After the Puerto Rican winter league season was over, I was asked by Fred Fleig, the head of National League officials, to meet in Salt Lake City, where I was umpiring a Pacific Coast League preseason game. Fleig informed me that he had selected me to become an umpire in the National League and that in a few days I’d be going to Florida to work spring-training games. He said that Pedro Vázquez, the president of the Puerto Rican winter league, had told him, “We’ve been playing baseball down here for eighty years, and Doug Harvey’s the best umpire I ever saw.”
“I don’t want you to tell anybody,” Fleig said. “Only your wife.”
I flew with my umpiring crew to Seattle, site of the main office of the Pacific Coast League. Seattle was where the umpires stopped to get their mail. The three of us approached the secretary’s desk, and in front of the others she said, “Congratulations, Mr. Harvey. I understand you’re going to spring training with the National League.”
I stood there red-faced with the two other members of my crew. I had known about this for about a week, and I hadn’t told them a thing about it. And they were pissed at me.
“Goddamn, you’re going to major league spring training, and you’re not good enough to tell your partners?” said Cece Carlucci.
All I could do was apologize for not telling him.
Carlucci worked the plate that afternoon, and the final batter of the game popped out. I watched the ball come down, saw the fielder catch it, turned around, and suddenly heard someone yell, “Look out!”
Carlucci, who was so angry that I was going to the major leagues and not he, had thrown his mask about thirty feet in the air into the infield. He could have hurt someone. But that was how angry and hurt he was. Cece never did make it to the majors himself.
I reached the majors faster than anyone else ever has. I had gone from Class C to the National League in just four years—all without my going to umpire school. Fleig assigned me to be part of the crew of veteran umpire Al Barlick.
When I stepped onto the field at Dodger Stadium opening day on April 10, 1962—the first regular-season game ever played there—the size of the place and sold-out crowd amazed me. I was just a farm kid from the Imperial Valley.
“What do you think of this joint?” Al asked me between innings.
“It looks like it could hold a lot of hay,” I said.
Al laughed like hell and must’ve told the story a thousand times.
From the beginning I could see why he was called the King.
Al had a booming voice, and at the inaugural game at Chavez Ravine, I experienced him for the first time with his game face on. The ballpark was jammed. He was behind the plate. The pitcher threw the first pitch of the ball game, and Al raised his arm up to signal it was a strike. He bellowed a booming call of “Sttteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.” You should have seen the people stand up and cheer. They had never heard a voice like that in L.A. before. He shook the whole stadium. They loved him.
Al had no fear of anyone. If someone hollered from the bench, he would turn, walk eight to ten steps toward the bench, and he’d turn that voice loose.
“One more word from you assholes . . .”
It was enough to shut them up.
Of course, it wasn’t fun when he turned his venom on me.
Barlick was a rough, tough Irishman who had been a longtime umpire in the league. His father had been a coal miner, and Al had been one too. Al had dropped out of high school his junior year to help support his family. He escaped the mines when he was hired to umpire in the minor leagues in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. In 1940, he was hired by the major leagues as a replacement for the great Bill Klem. Al was twenty-five years old, one of the youngest umpires ever to work in the major leagues. He was from the Midwest and didn’t trust anyone. You had to prove yourself before he would even consider talking to you. Once you proved yourself, he might not like you, but he’d respect you. Earning that respect wasn’t easy.
When I arrived after spring training to join his crew, I could quickly see that Barlick was mad to the gunnels. We never seemed to have a nice word to say to each other, though I have to say that he was one of the greatest umpires in the history of the game. But because he went out of his way to torment me, I experienced two of the worst years of my life.
The two other umpires in our crew, Shag Crawford and Ed Vargo, tried to shield me from Al’s tirades, seeking to make my life a little more bearable. Shag Crawford adopted me. If anyone was a man’s man, it had to be Shag Crawford. I can’t say enough about him.
