Hutch and the Reds weren’t the only thorns in my side that first year. The combination of St. Louis Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst and his ace pitcher Bob Gibson was just as toxic. Red was horrible. He wanted everything in his favor, everything to lean toward him. If a call went against him, you were wrong as an umpire. He’d put you in the shithouse in a minute. That was his attitude. He was not a fair person.
The Cardinals under Red were a bunch of assholes, and Bob Gibson was the biggest asshole. He was the leader. He was also a snake. You know, a snake’s nice if you’ve just fed him a mouse. You’re in pretty good shape if you did that. But don’t reach in there if he’s hungry. He’ll eat you. Well, Bob was hungry every time he went to the mound.
All the guys on the club were afraid of him. One time his catcher, Tim McCarver, went out to talk to him, and he screamed at Tim, “What the fuck do you know about pitching? Get behind home plate.”
McCarver walked back, his tail between his legs.
We called McCarver “Ironhands,” because when Gibson was pitching, he didn’t catch a lot of the balls, and the umpire behind him would get beat to shit. Gibson was tough to catch. He’d throw his fastball, and just as it reached the plate it would start to slow down, and then it would jump three inches—monstrous movement. I don’t know how he did it. He held the ball by the stitching and threw it hard. The ball would start to slow down and then it would explode, moving one way or the other. And McCarver had a tough time catching him.
When Bob was pitching, he was in another world. Anyone who crossed him was the enemy, and he didn’t care for me. He wanted me to give him five inches on either side of the plate, and despite his attempts at intimidation, I flat-out refused to do it. He didn’t care a bit for my strike zone, because mine was a true strike zone. Gibson would bitch like hell throughout the whole ball game.
We were in St. Louis, and Gibson (who, along with Sandy Koufax, was perhaps one of the two best pitchers in the league despite his deficiencies in personality) had pitched eight innings of shutout ball with me umpiring behind the plate. He won the game 2–0.
After the game our umpiring crew was in the dressing room. The radio was on, and I could hear Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck interviewing Gibson after the game.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Buck, “we have Bob Gibson as our guest. Bob, how are you?”
Gibson said, “I knew yesterday that I would be in trouble today.”
“What do you mean, in trouble?” asked Buck.
“When I saw Harvey at first base yesterday,” he said, “I knew I’d be in trouble today. He doesn’t give me anything.”
Now, Gibson had just thrown a two-hitter and won the game. I had fought the rain, did everything I could have done to get the game in, and he had his victory. And he was bitching.
The next day I ran across Mike Shannon, who had played third base for the Cards and was Jack Buck’s radio partner.
“Hi, Harv,” Mike said.
“Do I get equal time?” I said to him.
“Are you kidding?” he asked.
“No, I’m not kidding.”
“Hell, yes,” said Shannon, and right there and then we went on the air.
I told the people of St. Louis: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m an honest man, and Bob Gibson wants five extra inches on both sides of the plate, and I refuse to give it to him. And that’s why on occasion I have to eject him. It’s the reason we have arguments. Because I’m not going to give him ten inches more than he deserves, and that’s what he wants.”
Later Shannon told me, “Harv, we got more phone calls and letters after your response than from anyone we ever had on.”
“And how did they look at it?” I asked.
“They were all in your favor,” Mike said. “There wasn’t one who said you were wrong.”
“Great,” I said. “Then I got my message across.”
Red was managing in my first World Series in 1968 against the Detroit Tigers. With the Cardinals leading three games to one, game five pitted the Cards’ Nellie Briles against Mickey Lolich of Detroit. St. Louis needed to win only one more game to take the series. The game was played in Tiger Stadium. It was a day game, back when the World Series was still played during the day.
With the Cardinals ahead 3–0 in the fifth inning, the speedy Lou Brock doubled. Julian Javier then hit a single to left field. Brock rounded third as the left fielder, Willie Horton, came up throwing. He threw a pea to Tigers catcher Bill Freehan.
Brock didn’t slide. With Freehan in the way, Brock altered his line to the plate, and as he ran past it, Freehan tagged him. I had a perfect view. Brock never touched the plate. He didn’t miss by much, perhaps an inch, but I could see the space between the plate and Brock’s cleats, and I called him out.
