Class C was starting close to the bottom. Two umpires worked a game as a team. In the California League we umpired games all over the San Joaquin Valley. The first year, my partner owned a car, and he was paid five cents a mile to travel to the games. I lived out of my suitcase. I didn’t rent an apartment or go back to a place to live. There was no home base.
After a game was over, we’d grab a couple of fifteen-cent hamburgers and then drive a couple hundred miles or more to small towns up and down central California, like Modesto, Visalia, and Bakersfield. During the summer it was hot as hell, and the fields were more like cow pastures—rough and unforgiving, like the fans who wanted your hide every night. For this punishment (I loved it), I was told I was getting $50 more than most of the California League umpires, because I had come so highly recommended. It was a good thing that I was single and had paid off almost all of my debts.
My second year I was paired with another umpire, a young guy with a wife and daughter who one day broke down and confessed to me that he was so broke he didn’t have enough money to rent an apartment and feed his family. He was only making $200 a month and wasn’t making ends meet.
As a child I was taught the importance of empathy, to picture yourself in the shoes of the other guy. After he spilled his tale of woe, I felt for him, and so I gave him almost half my salary so he could bring his wife and daughter on the road with us. I was single. My only living expense was my room, because I knew that after every game the home team would provide the umpires with a sandwich or a hamburger, and that was all I needed to get by. I was counting on the home team’s after-game sustenance for my survival.
We were working a game in Visalia and there was a situation on the field where I ejected Visalia’s manager and one of their better players, and Visalia lost the ball game by a run. That night after the game, we arrived at our dressing room only to find that no food had been left for my partner and me.
“Where’s our food?” I asked the batboy.
“We were told not to bring it, Mr. Harvey,” the boy said.
This was retaliation by the Visalia general manager for my calling a play against his team and ejecting the manager and one of his players.
I didn’t get mad. This was one trait that separated me from most of the other umpires I knew. Very early I learned that getting mad didn’t accomplish very much. We had to go into town to get a bite to eat at our own expense.
Before the game the next day, my partner and I went to the office of the Visalia general manager to get the baseballs for the game. We always picked up two dozen balls: a dozen and a half new balls and a half dozen gently used balls from the game before.
In front of the general manager, I picked up the used balls and put them aside.
“Give me six more new ones,” I ordered.
“Why?” he wanted to know.
“Give me six new ones,” I repeated.
“What are you doing, Harv?” he asked.
“As long as you think I’m not worth a sandwich,” I said, “we’re going to do this every night. Give me six new balls.” I was going to make him pay. He got the message. After each game at Visalia, there were a couple of hamburgers, a hot dog, and a drink waiting for us. We ate like kings.
It became one of my mantras: Don’t get mad. Get even.
When I started working in C Ball—and this was true throughout my umpiring career—I was often told, “If you want to make it in the major leagues, you have to have a pitcher’s strike zone.” In other words, you have to open up your strike zone a little bit. In theory, if you give the pitchers the close ones instead of calling balls, the pitchers will be less likely to bitch and moan, and the game will go faster.
I categorically refused to do that. The rule book determined what was a strike and what was a ball, and I was determined that I would strictly go by what the rule book had to say.
Screw it, I said to myself, I’ll take their arguments and stand on my own.
During my entire career, I was a great believer in fairness. I absolutely was fair. Opening up the strike zone by definition means that you’re cheating for the pitcher, and I don’t know how to cheat in any direction. I absolutely made the ball touch the plate if I was going to call it a strike. And of course it had to be the right height.
When I first began umpiring in the minors, a couple of the other umpires asked me, “Who do you know in the major leagues?”
“Nobody,” I said. Which was true. I had no contacts at all.
“You might as well hang it up,” I was told. “You’re not going to make it. You don’t have a chance in hell.”
I ignored them. I knew how good I was in this job. No, I hadn’t gone to umpire school, and no, I didn’t have any contacts to rely on. What I was sure of was that talent and hard work would overcome any of that. I was confident my chance would come. What I needed was the patience to wait for that chance to arrive.
It wasn’t all that easy working in the low minors. A lot of guys who were pretty good umpires didn’t make it. It’s a tough grind, really tough. There were a lot of times when I said to myself, I don’t think I can do this anymore.
The longest drive in the California League was Bakersfield to Reno. It was 411 miles, two-lane highways, one going each way. It was highway to Sacramento and then mountains all the way to Reno. We would leave at midnight and arrive in Reno when the sun was coming up.
Say we finished a night game in Bakersfield. You showered and you stopped and got a sandwich or something to eat and then you left town at one o’clock in the morning for the long drive to Reno.
These were dangerous two-lane highways all the way. You just drove as far as you could, and if the other guy was awake, he drove as far as he could. Sometimes I think back and really don’t know how any of us made it without falling asleep at the wheel and killing ourselves.
One time we were in Bakersfield. It was 1959, and I had just finished working a doubleheader. We were changing clothes in the dressing room and there was a knock on the door.
“You worked a helluva game,” this fella said.
He introduced himself as Al Widmar of the Philadelphia Phillies. He said he was scouting for the Phillies and had noticed my talents.
“Now I have two suggestions, if you want to make it to the majors,” he said. “You gotta dye your hair, and you gotta stop chewing tobacco.” My hair had started turning gray when I was fifteen. I’ve always been gray. And I had been chewing tobacco ever since I began farming in Imperial Valley, where it was so dry I needed the wet chewing tobacco to keep me lubricated.
“Let me tell you something,” I said. “If they don’t want a gray-haired, tobacco-chewing umpire, they’re not getting me.”