But not even they could protect me from Al, who wasn’t called the King for nothing. I worked under him for two full years, fully realizing how much Barlick resented me but never knowing why. He tried to drive me out of baseball, and I simply refused to leave. It took all my skill and honor to keep him from running me out of the league. I just refused to give in to him.
I wanted so badly to tell someone what he was doing, but who was I going to tell? Fred Fleig was in charge of the umpires and he had hired me. I had too much pride to go see Fred about this. I also told myself, If you can’t handle your job between umpires, how the hell are you going to settle anything on the field?
I was working with Al, Shag Crawford, and Ed Vargo, and after ball games we would drink too much. I was not, and am not, a good drinker.
Early in the season our crew had to get up before sunrise so we could catch a flight from Houston to Pittsburgh, and I showed up perhaps five minutes late. In front of the other members of the crew, Al ripped into me. He called me every son of a bitch in the world. I swallowed hard. I wanted to slug him, but didn’t dare.
Since that incident I always had trouble sleeping on getaway days when we had to catch a plane. I was so afraid I would come down late and be the target of Al Barlick’s wrath that I would lie awake all night for fear the alarm clock wouldn’t ring. Finally I began taking a light sleeping pill so I could get some sleep.
Al could be underhanded. I remember a doubleheader in Houston my first year. The expansion Colt .45’s, as they were known then, were playing Milwaukee in the old ballpark in Houston. The dressing room was a tin shed, hot and miserable. The Braves were at one end and we were at the other. Barlick was working first base and I was working home. During the game Henry Aaron asked about a pitch, and I told him it was a good pitch.
Aaron eventually walked. Later, between games, Barlick said to me, “Henry Aaron said you told him you blew the pitch, that you missed it.”
“You’re full of shit,” I said.
“I’m not,” Barlick said.
Between games of the doubleheader, I walked over to Henry.
“May I ask you a question, Henry?” I asked.
“Sure, go ahead,” he said.
“Barlick told me that you told him I missed a pitch. Is that true?”
“No, that’s not true,” he said.
“Can you come over and tell Mr. Barlick?”
“No way,” Aaron said. “I’m not getting myself into that kind of trouble.”
“I understand,” I said. “Thanks.”
I walked back to Barlick.
“You’re a fucking liar,” I said. “I don’t know what this is, but you have one hell of a problem going. Are you trying to blow me out of this league? Because you’re not going to do it.”
Barlick didn’t talk to me for a week after that. That’s how serious it got.
As miserable as he made my days, at night after games I was often the only one keeping Barlick company at the bar. For a while it had been Ed Vargo who drank with him, but Ed started excusing himself all the time and going upstairs to his room, and finally Al asked him what the hell was going on, because Ed was his bobo and drinking buddy. It turned out Ed was falling in love with his future wife, Betty. She worked for TWA out of San Francisco, and Ed was going up to his room every night to call her.
One night Barlick and I were sitting in the Sheraton Hotel bar in New York, and he exploded.
“The goddamn young umpires don’t know they should be drinking with the King,” he said.
Al and I would start with beers at the ballpark after the game, and then we’d drink at the hotel bar. Al would bemoan the fact that there were no umpires who brought credit to the game, and I’d sit and listen to this, and then we’d order stingers, his choice of obliteration. What I had to learn early was to stop drinking stingers with Al Barlick. My wife told me later in life that the way I was starting out my first year, she was sure I was going to become an alcoholic. At the same time, she had fears her dad would become one too—and those did prove to be true. It took me a while to see that in time I was going to be in trouble, because I never woke with a headache after drinking. So for me there was no fear of it.
Al was a heavy drinker, and the more he drank, the more abusive he’d become. I really didn’t want to sit with him, but I was the new kid, and so I did it out of duty. By the end of the evening, we’d end up bad-mouthing each other. A couple of times, he wanted to fight me.
“I’ll whip your ass right now,” he’d tell me.
I finally called his bluff and challenged him to fight.
“Al, let me tell you something,” I said. “You get sober, and I’ll get sober, and I’ll take you any time you want. In the morning, I’ll meet you in the lobby at nine o’clock. We’ll find a place and we’ll fight.”