When I called Brock out, it was the turning point in the series, because pictures showed that just before I made my call Tigers manager Mayo Smith was stepping onto the top step of the dugout to take Lolich out of the game. When I called Brock out, he left Lolich in, and Lolich went on to win the game 5–3. The Tigers then won the next two games to win the series four games to three.
I was criticized by National Leaguers for calling Brock out, but when Doug Harvey is umpiring, there is no such thing as a league. I could have called Brock safe just as easily and nobody would have argued. Nobody. But my heart wouldn’t let me do it. Had Brock slid, he would have been safe, and I’d have called him safe. But he didn’t, and it changed baseball history.
Red came charging out. With Red, whenever the call went against him, you were wrong. Like his star pitcher, there was nothing fair about him in any way.
Red Schoendienst’s biggest gripe was that he said I never gave his pitchers the high pitch. Well, you have to understand that whether a pitch is a ball or a strike is determined by where it’s located when it goes across the front of home plate. And I could never get people to understand that. Batters stand at the rear of the batter’s box because they need as much time as they can get to hit the ball. They have perhaps a hundredth of a second to hit it, so they stand as far back as they can. The ball would come downhill from the mound, would be shin-high at the front of the plate, and then as it crossed the plate it would be knee-high. That pitch is a ball, and as a result Red would be complaining, “Harvey never calls anything above the belt line.”
Well, that wasn’t true, but I couldn’t get Red to understand that.
Red moaned and bitched and cried that I wouldn’t give his pitchers the high strike, and now they’re trying to get the umpires to give the batters the low strike. You can’t give them both. An umpire can set himself to give a higher strike by standing up higher. Or you can call a lower strike by bending down more. But by definition you can’t do both. They are two different stances. By saying, “We want a bigger strike zone,” they are asking for both. Hell, if that’s what you want, widen the plate.
I harken back to a conversation I had with Ted Williams when I asked him, “Ted, where would you want the pitchers to throw if you wanted to put on a hitting exhibition?”
“Right up here,” he said, indicating the high part of the strike zone. “You don’t even have to think about the angle of your bat. It’s right in line with hitting a home run.”
And because baseball has stopped calling the low strike, pitchers are forced to throw right into the zone where 250-pound batters hit home runs. What baseball needs are umpires who call the good, low strike zone.
Another important thing to note about the strike zone: When I was coming up through the minor leagues, the old saying was, “If you want to make it in the major leagues, you have to have a pitcher’s strike zone. You have to open up your strike zone.” To me that means 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 it was going to be a strike. And, of course, it also had to be the right height.
I’m a great believer in fairness. I absolutely was a fair umpire, and yet when I see another umpire opening up his strike zone, I understand why he’s doing it. He wants the game to go faster, and I don’t mind it. But I wouldn’t do that. My heart wouldn’t let me do it, because it wouldn’t be fair to the batter. I always made sure the pitcher had fairness and the batter had fairness.
“If you’re a pitcher’s umpire, you won’t have as many arguments,” I was advised. In other words, the batter will only be up there a short time, but the pitcher will be around for as many as nine innings, and if he isn’t happy, he could be screaming at you for nine innings.
Screw it, I said to myself. I’ll take their arguments and stand on my own.
Arguments are part of baseball. The players and managers need to vent. Anyone who doesn’t understand why players get upset and argue has never played the game. I played, so I understand how the players feel. I know what drives them.
My first year I also learned there were gentlemen in the league. One player who was completely fair was Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale. In one of my first plate jobs during my first season, the Dodgers were playing St. Louis in Sportsman’s Park, and Don threw a pitch that the Cards’ Stan Musial hit over the big screen in front of the stands and clear over the stands. It was a blast.
Drysdale walked down from the mound and said, “Hey, Doug,” which impressed me, because he had taken the time to learn my name.
“Yes,” I said.
“Ask Musial if that hurt his hands, will you?” said Drysdale.
I had expected him to ask, “Where was the pitch?” But he never did that. Don and Sandy Koufax were two of the greatest professionals ever to play the game.
One of the most important lessons I learned as an umpire occurred during my rookie season. Gene Mauch was the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, and he fancied himself a genius with the rules. It was a night game, and I was umpiring at third, and there was a close play. Don Hoak, whom the Phils had acquired from Pittsburgh toward the end of his career, got the ball in time ahead of the sliding runner. He put his glove down, and when the runner came within two feet of him he pulled the glove back, missing the tag, and I called the runner safe.
