said.

  “Let me tell you something,” I said. “There isn’t a ballplayer in here who didn’t come up from the minor leagues and play under these conditions. Why don’t we ask both managers if we should continue? Ask them if they are willing to take the chance that the lights might come on when the other team is batting?”

  Lasorda was one manager, and I can’t remember the other.

  “Hell yes,” both agreed. “We’re used to this. Let’s go.”

  It was typical of Bowie. He was likely to have sat there all night waiting and wondering what to do.

  (Bud Selig wasn’t much better. Look what he did with one of the All-Star Games: He called the game a tie because the teams had run out of pitchers. He looked like a fool.)

  Bowie didn’t have much respect for the umpires. While he was commissioner our salary was low, and we could feel that in the pecking order of Major League Baseball, we were at the very bottom.

  — 2 —

  After Bowie left in 1984, Peter Ueberroth took over as commissioner, and he was terrific. He would back the umpires all the way. I’m sorry the owners were able to get his job, because he had the right idea. If you threw someone out of the game, he’d hold a hearing and fine them, no matter what.

  They got rid of him because he wanted to run baseball like a business, with him being the CEO and decision-maker, while the owners wanted to have their hands in it. As long as he was commissioner, things ran smoothly, but his having full control just didn’t sit well with the owners.

  After Ueberroth they picked Bart Giamatti to be the commissioner in 1988. Bart, who had been the president of Yale University, wasn’t commissioner for a year. The thing he was best known for was kicking Pete Rose out of baseball and making him ineligible for the Hall of Fame.

  It wasn’t long after Bart suspended Pete that Giamatti had a massive heart attack and died.

  — 3 —

  When we were in New York, Bart never failed to come into our dressing room and see us, no matter what. One day he came in, all sweaty. He was in a hurry.

  “Here, boss,” I said. “Sit down.”

  I put him in a chair.

  “Now tell me,” I said, “what’s bothering you?”

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I’m going upstairs for a meeting with all the general managers, and all they do is gripe about the fact that the old-time umpires were so much nicer than the group we have today. Tell me, Harv, is that true?”

  “That’s absurd,” I said. “Let me count the ways.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I mentioned Jocko Conlan, Shag Crawford, Tony Venzon, and Al Barlick, the biggest of them all.

  “I could go on,” I said. “These are the ones who come to mind. If you as much as opened your mouth, you were gone. No doubt in my mind, they were far tougher than the umpires today.”

  “You’re serious,” Giamatti said.

  “I’m dead serious. You go up there and ask the general managers what the hell they’re thinking. Have they ever been around when Al Barlick started hollering? He shook the whole stadium, and he had no fear of anybody. If someone hollered from the bench, he’d turn and walk eight or ten steps toward the bench and turn that voice loose, and he’d bury them. He’d say, ‘One more from you assholes, and you’re gone.’ Tha
t’s the way Al talked.”

  Bart promised he’d go up there and tell them. I don’t know if he ever did.

  — 4 —

  Fay Vincent, a close friend of Bart’s, became the baseball commissioner in 1989, following Bart’s death. Fay was the best. We could trust him. When he took the job he said, “The umpires are my police force. And I will back them.”

  I believe that Fay was kicked out by the owners because he cared too much about the players and the umpires. The owners wanted a commissioner who cared only about the owners, cared only about their bottom line, and so they picked one of their own: Bud Selig, who was the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. Since Bud took over, we have seen a corporatization of the game. The owners came at the players with a demonic vengeance to reduce everyone’s pay. The players went on strike in 1994, and the owners were so spiteful and stubborn that there was no World Series in 1994. They weren’t used to being treated so disdainfully.

  Under Bud, no longer are there National League umpires and American League umpires. Now there are just umpires, and they aren’t under the league presidents, but rather under the commissioner’s rule. Umpires are now making more than $200,000 a year, but to get it they had to give up all their autonomy. We now have cameras in the ballparks to judge them. An umpire today spends every game with someone looking over his shoulder. Who can work that way?

  The umpires went on strike in 1999. The argument was over getting more money for minor league umpires and for retired umpires. Just as the owners did with the players in 1994, they refused to budge. Richie Phillips, the lawyer for the umpires, decided the best thing would be for everyone to strike. Why not? It worked for the players. But they didn’t realize how much Major League Baseball was being corporatized. Once Bud Selig took over, everything became about the money. It was no different from the guys who bought companies, fired all the workers, and then sold the company and made millions. There was a ruthlessness about it.

  They ran into a buzz saw. Twenty-two umpires were let go, and about half of them never got their jobs back. The umpires today have given up all their autonomy out on the field. They have none.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE LAST HURRAH

  I was in St. Louis and it was raining lightly. The surface of the field was Astroturf. I was umpiring at third base, and somebody hit a ball that I thought was going to be trouble for the outfielder, so I turned and started to head to the outfield.

  I realized that the left fielder had played the batter short and wasn’t going to have any problems getting to the ball, so I planted my left leg and spun on it to go back to the third-base bag, because there was a runner on second and I didn’t want to take a chance leaving it open. When I spun on the Astroturf, my rubber-soled shoes caught—that was the danger of Astroturf. The shoes we wore had rubber nubs in them and they would catch on the Astroturf, and that’s what blew out my knee. That left leg seemed to be my nemesis, and by the end of the 1992 season the pain took much of the joy I felt from the job. It was just too painful to continue.