This happened twice. I’d come down in the morning, but Al wouldn’t show up. Because of my farming background, I’ve never been one to sleep very much at all, especially past sunup. If the sun was in the sky and I wasn’t on that tractor, I was a dead man. I preferred to get up with a short night of sleep and take a walk, come back, and take a nap in the afternoon.
I had a daily routine. I’d get out of bed early, go right down to breakfast, and then no matter what city I happened to be in I’d immediately go out and walk for an hour. I’d stop and bullshit with people I’d gotten to know over the years, then pick up two newspapers, USA Today and the local paper. Then I’d take off for my second walk of the day for about an hour or so. I’d come back to the hotel at about four-thirty and then I’d have my evening meal. I’d go upstairs at about five o’clock and then rest for an hour. If I couldn’t sleep, I’d put my arms by my side and lie perfectly still. Then I’d go to the ballpark.
That’s what I did every day.
I’ve always cursed the day Fred Fleig assigned me to Al Barlick, but then when I got older I realized how much I had learned from him. Al was a tough taskmaster. One time I was umpiring at third base. The Cardinals were in Los Angeles, and Cards’ third baseman, Ken Boyer, turned to me and said something funny, and I laughed out loud. Across from first base, where Al was, came this booming voice. He screamed across at me, “What the fuck are you smiling at?”
Nothing was going on, and from the first twenty rows of spectators and in both dugouts, everyone turned and looked at me. I was never so embarrassed in my life.
Though I hated him, Al Barlick taught me so much about my craft, and I shall forever be indebted to him for it. Al was old-school. He had a fear of nobody. He hollered and screamed. And he taught me an important lesson: If you make a call, hang with it. And that’s the way I umpired.
Al taught me that to get the respect you needed to command as a great umpire, you had to be creative.
When Leo Durocher was a coach for Walter Alston on the Dodgers, Leo would come out of the dugout, holler something obscene at us, and get ejected about the sixth inning. Then we realized that five minutes after Leo left, a little, cute tootsie sitting in the box seats wearing a Dodger jacket also left. We asked a few questions and learned that yeah, she was Durocher’s honey.
Not very long after we learned this, Leo hollered something at us, and Al Barlick walked over and told him, “Let me tell you something, Leo. I have to work here, and you’re going to stay as well. You’re not leaving. We’ve had all we’re going to take of you walking out with your honey. So sit down and shut up.”
Al called us together and said, “We’re not to eject him.”
Later Durocher managed the Cubs, and for the first year and a half he sat on the bench and kept his mouth shut. By the middle of the second season he saw he had some players—Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Fergie Jenkins—and it was then that he started running his mouth. I tossed Leo a couple of times. He was fun to toss. He’d come out and put on a big show.
“Get the hell away from me,” I’d tell him. “Get out of my face.”
I didn’t need his crap.
Al also taught me practical lessons to follow away from the diamond as well.
“Don’t ever take a drink from a ballplayer, Harv,” he said. “Don’t do anything with ballplayers.”
I paid close attention to what he had to say, though I must say I did it with clenched teeth. What drove me every year those first few years was my determination to be a better umpire than Al Barlick.
I hated him—until I understood where his enmity came from. I didn’t know any of this until a half dozen years later, when umpire Tony Venzon and I were having dinner at Johnny’s Café and Steakhouse in Chicago, and the topic of conversation got around to Barlick.
Venzon had fought in World War II. He was part of a large group of American soldiers on reconnaissance in the woods. The commander sent him back to his jeep to get some papers he had forgotten. While he was away, the group was surrounded and captured by the Germans.
When Tony returned he saw all these American soldiers lying down. He thought they were kidding. But then when he walked over and saw all the blood, he realized the Germans had lined them all up and shot them. They were all dead.
Venzon was a fine umpire and a good friend.
“I could never understand why Al treated me the way he did,” I said over dinner.
“Don’t you know?” Venzon said.