Mauch came running out to raise hell with me, so I had to run him, and I had to run Hoak as well.
At the end of the evening I had a sore throat from all the hollering. Mauch and I must have stood there for twenty minutes hollering at each other. Finally Al Barlick came over, took charge, and got Mauch to leave the field.
Sitting in a bar that night, I asked myself, I wonder what would happen if I refused to argue with him?
The next night I was at second base. There was a slide play there. Phillies second baseman Cookie Rojas caught the ball in time, but I called the runner safe, and out came Mauch again.
This time I stood there with my arms crossed and stared at him. I started counting to twenty to myself—one, two, three, four . . . until I got to eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and when Mauch started repeating himself, I said to him, “Gene, I’ve listened to you. Why don’t you listen to me?”
Mauch shut up.
“Cookie had the ball in time,” I said, “but he had a slow glove and missed the tag.”
Gene turned toward Rojas—I was wondering what Cookie was going to say—and with his Spanish accent Rojas said, “He’s right, skeeper.”
I turned and saw Mauch loping across the infield back to the dugout. He jumped over the foul line and went into the dugout, and that was the last argument I ever had with him. He accepted the fact that I knew what I was doing.
I understand that years later, when Mauch was managing Montreal, he got in a big fight on the field and told the umpiring crew, “I’ll trade one Doug Harvey for all of you.”
Bless his heart, when I saw Cookie at a Baseball Assistance Team dinner a few years ago, I told him I’d never forget his backing me up as long as I live.
“You could’ve hung me out to dry,” I said. “And if you had, I’d have run your ass too.”
We both had a good laugh about it.
But after that, I adopted what I call the Harvey Twenty-Second Rule. It relates to demeanor, something I teach to young umpires, though not everyone can carry it off.
When I see a young umpire out there screaming and hollering at a manager or a player, I say to him, “What are you screaming about, son? What are you so uptight about? I’m watching you and you’re screaming and hollering.”
“Well, he’s screaming and hollering at me,” the answer always comes back.
“And how many men does it take to make an argument?” I ask.
“Well, it takes two.”
And then I say, “One option is for you to refuse to argue. Just stand there and count to twenty. He will have exhausted himself screaming and hollering. Let him do it. But don’t let him get up in your face. Tell him, ‘Hold it. Hold it.’ He will look at you funny.
“Tell him, ‘I’m listening to you, but back up or I’m going to jerk your ass out of here.’ And you’ll be surprised. Never once did a manager or player tell me, ‘I’m not backing up.’ You tell him, ‘I can hear. My hearing is very good, but I refuse to listen to you if you’re going to scream and holler in my face. Now what is it you want to tell me?’
“And that’s when you give him twenty seconds to talk. After that you say, ‘Now it’s my turn. I’ve listened to you, haven’t I?’
“ ‘Yeah, you listened to me.’
“ ‘Well, I think it’s only right that you listen to me.’
“ ‘Okay.’
“And then you explain yourself.
“ ‘I was in perfect position. I was right there. I saw the ball come in. I saw the tag. There’s no doubt in my mind he missed the tag, and I have to call him safe, and safe he’s going to stay.’
“ ‘Goddamn it,’ he might start in again.
“ ‘No no no,’ I would say. ‘You don’t understand. I listened to you, and you listened to me, and now this conversation is over.’
“ ‘What do you mean?’
“ ‘I mean if you don’t get away from me, I’m going to jerk your ass out of this ball game.’ ”
Now it’s in his lap. He has a choice. He can stay out there and get tossed. Or he can return to the dugout.
Finally, I instruct young umpires, “If you can get rid of the screaming and hollering, you got them by the balls.”
Many can’t do it. I told this to Jerry Crawford when he first came up, and he said to me, “Chief, I know what you’re trying to tell me. I understand. But I just can’t umpire that way.”
Years later he came back to me and said, “It took me a long time, but I finally understand that yours is the easier way to umpire.”