  The doctor said I’d be out of action for eight to ten weeks, but I couldn’t stand not being out on the field, and I came back after five weeks. I had been taken off the 1992 All-Star Game because the league hadn’t expected me to be back in time, but I called and told them to put me back on the game.

  “Doug,” I was told, “the doctor says you can’t work that game.”

  “I don’t give a goddamn what the doctor says,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  I was stubborn. I shouldn’t have tried to come back so soon. My leg pained me the rest of the 1992 season, and before the end of the year I announced my retirement.

  For my final game after thirty-one years of umpiring in the major leagues, the league office called and said, “Both teams want you to work the plate.”

  “I worked the plate yesterday,” I said.

  “They would like you to work the plate for your last game,” I was told.

  I agreed.

  The Astros were playing against the Dodgers, and neither team was going to the play-offs. I decided to have a little fun. Before the game I asked both teams what the game would mean.

  “It’ll mean about four hundred dollars per man,” one of the managers said.

  “Fuck,” I said, “they spend that on tips in one night. Boys, ain’t nothing on the line for either of you, so send them up swinging.”

  In front of the two managers I drew two lines, each one about six inches from the left and right sides of the plate. Bob Gibson would have been thrilled.

  “Toes to the nose,” I said. “That’s what I’m going to call. And if I get one run, it’s all over.”

  It was the fastest game that season, by far—one hour and forty-four minutes, and everyone, including me, caught his plane.

  After the game, I came back out to the empty stadium to take one last look. I took my wad of chew and placed it right in the middle of home plate. Then I walked away.

  I was done.

  As much as I loved my job, nothing lasts forever. I had told my wife, Joy, I would quit when it no longer was fun, and in 1992, after I injured myself, it stopped being fun.

  National League president Bill White called me in May the next season.

  “Doug, I want you back.”

  “I’m already drawing my retirement,” I said.

  “I’ll let you keep your retirement, and I’ll give you your same salary, two hundred thousand dollars a year,” White said.

  “It takes too much out of me,” I said. “I’m ten percent off on the strike zone.”

  “You don’t have to umpire at home plate,” White said. “You can even umpire at third base each game. The thing is, I want you on the field. I need you.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “You run a better game than anybody. And I want you out there.”

  Bill wanted me there in case of trouble. It was said that I settled trouble better than anybody. But I believe a man’s word is his bond, and I had promised Joy I would quit, so I turned him down.

  “Once I quit,” I told White, “I promised the wife it would be over with.”

  Do I regret having made that decision?

  Only every day of my life.

  A year later, I thought about it and realized I should have taken it. I’m not one to show off and do something just because it would have made me look good. It would have been different, something never done before. I’m not that type of person.

  But I miss it. I miss it every day.

  CHAPTER 17

  MY MISSION IN LIFE

  On August 27, 1997, my doctor looked down my throat and said, “Uh-oh, Doug, we have a problem. You have a knot about the size of your thumb that doesn’t belong there.”

  They cut the thing off and took a biopsy, and a few days later he called back and said, “You have cancer—cancer of the throat. It’s called Valecular cancer, the attachment of the tongue to the throat.”

  He added, “Take two months and get your affairs in order.”

  He was giving me a death sentence. I guess he didn’t know me very well.

  A month later, on September 24, our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary, they started treatment.

  I couldn’t imagine how such a thing could happen. I asked the doctor whether perhaps it was because I had played football or because I had been hit in the head and mask by foul balls when I was umpiring.

  “It wasn’t that,” he said.

  “Then what was it?” I wanted to know.

  “It was the chewing tobacco,” he said.

  “Nothing else?” I asked.

  “Nothing else,” he said.

  - - -

  I wore another kind of mask when I went for the radiation. They strap you down to a bench so tightly you can’t move a muscle. I couldn’t have gotten up if I had tried. I wasn’t in control.

  I hated it.

  For six and a half weeks they shot me with X-rays. I weighed 205 pounds when I st
arted. I weighed 140 when they were finished with me.

  When I speak to junior high school and high school kids—and I’ve spoken to hundreds of thousands of them since then—I tell them, “This is what you have to look forward to when you start using spit tobacco.”

  At first it didn’t hurt. Then after a few weeks it started getting tender inside. I couldn’t swallow food, so I stopped eating. I couldn’t even get egg custard down. At one point I couldn’t swallow a teaspoon of water.

  I suffered from renal shutdown, which meant that my heart, kidneys, liver, and lungs were threatening to shut down.

  They put a feeding tube into my stomach so I could have nutrition. Just as I was about to go home, I developed an infection. When I arrived home I was so uncomfortable I couldn’t lie down on the bed. Every bone felt like a knife was sticking into me.

  For four and a half months, I slept in an easy chair.

  After I took my painkillers, I drank Ensure, which was poured down the feeding tube. I was warned never to cough. Try not coughing when you have to cough. One time I coughed so badly I expelled chocolate all the way up to the ceiling. Within twenty seconds my arm was burning. That’s how strong stomach acid is.

  Four and a half months later, my weight had risen to 170 pounds.

  I was going to live. And when you have cancer, believe me, all you want to do is live.

  I called Joe Garagiola, who runs an educational program about the dangers of chewing tobacco among ballplayers.

  “I want to talk to the youth of America about this,” I told him.

  Joe sent me to dozens of junior high schools and high schools around the country to talk about the evils of chewing tobacco. In California alone, one out of every five high school ballplayers uses some form of chewing tobacco. Try it a few times, and I guarantee you: You will be hooked. It’s made specifically to addict you.