“No, I don’t.”
He then proceeded to explain it to me.
“When you came to spring training in 1962,” Tony said, “Al Barlick told everyone that Billy Williams was going to be the next umpire coming into the National League. The head of officials was Fred Fleig, and Fred went against the King’s orders. He hired you instead.”
The King had wanted Billy Williams, who had been on option to the National League for several years, and Al thought he should have been the next one to be brought up.
“Fleig said, ‘No, I’m taking Harvey.’ ”
Barlick was called the King of Umpires, and Fleig had crossed him and chosen me instead. And then Fleig assigned me to Barlick’s crew. And Al did everything he could to drive me out of the league.
That was the story behind it.
When Al retired in 1971, he called me on the phone. I was in a St. Louis hotel.
“Harvey,” he said, “I’m at home, and I just want you to know all the problems we had, fifty percent of it was my fault. And I apologize to you and hope you will forgive me for having realized too late that you’re a great umpire.”
I was flabbergasted.
“Al, it’s all water over the dam,” I told him. “I forgave you many years ago.”
I wasn’t a man to hold a grudge. It’s part of the reason I was a good umpire, though I have to wonder why Fleig assigned me to Barlick’s crew. It confounds me to this day. What was Fred thinking?
Al also said to me, “Harvey, you’re going to the Hall of Fame one day, and when you get there, I’ll be with you.”
Unfortunately, Al didn’t live to see me get in. He passed away in 1995 at the age of eighty, and I wasn’t inducted until 2010. Had he been alive, he’d have certainly been with me.
In addition to never socializing with ballplayers, managers, or coaches, I also made it a practice never to accept a drink from a team president, a general manager, or even someone from the league or commissioner’s office. I felt it wasn’t my job—but more to the point, I felt it wasn’t right. My job was to be neutral, and I never wanted to put myself in a position where I might be accused of favoritism because I had accepted something—anything—from a ballplayer or a team official.
One night fellow umpire Jocko Conlan and I were in a bar in Milwaukee after a ball game having a beer, and a guy came over to my bar stool and bumped me. I turned around, and it was Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax.
“Harv, you want a cigar?” Sandy asked.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t accept gifts from ballplayers.”
“Okay,” he said, and he left me and walked over to a table with a group of Dodger ballplayers.
That taught me a lesson. I never again sat on a stool at a bar. I always went to a table, because no one can invite himself to a table.
When Sandy left the bar, he absentmindedly left his silver cigarette lighter in front of me. I picked it up and carried it around for two months before I could return it to him. Before a game at Dodger Stadium I caught him coming off an elevator heading for the Dodger dressing room and gave it back to him.
“Hey, Sandy,” I said. “Here. I don’t want your lighter. I don’t want anything of yours.”
I never wanted a player to think he got something special from me. I figured he was entitled to only one thing from me, and that was a fair strike zone.
I was working the ’92 All-Star Game in San Diego, and President George H. W. Bush was going to throw out the first ball. They needed a place to hide him before the game, and so they asked if he could hang out with us in the umpires’ dressing room. He came in with all his security people and it was crowded as hell. There was a knock on the door.
“Someone important wants to see you,” the clubhouse man said to me.
“Mr. President,” I asked, “I’ve got to ask you a favor. Could you get rid of your security people? There’s someone outside I really want you to meet, and we’ve got too big a crowd in here.”
“Just stay outside,” the president told his security people. “Who the hell’s going to come in here?”
I went outside and brought in Ted Williams. Ted and the president started talking fishing, and after a while I said, “Gentlemen, it’s about time for you to head out there, and I have to get ready so I can work home plate.”
Before Ted walked out, he said to me, “Harvey, I have to ask you something. They say they consider you the epitome of umpires. Let me ask you: What’s your strike zone?”
“Ted,” I said, “my strike zone starts at the front of home plate; it’s from the knee to the breastbone, where it comes together according to how the man crouches. And if you’re standing back in the box, the ball will pass you right there. That’s why they always said that Doug Harvey has a terrible strike zone, because that’s where the strike zone is.”
