The Villains in Blue

Poised behind home plate, his masked face thrust over the catcher's left shoulder, burly (6 ft. 2 in., 210 Ibs.) Frank Dascoli, 48, seemed the epitome of the big-league baseball umpire. His gestures were flamboyant and unmistakable; his concentration was intense. His calls were sure: this season a writers' poll voted him the best ball caller in the business. Relying on his "fast thumb" (he once ejected 18 players from an exhibition game), Dascoli insisted on absolute obedience in every game he worked. But good as he was, Dascoli committed the umpire's unforgivable sin: he lost his temper in public. Fortnight ago, for calling National League President Warren Giles "incompetent and spineless," Dascoli was summarily dismissed. Explained Giles, who is also a fast man with a thumb: "The best umpire is the most inconspicuous--except when he's calling a play."

Discretion on and off the field is just one major requirement for the big-league baseball umpire, whose job ranks among the most demanding, the least appreciated and the loneliest in organized sport. Ideally, the umpire should combine the integrity of a Supreme Court justice, the physical agility of an acrobat, the endurance of Job and the imperturbability of Buddha. Before each game, he must perform such lackey's chores as "policing" the diamond and rubbing the gloss off 60 new baseballs with specially aged New Jersey creek mud that costs $12.50 a can. He must know by heart all 550 regulations in the baseball rule book. He must not only keep high-strung athletes from beating one another up, but prohibit fraternizing between the teams. He must make split-second decisions with confident finality, and he must be, or at least appear, totally immune to criticism. Says Veteran Charlie Berry, 58, of the American League: "You go into this business knowing that they'll never build a monument to you."

Boos, Bottles & Bombs. Insulting the umpire is a pastime as old as baseball itself: in organized baseball's first recorded game, in 1846, a New York Nine player named Davis was fined 6-c- for cussing the ump. Umpires have been beaned by flying pop bottles, chased out of ballparks by angry fans, assaulted by umbrella-wielding ladies, and showered with dirt and obscenity by players and managers.

Most of the 37 men in blue who patrol the majors accept insult as a matter of course--"I'd really get upset if they cheered," says the American League's Ed Runge--but few ever get used to it. "You try to rationalize," says the National League's Frank Secory, "but it's not easy. A guy in the stands shouts vilifications, and a psychiatrist says it's healthy for him--it's his safety valve. I know the guy doesn't mean me, personally, and if he saw me on the street he wouldn't know me. But it's hard to stay calm."

To give umpires a measure of protection, ushers periodically patrol the stands looking for troublemakers, and all major-league ballparks now serve drinks in paper cups instead of cans or bottles. But determined fans still manage to smuggle heavy artillery into the parks. When the Chicago White Sox played host to a group of golf caddies earlier this season, the umpires were pelted with 500 golf balls. Says Umpire Runge: "Once a lady threw a shoe at me. Generally it's the standard stuff--bottles, garbage, cushions, programs. But I turned white in New York a few weeks ago when someone tossed a four-inch bomb behind me."

Fastballs & Foul Tips. Even when the fans, players, coaches and managers are reasonably passive, the umpire faces other dangers. Physical injuries are common. Most dangerous assignment: calling balls and strikes behind home plate, where the umpire is an easy mark for a stray fastball or foul tip. Before he traded his thin, hair-stuffed National League chest protector for an inflated American League model, fragile Jocko Conlan absorbed a regular beating. His hospital record: two broken collarbones, two broken elbows. Last fall in Baltimore, American Leaguer Larry Napp was struck by three successive pitches--one on the mask, two in the groin--and had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. The National League's Bill Jackowski has been twice hit in the throat by lined fouls.

To these hazards must be added the loneliness of a man who is by necessity an outcast. Umpires and players do not mingle, fly in the same plane or sleep in the same hotel. Their fan mail is light and invariably scathing. "I occasionally get birthday cards from fans," says the National League's Al Forman. "But it's often the same message: they hope it's my last."

Better Than the Mines. In pursuit of his trade, the aspiring major-league umpire must serve a lengthy minor-league apprenticeship (average duration: five to seven years), pass an exhaustive, FBI-type security check. Even after arrival in the majors, an umpire's tenure is chronically insecure: he can be optioned, traded or fired, sometimes on whim.

The umpire's rewards are slim. Traveling seven months of the year, working seven-day weeks, he is paid a starting major-league salary of $7,500, can work up to a top of about $18,000. But for all that, ex-ballplayers, would-be ballplayers who never got beyond the bush leagues, and fans with the hankering and the nerve to brave the insults and the perils of umpiring keep the majors well supplied with raw stock. "It's an unnatural life," says Umpire Augie Donatelli, who came out of the Pennsylvania coal country and took up umpiring after washing out of class D professional ball. "But have you ever been miles deep in a soft-coal mine? Umpiring gets rough, but whenever it does, I say to myself, 'Augie, this is better than the mines.' "

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