Two years after our screaming match, Gene Mauch was the manager of the Phillies when they made their infamous dive, losing most of their games at the end of the 1964 season to lose the pennant to the St. Louis Cardinals. That year Jocko Conlan was my crew chief, and Jocko was going to retire at the end of the year. Ordinarily, the league assigned our umpiring crew to many of the Phillies games, but because everyone thought the race was over and was sure the Phillies were going to win it, the league sent us to the West Coast to umpire a series between Houston and the Dodgers. Meanwhile, the Phillies kept losing, and by the end of the season Mauch and the Phillies had blown it.
It was such a surprise. Mauch screwed around with the pitching staff, pitching Jim Bunning and Chris Short almost every game it seemed. He panicked and pitched guys out of turn, and Gene just caught hell from everybody. But it was Gene Mauch who taught me that important lesson: It takes two to make a fight.
I had an incident involving Herman Franks, the manager of the Chicago Cubs, that taught me another lesson I never forgot. I was behind the plate and he said something about the strike zone, and I told him, “Just sit still and leave me alone. I know what I’m doing.” And I punched the batter out. Strike three. And he hollered, “Well, you’ve fucked up everything. Now you’re screwing up the strike zone.”
Boom, bam, boom. “Get the hell out,” and I tossed him. Herman just sat there and looked at me. I said, “Let’s go. Let’s go.” He reached into his back pocket very calmly, took his lineup out, and handed it to Peanuts Lowrey. They were sitting and talking, and I finally got peeved, walked down the third-base line, and got near the bag.
“Let’s go, Herman,” I said.
He walked to the top step of the dugout, continued across to the third-base area, and we were talking.
“Doug, I didn’t curse you.”
“Don’t give me that, Herman. I was looking right at you when you did it.”
He said, “What did you think I called you?”
Translating his words, I said, “You called me a fucking asshole.”
“Oh no,” he said, “I was saying that was an asshole call.” He was improvising.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I know you think I’m a dingbat, but get the hell out of here—now.”
“But, Doug—” he said, and he turned and started walking toward home plate, talking to me. Only I didn’t follow him. I was standing at third base and I let him walk. And there Herman was, walking all the way to home plate, thinking he was talking to me. I had crossed my arms and was standing at third base, and now the people were starting to giggle. It was funny. Herman was walking to home plate talking to me, and I wasn’t there.
Finally, Franks turned around to have his last say, when to his chagrin he realized that I wasn’t there. When he looked back at third, I turned my head and looked out to center field with my arms crossed, like I didn’t know he was gone. Oh, jeez. He got so goddamn mad. He came running back, charging me like a wounded buffalo. That day I learned that when you eject a man, you never stand on any dirt. You always stand on grass. They can’t kick dirt on you if you’re not on dirt. Herman Franks was the only man during my career who ever kicked dirt on me. When he did that, of course, I got him the hell out of the ball game.
The next day, the phone rang in the umpires’ dressing room, and Jerry Crawford answered it.
“Chief,” he said, “it’s Herman.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No.”
“Give me the goddamn phone.”
“Oh, Doug—you of all people,” said Herman. “How could I ever have done that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Could you see it in your heart to forgive me?” he asked with real contrition.
“Fuck no,” I said, feigning anger, “and I’ll tell you something else. If you fuck around with me, I’ll nail you every time I see you.”
Bam. I hung up.
I told the guys in my crew, “Don’t forget what I’ve always said. You never hold a grudge.”
That was the way I umpired. I never held a grudge. But I got Herman thinking: Will he eject me every time he sees me?
That’s the way I worked.
Ted Simmons, the St. Louis Cardinals’ catcher, is the only player I should have tossed but didn’t. There was a riot going on, and I was working the plate. Ted was behind the plate, and when the melee broke out, he jumped up and tossed his mask toward the dugout, signaling his intention to get involved.
I turned around to him.
“Let me tell you something, Ted,” I said. “If you get in that dugout, you’ll stay in the game. If I see you out on that field, I’m going to eject you.”
As I started heading toward the pile of bodies near the mound, Simmons said to me, “What the fuck do you know, asshole?”
I was already on the dead run to see if I could break up forty players, so I missed him. I didn’t eject him.
After that, I kept my eye out for him, but I never did get him.
Which also showed I never carried a grudge. I may never have forgotten when someone said something to me, but that didn’t necessarily mean I acted on it. A grudge eats at you. I never allowed that.
When I came up, I was a little bit of a wiseacre. One of the many lessons I learned early was that I had to watch myself.