Whether I was capable of calling balls and strikes and outs seemed more relevant. So was knowing the game.
I worked like hell. When I went into the California League, I was about six foot two, 170 pounds, good-looking fella, liked a few drinks, liked to toddle a few. My partners would always say after games, “Hey, let’s go down to the Kern River. There are women down there. C’mon, we’ll go down and chase the women for the afternoon.” I mean, it was hotter than hell in Bakersfield in the summertime.
The guys would try to get me to carouse, but I’d always say, “Nah, I’ve got things I gotta do,” like laundry or call my mom.
I was lying to them. They were probably the only lies I ever told in my life. More important than carousing and drinking, I felt, was studying the rule book one to two hours every day I was in the minor leagues. I figured by my doing that, more than any other thing, it would get me to the major leagues quicker—other than the fact that I was a good umpire. One to two hours every day I studied. I never missed a day. And that’s why I always knew what I was talking about when it came to the rules.
To me the rule book is the Bible of baseball. I would read that book in hot hotel rooms without air-conditioning and nothing but a small fan. I memorized every word. I knew if I was to be an umpire who was respected by the managers and players, I would have to know the game inside and out. My goal was to be more knowledgeable about the way the game was played than anyone on the field. And you know what? It paid off, though it made for a rather lonely, barren existence. After tutoring myself on the rule book, there was little else for me to do until game time. I didn’t have any money to go anyplace. I didn’t have transportation. My partner had the car. So what was I going to do? And that was tough. I was out there on a shoestring doing the best I could, and it wasn’t easy. But you have to know Doug Harvey. I had set my mind to make it, and I stubbornly refused to change. I just went at it, day after day.
But it was my knowledge of the rules that helped get me noticed. In my second year in C ball in the California League there was a runner on second base. The runner on second broke for third. Everyone hollered, “There he goes,” and the pitcher quickly threw the ball to third base. The runner, seeing he was a dead duck, stopped, turned, and slid back into second base.
The manager of the team at bat was Buddy Kerr, the former New York Giants shortstop. Buddy came running out.
“Harvey, I’ve got you,” he said.
“Oh really, Buddy,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “That’s a balk.”
“Beg your pardon?” I said.
“That’s a balk,” Buddy repeated. “The rule says you cannot throw to an unoccupied base. It’s a balk.”
“Buddy, I’m proud of you,” I said.
He had the dumbest look on his face.
“What the fuck do you mean, you’re proud of me?” he asked.
“To think somebody in this godforsaken league besides me is reading the rule book,” I said. “I’m really proud of you, Buddy.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “It’s a balk, Harvey. Move him over.”
“Your biggest problem, Buddy,” I said, “is you don’t know which rule it is. It’s Rule 805. There are thirteen ways in which to balk: Rule 805, sections A through M. You should have kept reading, Buddy. There’s a comma there, and it says, Except for the express purpose of making a play. Now, Buddy, where was the runner going?”
“To third base,” he said sheepishly.
“Where did he throw?”
“To third base.” He paused. “Goddamnit, Harvey.”
“Get away from me, Buddy,” I told him.
And Buddy walked back to the dugout.
One of the other managers I had in the California League was Dave Bristol, one of the real assholes of the world. Johnny Edwards, a catcher who went up to the Cincinnati Reds with him, was hitting when the opposing pitcher hit Edwards in the head with a fastball. Edwards went down like a big old oak tree. Bam, he hit the deck.
I walked over to see how Edwards was. Bristol came over, slapped Edwards in the face, and said, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m all right,” Edwards said.
“Don’t you want to have him looked at?” I asked Bristol.
“You mind your goddamn business,” was his reply.
Edwards walked to first base.
I turned around and walked back to my position in the infield, because we were working a two-man system.
In the middle of the inning I called time. Edwards had fallen to his knees and was obviously in trouble. He was taken to the hospital, and it turned out he had a bad concussion. In those days, if you weren’t dizzy, you played. But that was typical of Bristol.
It was in the minor leagues that I began to develop some of my rules for how managers and players should conduct themselves with respect to arguing with umpires. One of my most hard-and-fast rules was that I would not tolerate a manager or player calling me a name.
Managers and players know well the magic words when it comes to getting tossed. But my feeling was that being an umpire is like being a policeman in civilized society. You don’t go around calling policemen names unless you want to get arrested. I wanted managers and players to understand that you don’t call the umpires names, either.
One day, when I was umpiring in the California League, there was a close play, and the manager of the team came out to argue with me. After he had his say, I told him he had better get away from me.
“You’re going to get tossed if you don’t,” I warned him.
He turned and started to walk away, and as he did, he put his hand behind him and made a shooing motion. In a voice loud enough for me to hear, he said, “You’re a fucking hot dog.”
And I tossed him from the game.
He stopped and came back to me and asked, “What the hell was that for?”
“I don’t call you names,” I said. “You don’t call me a hot dog.”
“All I said was that you were a hot dog,” he answered.
“That’s a name,” I said. “You’re gone.”
After a while the managers and players came to understand that if you called me a name—and it didn’t have to be a swearword—you’d be tossed.
After two years in the Class C California League, I was offered a chance to go up to Class B, the Carolina League. I had gotten a $25-a-month raise in pay to $275 a month, and the Carolina League wanted me to take a pay cut.
“Why should I do that?” I asked.
“Because it’s a promotion to Class B,” I was told.
“I don’t give a damn what it is,” I said. “My mother lives here in California, and I’m not going across the United States to make less money.”
“You’ll never make it with that attitude,” I was told.