“Is that right?” said Ted.
“Yes,” I said.
“Shit,” said Ted, “you’d have made a .320 hitter out of me.”
And he left.
That first year on our first trip to Philadelphia I ran into Al Widmar, the scout from Philadelphia who told me I’d never make it to the big leagues because I had gray hair and chewed tobacco. Widmar, then the pitching coach of the Phillies, was sitting in the dugout.
I had the plate that day, and moments before the game Al was minding his own business when I walked over and put my foot on the first step.
“I’m here, partner, and I’m going to be here for a while,” I told him.
Then I spit tobacco juice at his shoes and walked away.
When I came to the National League I thought I was the best base umpire there was. But I still had a lot to learn about the art of umpiring. Especially behind the plate. Early in my rookie year I learned an important lesson.
I even remember the date: It was May 11, 1962. The Dodgers and Cardinals were playing in the bottom of the second, the Cardinals batting, the Dodgers up 1–0. Stan Williams was pitching for the Dodgers. They called Stan “Big Daddy.” He was six foot five and every bit of 230 pounds. The Cardinals’ batter stepped in. The count was one ball and two strikes.
A fastball came in like two others before it. When it was about twenty feet out, I threw up my hand and yelled out “Hrrrriiiiiikkkke!” Then the ball cut six inches like nothing I’d ever seen. The pitch crossed the plate outside the strike zone. What could I do? I couldn’t change the call. I’d already called strike three. It was the third out. The Dodgers trotted off the field.
The batter, waiting for someone to bring him his glove, turned his back to me. I figured I was in a shithouse of trouble. I was sure he was going to unload on me and get the crowd on my ass. But he never turned to face me. Over his shoulder he calmly said, “Young fella, I don’t know what league you came from, but home plate is seventeen inches wide, same as it is here. If you want to stay up here, wait until the ball crosses the plate before you call it.”
The batter was Stan Musial.
From then on, I never called a pitch until after it hit the catcher’s mitt. That’s the timing you try to set, and you do it beginning with the very first pitch of the ball game. The pitcher throws, the ball hits the catcher’s glove, and you count to yourself “one thousand one,” and during that time you try to see the pitch again in your mind’s eye, and then you make the call. In a way you’re seeing the pitch twice. But you must wait until a second or even two after the ball hits the glove to make the call. The one exception to this rule is if there’s a runner on first base, in which case you have to make the call sooner. If the runner runs, the catcher has to know early whether it’s a ball or a strike so he can decide whether or not to throw to second.
Another of the good guys was Milwaukee Braves catcher Del Crandall. It was early in my first season and I had the plate. Warren Spahn was pitching and Crandall was catching. Warren threw the first pitch of the game, and I said, “Ball.”
Warren, who was the winningest left-hander of all time, walked down from the mound and said, “What?”
“The man said ball,” said Crandall.
“Jesus Christ, I can’t throw a better pitch than that,” said Spahn.
“I guess you’re in a heap of trouble,” Crandall said.
Spahn turned around and walked back up onto the mound, and he kept his mouth shut the rest of the day. Crandall was a very fair person. Spahn, like most pitchers, just wanted anything close he could get, and guys like him liked to test the new umpires. Yeah, they would test you badly. That first year they would test me every minute of the day.
With every game I learned something. The most difficult manager I ever had to face was Freddie Hutchinson of the Cincinnati Reds. Back in those days, Hutchinson was a real beauty.
He was on me the very first series I worked in the major leagues in 1962.
By the third game of the season-opening series between the Reds and the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium, I had rotated to first base. On a close play at first, Gordy Coleman, the Reds first baseman, pulled his foot from the bag an instant before the runner arrived. I called him safe. Fred came out and started in, ranting and raving.
“What the fuck’s going on?” he demanded to know. He could no more hold a conversation without cursing than he could flap his arms and fly.
This is where the creativity I learned from Al Barlick came in handy.