I was behind the plate in Chicago. The Cubs were playing the Phillies. The Cubs’ pitcher was a big guy, a right-hander named Larry Jackson. Wes Covington was the batter; a great big guy, a strong son of a bitch. He came up with the bases stacked. Jackson got two strikes on Covington, and I told myself, He’ll either try to backdoor with a hard slider, or he’ll try to cut it inside.
But he reversed it. He threw the pitch on the inside corner, but missed it. Covington jerked his leg out of there and I said, “Ball.”
The Cubs’ catcher was Dick Bertell. So here came the next pitch and sure enough, he threw a goddamned slider, and bam, the pitch hit the catcher’s glove. But it missed.
“Ball,” I said.
And I heard, “Oh, Jesus Christ, Harvey.”
“Whoa, big fella,” I said to Bertell. “We’re going the wrong way. Don’t be doing that.”
Jackson threw another close fastball. I said, “Ball.” And Bertell dropped down on his knees and said, “Oh, why?”
I leaned forward and said, “I wanted to see how high the pitcher could jump after I made that call.”
“You cocksucker!” said Bertell.
Here we go. The catcher, the pitcher, the manager, the third-base coach: I threw them all out of there. That night, I went out and got drunk.
The next day, at seven o’clock in the morning, the phone rang. It was the head of umpires, Fred Fleig, the man who gave me my job.
“Doug,” he said, “I want you to meet me at the hotel.”
“Okay,” I said groggily, “but you better have some sweet rolls and some coffee, because I’ll need them.”
I grabbed a cab and headed over to his hotel. We were having coffee and sweet rolls, and he said, “Bertell said you told him you wanted to see how high the pitcher could jump.”
“That’s right, Mr. Fleig,” I said. “That’s what I told him.”
“Well, I respect you for telling me the truth,” he said. “You’re kind of a wise kid, and I’m telling you: Get rid of it.”
“I’ll try,” I said. And I did try.
After that, every time Fred would come into a dressing room, he would tell the young umpires, “You listen to what Harv says. He’s an honest man, and he won’t get you in trouble.”
The fact that I always told the truth worked out for me.
My first year in the major leagues was memorable for so many reasons. I entered baseball the same year as Casey Stengel and the Amazin’ Mets. They were called the Amazin’ Mets as something of a joke. The 1962 Mets may well have been the worst team to come along in quite a while. When the league expanded, the powers that be allowed the existing teams to protect almost all of their decent players, making only over-the-hill veterans and fringe ballplayers available to the two new teams, the Mets and the Houston Colt .45’s.
During a game at the Polo Grounds, there was a play at second base. I called the runner safe when the Mets second baseman was late with a tag. Casey came trotting out to protest. In that deep voice of his, he said, “Young man, it appeared to me that the second baseman had the ball and tagged the man coming in, and therefore I feel he should be out.”
“Casey, let me tell you something,” I said. “Your fielder caught the ball, but he was reaching forward instead of catching it coming backward, so it took time for him to reach forward and catch the ball, and then he put a slow tag on him.”
“A slow tag?” said Casey.
“Yeah, Casey, that’s right. A slow tag.”
Casey turned around and started to walk off, and I could hear him muttering under his breath. Both his hands were up in the air, and he was saying, “Slow tag. Slow bats. Slow arms.”
Casey was a wonderful gentleman. I loved him.
As great as Casey was, that’s how opposite-of-great his successor, Wes Westrum, was. Wes was a pain in the ass. He would get pissed off at me all the time. He was always trying to prove me wrong. One time he told me, “Harvey, I’m going to be watching the replay on the TV.”
One game he came out to argue with me four times.
He kept saying to me, “I’m going to check the TV.”
“Westrum,” I told him, “I’m better than any fuckin’ TV you got.”
Finally, I ran him. I couldn’t take it any longer.
We used to have to work old-timers’ day games. Whoever wasn’t working the plate that day would umpire for three innings for the old-timers. We were in New York at the new Shea Stadium. Roger Craig was on the mound and Joe DiMaggio was the batter, and Roger came over and said to me, “Harvey, if you strike Joe DiMaggio out, I’ll kill you. Pull it in.”
“For Christ’s sake, you think I have no sense at all,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, the gentleman gets eight strikes.”
