You're Out — Baseball Bench Coach

You’re Out! These are words expressed by one with a stiff upper lip, fair-minded, baseball knowledgeable, rule enforcer, aka the Umpire! Of course baseball managers, players, and fans don’t always use the same descriptive words for our men in blue. Depending on whether your team won or lost, you either don’t know who called the game or believe he must have been a bum. The best compliment an umpire can ever receive is that he went unnoticed. Let’s take a moment to indeed recognize umpires and their role in baseball.

My first job was as an umpire in District 18 Knothole (Cincinnati’s version of Little League). I studied the rules, passed the exam, and was soon issued a t-shirt, face mask, and a handful of scorecards that would be my first time sheets as a 15-year old employee. My pay would be five bucks a game; seemed fair enough. There are so many fun stories to share about my years behind the plate and manning the bases, but the two that stand out involve brushes with fame. I was once assigned a game where a very young Ken Griffey Jr. played. I remember seeing Jr. batting for the first time and thinking that his swing was sweeter than that of his dad, Ken Griffey Sr., Reds right fielder. 25 years later I met Sr. at a Reds baseball camp and shared those thoughts with him. Sr. laughed and agreed I was right about Jr., even then.

I’ll never forget a summer night in August, 1978. Pete Rose was in the midst of his NL record setting 44-game hitting streak. His streak stood at 39 and the Reds were in town but had an off day. That evening I was the home plate umpire for a game that Pete Rose Jr. led off, just like his dad. There were only about 50 people watching the game until the third inning when Pete Rose arrived. When word got out Rose was there, it was reminiscent of “Rocky” running through the streets of Philly as literally hundreds of people were soon at the ballpark. I remember calling Jr. out on a play at the plate and trying not to glance into his team’s dugout where Rose sat. Interestingly, my umpiring career came to a screeching halt five years later also with an out call behind the plate. I was umpiring in a Men’s Softball Beer League in St. Louis. While my pay was now a whopping twenty bucks a game, I called it quits the night that two disgruntled players were pounding on my AMC Gremlin about the terrible call that I had made. It was time to finally turn in the face mask.

An MLB umpire is one of the highest paid officials in professional sports. A first-year umpire starts around $120,000, while veteran umps often earn three times that annual salary. In the playoffs an MLB umpire can make around $20,000 per game, a little more than my $5 per game in 1974. Turnover is low, which is good for those who have made it to the big leagues and of course bad for those struggling in the minor leagues to get there. Often, MLB only adds 1 or 2 umpires a year to its crew of 68 umpires for the season. For umpires toiling in the minor leagues the road is long, the pay is barely adequate (just $3,900 per month at the highest level, Triple-A), and most often there is a dead end sign ahead.

I wish I could say that I have followed the careers of MLB umpires. Yes, some last names ring a bell, especially when they span across two generations and 50+ years of service, such as these father and son combinations – Ed and Paul Runge; Tom and Brian Gorman; and Shag and Jerry Crawford. But just like everyone else, my memory of umpires concerns bad calls. In Game 1 of the 1970 World Series between Cincinnati and Baltimore a controversial call made by home plate umpire Ken Burkhart is still painful to remember. With the game tied 3-3 in the sixth inning Reds pinch-hitter Ty Cline hit a high chopper right in front of the plate as Bernie Carbo ran from third trying to avoid Orioles catcher Elrod Hendricks’ tag. Burkhart signaled “You’re Out”, failing to see that Hendricks had made the tag with his glove while he held the ball in his throwing hand. Fifty years later I can still hear Reds manager Sparky Anderson screaming “there’s no way possible” at Burkhart.

And then there was “The Call” in the 1985 World Series that decided the Missouri interstate match-up between St. Louis and Kansas City. The Cardinals led 3 games to 2 with a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6. Jorge Orta, the Royals leadoff batter, hit a bouncing ball toward Cardinals first baseman Jack Clark who tossed it to pitcher Todd Worrell, clearly beating Orta to the bag. Yet, instead of “You’re Out”, first base umpire Don Denkinger signaled safe. The Royals won the game 2-1 and dominated Game 7 in 11-0 fashion, setting off a celebration on the wrong side of the state.

The 1970 and 1985 World Series calls would have been most probably overturned in today’s replay review. When the system expanded in 2014 to include more than just disputed home run calls, baseball fans and commentators have offered endless criticism on what plays are reviewable and how much time it takes to make a review decision. Since we have state of the art technology available now, I contend (and would hope MLB umpires support) that we should be able to correct as many missed calls on the field as possible. Those who suggest that we are unduly replacing the human element with the replay system are on the wrong side of the issue. The issue is putting in place a system that is fair, transparent, and timely. With every game now on television and the scrutiny of umpire performance seemingly heightened more and more each season, let’s use our advanced technology to help the umpires and as a result, the game of baseball.

ESPN baseball insider Buster Olney opined last year that technology will replace home plate umpires calling balls and strikes by 2023. I have previously discussed baseball’s use of TrackMan, a radar-based system to call balls and strikes being used in minor league play. Some commentators have mused whether the MLB should experiment with TrackMan when baseball returns this season. While today’s HD television and the imaged strike zone add fuel to the argument that umpires too often miss ball/strike calls, I maintain that a better use of the new strike-zone technology would be to effectively grade home plate umpire performance. Maybe it would pave a clearer path to getting into the MLB for deserving umpires.

On-field use of the new strike-zone technology would have erased one of my favorite World Series moments. I was always fond of the pitching savvy of Greg Maddux, and recall his starting Game 1 of the 1995 Series between Atlanta and Cleveland. Maddux was masterful that night, allowing only two hits in the Braves 3-2 win. Harry Wendelstedt (father of today’s MLB umpire, Hunter) was the home plate umpire. The camera crew captured how Wendelstedt was consistently calling strikes out of the zone. As the game went on, Maddux knew exactly the location of the extended strike zone. Maddux clearly was playing the game of “give me an inch, and I’ll take a mile”. Unfortunately, my Cleveland buddies in the sports bar that I was watching the game weren’t quite as enamored with how it all turned out as I was.

With the pandemic all of us would like to hear the sweet sound of “Play Ball” from home plate umpires sometime soon. Until then, all we can do is reminisce and celebrate the words “You’re Out” as the fly ball is caught by Reds CF Cesar Geronimo in 1975, the toss across the diamond from the Cubs Kris Bryant lands safely into the first baseman’s glove of Anthony Rizzo in 2016, and the third strike thuds into the mitt of Nationals catcher Yan Gomes, a very long six months ago.

Until next Monday,

your Baseball Bench Coach