“Didn’t you get the notice?” I said.
“What notice?” he asked, a little puzzled.
“The one that said this year we’re going to concentrate really hard on keeping the first baseman’s foot on the bag,” I said. “There’ll be no cheating.”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch. This guy’s here three days and he’s gonna change the whole goddamned way of umpiring,” he muttered as he left the field. Fred, a former pitcher, was about six foot four, and he was six foot four of hell on umpires—until I stood up to him one day. And when I did that, I could see he had a lot more respect for me. That was something I had to learn.
It happened on a day when I was working the plate in another Reds–Dodgers game. Hutchinson was managing, Maury Wills was the first batter for the Dodgers, and Bob Purkey was pitching for the Reds. The first pitch came in and I called it a ball. I could hear a voice coming from the dugout. It was Fred.
“Well, you’re oh-for-one,” he yelled out.
The next pitch was fouled off, and Fred yelled, “Great, now you’re one-for-two.”
The next pitch came in, and I heard, “Great, you’re one-for-three.”
I took off my mask and looked over at Hutchinson.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “I’m not going to be oh-for-four, ’cause I’m going to nail you.”
I put my mask back on, and after the next pitch he kept up the same patter. I walked over to the Reds’ dugout and told him, “Get the hell out. I don’t need to listen to your shit.”
“Well, I’ll go to the league office tomorrow and I’ll get your fucking job,” he said.
“Well, if you, your brother, or your dad can get my job,” I said, “I don’t want the fucking thing. Now, get out of my face!”
A few batters later, I thought I heard the same voice. I looked over at the Reds dugout. Fred wasn’t there anymore, but I could see everyone on the bench laughing like hell. And I was thinking, That’s a little odd, ’cause Fred’s got himself ejected and he’s not there anymore, so it can’t be him talking.
Then I thought, When I tossed him, Hutch had water all over his chest. I wondered what he was doing all covered in water.
After that, the next few Reds hitters who came up would dig in, look down, and start laughing. It started driving me nuts. I wondered what was going on. When Reds first baseman Gordy Coleman came to the plate, I decided to ask him. I trusted Gordy. He was a good guy—about the only good guy on their ball club.
When the catcher went out to the mound, I asked, “Gordy, what the hell is going on?” He was bent over so it wouldn’t look like we were talking to each other.
“Hutch was getting a drink of water at the end of the dugout when you ran him,” Gordy said.
So after a couple more batters I got to thinking, Hold it a minute. How the hell could he be yelling at me when he was drinking water?
I called time-out and approached one of the Reds coaches, Reggie Otero.
“Reggie, was that you?” I asked.
All the Reds’ players burst out laughing. They thought it was real funny because I had ejected Fred for something his coach had been doing. Turns out that Otero could do a great imitation of Hutchinson’s voice. His act impressed me, but as I returned to the plate to dust it off, all of a sudden it occurred to me to call time-out again. I walked back to the dugout.
“Come to think of it,” I said to Otero, “I caught you. So you get your ass out of here too!”
Hutch, who could get nasty, taught me another important lesson. As an umpire you always turn the side of your body to the man you’re going to eject, because if you don’t, he’ll leap right in the way of your arm as you’re signaling his ejection and swear that you hit him. And that can get you in the deep shithouse with the president of the league. I learned that the hard way.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at Hutchinson, tossing him out of the game. But I didn’t turn sideways when I made the motion to toss him, and I accidentally hit him with my hand.
“You hit me,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I said.
And that’s how I learned you have to turn your side to whomever you’re ejecting. Because a guy like Hutchinson will try to put you in the shithouse any way he can.
He reported me to the league office, and I had to go there and explain. I caught hell from everybody. Sure I did.
“Hutch said that you hit him.”
What was I going to say? That I didn’t hit him? That he walked into my arm? It sounded too much like an excuse.
“I’ll have to fine you.”
“Do what you have to.”
Another thing I learned that first year was that if the manager was an asshole, his players probably would be as well, and that was certainly true of Freddie Hutchinson’s Cincinnati Reds.