They announced Joe’s name, and we waited and waited, and we could see him standing around in the dugout. Finally he came out and said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t find a bat.”
“No problem, Joe.”
Later Felipe Alou told me, “Joe couldn’t find a bat, so he took mine. It was the heaviest bat in the rack.”
On the first pitch he hit a one-hopper off the center-field wall. It was a wonderful thing to see. He swung so smoothly, didn’t put any effort into it. But his legs were gone, and first base was as far as he could go. I thought to myself, For a guy to drive the ball that far with bad legs like that—what a shame he isn’t young. I would have loved to have seen him in his youth.
Joe DiMaggio used to play in our golf tournaments, and there’s never been a nicer gentleman in all the world. But he had to be comfortable around the people he was with.
In spring training, Joe was a coach with the Oakland A’s. I was umpiring at third base, and Joe was sitting on the edge of the home dugout by third base, and he let out a fart, a big one.
The lady sitting right above him said, “What was that?”
Her husband said, “What was what?”
She said, “Didn’t you hear it? There’s something wrong with this place.”
I looked over and Joe’s face was as red as a Cincinnati Reds uniform. He was blushing to high heaven.
When I came up in 1962, Alvin Dark was the manager of the San Francisco Giants. I was umpiring a game at third base in Milwaukee a couple years later, and Jim Ray Hart of the Giants hit a ball way out to left field. The bases were loaded and there were two outs in a close ball game.
The ball Hart hit was one of those balls I felt was going to be close as to whether it left the ballpark or not. I busted my ass, got halfway out there, and set myself—which you always have to do. Any umpire who tries to umpire on the run is a damn fool. You have to set yourself.
I set myself and watched the ball come down. And this is another Harvey theory: Don’t watch the ball when it’s on its way down—instead, when it’s still twenty feet high, watch the fielder’s glove; you’ll never miss whether it’s caught or not. The rule also goes for the fielder charging in and taking the ball off his shoe top. If you leave the ball when it’s twenty feet in the air and watch the fielder’s glove, you’ll never miss whether it’s a trap or not.
“You’ll always be able to make that call,” I tell all my young people.
This ball was coming down. Rico Carty, the left fielder, ran back to the fence and jumped up. If I had been following the ball, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with it. The ball always leads your eyes, so you don’t see what happens.
I left the ball and went to the glove, and goddamn if I didn’t see a fan in the stands holding a small, brown-colored stick of some sort—it could have been a piece of steel or it could have been a pencil—sticking out over the edge of the stands. The ball hit it just as Rico Carty leaped up trying to catch the ball.
I ran out and saw the fan pull back this stick. And I called Jim Ray Hart out, citing fan interference.
Al Dark came running out near third base, and he wanted to argue. Whitey Lockman was his third-base coach. Whitey came over and said, “Skip, I hate to tell you, but Harv’s right.”
That was the first time I ever had a ballplayer say something to save me. It happened two or three times later during my career.
I never did have any bad arguments with Al.
Another manager I rarely got into a bad argument with was Pittsburgh Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh. Danny was crusty but fair. He would come out and argue, but he was one of those managers who never wanted to come out of the ball game. He wanted to be on the field, so he kept his cool to keep from getting ejected.
Harry Craft of the Colt .45’s didn’t like to argue. He didn’t have the fire in his belly. He wanted things to go smoothly and didn’t argue at all.
Bobby Bragan, the Milwaukee manager, never argued with me, and there was a reason for it. Bobby managed in the Pacific Coast League when I was umpiring there. I had known him, so when he came in we respected each other. I also knew Bobby Cox from the minors. He had been a player in the California League in the early 1960s. He was at Reno playing second base. That’s how far back we went. I read that Bobby got tossed more than any other manager in the history of the National League. I couldn’t believe it. I never ran Bobby once.
One manager who could be nasty was the Cardinals’ Johnny Keane. There was a to-do at third base involving Tony Venzon, and I walked over from second base to listen in. Keane had started the argument and then stood directly behind Venzon, listening to his every word, hoping to catch him saying something wrong.
“Hey, Tony,” I said, “it’s me, Harv. You won’t believe who’s standing right behind you.”
He turned around quickly, and when he saw Keane standing there he unloaded a string of expletives.
“If you want to argue with me,” said Tony, “you better get the hell over here in front where I can see you. Don’t you ever—” And on and on he went. Tony turned the argument around on Keane.
