A Godly Umpire?

 

A Godly Umpire?

Hall-of-Fame umpire (now, there’s your textbook example of an oxymoron) Doug Harvey died over the weekend at the age of 87. For reasons unclear, some players referred to him as God.  The NYT obit yesterday included a story that may have told more about Harvey than he ever intended.

Supposedly, the young Harvey was behind the plate in St. Louis calling balls and strikes for only the third time in his career.  It was the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two out and Stan Musial up.  Musial worked the count full.  This is what you might call a tense moment, one that apparently got the best of the rookie ump.  Harvey rang up Musial on a pitch that looked like it was going to be a strike but in fact sailed well outside.  Musial calmly informed the young umpire that the plate was only 17” wide, and Harvey learned a valuable lesson—take your time in order to make the right call.  Too bad it never happened.

I was curious to see who the pitcher was, which took me to retrosheet.org.  The first thing I saw was that Harvey’s third time ever behind the plate was a Phils-Colt .45s game.  He did call balls and strikes in St. Louis his next turn, but that was a 14-3 beat-down of the Reds.  According to retrosheet, Harvey called eight Cardinals’ games in ’62 and rang up Musial twice, both times leading off an inning.  Maybe Harvey misremembered; it happens to some people.  Let’s say he was right, and I’m the one who can’t read things correctly.  In that case, lucky Harvey to learn such a valuable lesson at the start of his career.  As for Stan Musial, too bad, buddy.  Grab some bench.

So, now that that detour is over, let me get back to what I wanted to say in the first place—get Doug Harvey and every other plate umpire out from behind the catcher.  Either go with an electronic balls-and-strikes system or position the ump just back of the pitcher off the mound, to the left or right.  My guess is you’ll get fewer blown calls.

Say, why don’t they try that in spring training, pair the electronic system with the other two ways?  Unlike almost every ump who’s ever worked a game, I’ll be happy to admit if I’m wrong.