One of the Reds’ worst players to deal with was Frank Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder. He was the toughest player I had to face. Frank Robinson was always trouble, but of course Frank Robinson was playing for Freddie Hutchinson.
We were playing a game in Cincinnati in the summer, one of those terribly hot days. Back then the umpires had to wear a coat, so I was out there in the heat with my coat on and I was miserable. The next batter was Frank, and he came up to home plate. He was squeezing the bat and talking to himself.
“Let’s go,” I said. “It’s hot. I don’t care for your wasting time. I’ve got to work out here. Let’s go. Get in the box.”
Frank didn’t move. He just stood there, squeezing his bat.
“You screwed me at first base yesterday,” he said, “and you’re screwing me now.”
“Hey, what the hell’s wrong with you?” I said. “What are you talking about, screwing you?”
“You heard me,” Frank said. “You screwed me last night, and now you’re screwing me again.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “Get in the box.”
“I’ll get in the box when I want to,” said Frank.
“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I’m telling you now: Get in the box.”
“I’m not getting in the box,” said Frank.
“Pitch the ball,” I ordered.
The ball hit the catcher’s glove. Wham.
“Strike one. Now,” I said, “will you get in the box?”
“I’m not getting in the box.”
“Pitch the ball.”
Wham.
“Strike two,” I said. “You getting in the box?”
“I’m not getting in the box.”
Shag Crawford came down from first base, and he wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“I told the gentleman to get in the box,” I said, “and he refused, so I called a strike. And I called strike two.”
Shag said to Frank, “Don’t be silly. Get in the box.”
“I’ll get in the box when I want to,” he stubbornly said to Shag.
“Well, let me tell you something,” said Shag. “I’m going to walk to first base, and if you’re not in the box by the time I get there, you’re out of here.”
“I always thought you were a straight-shooter, Shag,” said Robinson, “but you’re nothing but a son of a bitch.”
So Shag jerked him, threw him out of the ball game.
Dick Sisler, Hutch’s right-hand man, came out and called me a son of a bitch, so I ejected him too. Sisler then said to Shag, “If you have the balls, I’ll meet you after the game and kick your ass.”
This was old-time baseball in the early 1960s. This is what it was like. It was wonderful.
In 1982 Frank Robinson became the manager of the San Francisco Giants, and he was the same pain in the ass he was as a player. Except that as manager he hated to be ejected, because he knew he would have to spend the rest of the game in the dressing room, watching it on TV. He could still get mad—we had a few good arguments—but as manager, I never tossed him.
Speaking of Fred Hutchinson—whom we all despised—Fred had cancer the last two years he managed. And during those two years, he was just as nasty as ever.
One day Ed Vargo ran him.
Hutch was in the third-base dugout and Vargo was at first base, and it took Hutch a good five minutes to walk over there, because he couldn’t hardly walk. When he finally got to the dugout he took his time emptying his pockets, and then he had to tell someone he was running the ball club, and then he had to walk all the way from the third-base dugout over to first base.
I was umpiring at second and walked over to first to be a witness, something we were told to do any time one of us got into an argument. I was there to listen. Fred was a bit taller than Ed, and Fred got up really close and looked down at him, and he said, “I hope you get what I’ve got.”
And he turned and walked off.
That was the worst I ever heard. I knew that sometimes they wished we were dead, and this was proof of it.
Fred had to quit as manager in the middle of the ’63 season when he became too ill to continue. Not too long after I entered the majors, he died.
One evening in Cincinnati, a writer came into our dressing room before a ball game. He said, “Fellows, I just thought you’d want to know. Fred Hutchinson has died.”
“Jesus,” said umpire Augie Donatelli, “can you tell me where they buried him?”
“Jeez, Augie,” the writer said. “That’s really nice.” And he started to write the address on a piece of paper.
“Augie, you want to send a card of remembrance?” asked the writer.
“No,” said Augie, “I want to go and piss on his grave.”