Most of the arguments I had came in my first few years. One of the reasons they eventually stopped was that the players saw that I demanded respect. They learned quickly that if you called me anything but sir, Mr. Umpire, or Doug, you’d be ejected.
The first player I ever ejected was Joe Torre, who was just breaking in as a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. They were playing the Pirates in St. Louis toward the end of the season. With two out, Joe hit a double, a runner was coming in to score, and it was going to be close. I was umpiring at second base. Joe rounded second, and I saw him touch the bag. He ran past it by about ten feet, then turned to look to home plate to see if there was going to be a tag play just as Pirate catcher Smoky Burgess—who had come halfway out to the mound—caught the ball and fired it back to second, catching Torre by surprise.
“You’re out,” I called.
“You’re full of shit,” Torre said.
“What?” I said.
“You son of a bitch,” he said.
“You’re out of here,” I said, making Joe Torre the first player I ever ejected.
After I ran Torre, the Cardinals’ third base coach came running out to second base.
“Why did you toss Torre?” he demanded.
“He called me a son of a bitch.”
“Why, young man,” said the coach, “this is the major leagues. You have to be able to take it when you’re up here.”
Just about then Al Barlick walked over and got between us.
“You’re out of line,” he said to the coach. “Get back to your bench.”
Like a schoolboy, he turned and walked back to the dugout.
They also found out that if you screwed with me—which I considered another form of disrespect—I not only wouldn’t take it, I would get even. Once word got around that I was no guy to mess with, most of the trash-talking stopped.
As an example, our crew was in Cincinnati for a game against San Francisco. Johnny Edwards was catching for the Reds and Tom Haller was catching for the Giants, and I was arguing balls and strikes pretty good with both of them.
Haller was batting and he yelled down to Edwards, “Hey, maybe you and I ought to call balls and strikes. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”
I was burning. I didn’t do or say a thing. I just waited my turn.
Late in a close ball game, Haller came to bat. There were two men on base, and the Giants were down one run. The pitcher looked in and wound up, and just as he was starting his delivery, I said just loud enough for Haller and Edwards to hear, “So, you think you can umpire? You wouldn’t make a pimple on a fucking umpire’s ass. Strike one.”
Haller didn’t even swing. He backed out when I started talking. He looked at me with a funny look on his face, and he stepped back into the box. He figured I had had my say. Well, when the pitcher started to wind up, I knew he couldn’t step out, and I let him have it again.
“I could take you people and give you six years of training, and you couldn’t make a fucking umpire,” I said as he swung at this one. The ball was outside. He shouldn’t have swung at it. Now he was thinking that I intended to screw him on every pitch, which I did.
Haller stepped back and said, “Hey, Harv, I realize we had some fun with you. But this is really an important part of the game.”
I just stared at him.
“Let’s go.”
And he stepped into the box.
“Yeah,” I said, “this is a really important part of the game, and nobody can hear me but you two assholes. Shall we play baseball? What do you want to do?”
And just as the pitcher started to deliver, I said, “Oh, by the way, the last ball you swung at was a ball.”
And Haller swung at a pitch over his head for strike three. He threw the bat down and walked away.
Now it was Johnny Edwards’s turn to come to bat with a runner on first. He looked at me. The first pitch came in. I didn’t say a word. I called it a strike. On the next pitch he swung at a ball over his head and popped it up. So I got my revenge. And I did it in a way that let the two players involved know not to fuck with me again, without me making a big scene about it. This is what baseball needs. It needs people who are mature enough to handle the situation without screaming.
Another time I read in the paper a statement from Bill White, the first baseman who had just been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, that the umpiring was all fucked up. He said that the only good umpires in the league were Al Barlick, Jocko Conlan, and Shag Crawford.
“The rest,” he said, “are terrible.”
The next time I was behind the plate when the Phils were playing, Bill came to bat, and on the first pitch, which was outside, I called, “Strike one.”
“Wasn’t that pitch outside?” Bill asked.
“It might have been,” I said, “but as terrible an umpire as I am, who the hell would know?”
I didn’t say another word, but you better believe he started swinging at anything that was close. It’s amazing what you can do if you use your head instead of your voice. Use your damn brain. That’s what I teach young umpires.