THE MEN BEHIND THE MASK : It’s Easy to Forget, but the 22 Umpires Who May Be About to Lose Their Jobs Have Lives and Families Like Everyone Else

Country Joe West has dabbled in singing and songwriting and even performed at the Grand Ole Opry. Now, one of 22 major league umpires who may be about to lose their jobs in a failed labor strategy, West figures he can always call Merle Haggard or Mickey Gilley to see if they need an opening act or check in with Johnny Lee, who is opening a club in Branson, Mo.

West is 46 and has some working years ahead of him. Fellow National League umpire Terry Tata is 59 and was thinking of retiring in a year or so anyway. He would have preferred to go out on his own terms, rather than in a dispassionate decision by an industry to which he had given almost 40 years, but he is looking forward to escaping the stress and spending more time with his wife, Janice, who is suffering from multiple sclerosis.

For Jim Evans, 52 and in his 28th year as an American League umpire, pending unemployment means increased time at the umpiring school he operates in Florida in the the off-season and, as a University of Texas graduate with a degree in education, more time with 12-year-old daughter Lindsay. She is a competitive ice skater training with former Olympian Carol Fox and is being home schooled by Evans and his wife, Duana, who has a degree in child psychology.

Evans, West and Tata have built up pension and severance benefits that provide a degree of financial solace as they confront the possibility of their umpiring careers ending with today’s games, but National League umpire Paul Nauert, 36, and American League umpire Ed Hickox, 37, in their first full years on a major league staff and without those benefits, are suddenly faced with the prospect of building a new career in a new profession while tackling the job market with a resume that includes 11 years or more of minor league umpiring.

From older to younger, experienced to inexperienced, the possibility that careers are ending today “is a devastating feeling for all of us,” said Evans, and a possibility, added Tata, “that has created havoc with lives and families.”

A cynic might suggest that they brought this on with their blind support of union counsel Richie Phillips and his questionable strategy of mass resignations, but that is to pull the plug on the emotional and human factor.

Take Hickox, whose dream of playing major league baseball ended at a community college in Florida when he realized he wasn’t good enough. He loved the game and decided to try umpiring. His dad loaned him $800 to attend Harry Wendelstedt’s umpiring school 18 miles from his home. Hickox graduated second in a class of 230 and was assigned to the Class-A Gulf Coast League with a minor league contract at $750 a month for the five-month season.

He was 19 and would spend 16 years in the minors before receiving the coveted call to join the American League staff on a full-time basis on Jan. 1 of this year. He had umpired some 900 AL games as a vacation or injury relief starting in 1990. By late July he was facing termination on Sept. 2, the AL having accepted the resignation that had been offered in support of his union.

“I don’t think anybody can describe my emotions,” Hickox said from Philadelphia on Tuesday as he waited to take a train to Baltimore, where he is working, perhaps, his last series. “This is all I’ve ever done, all I’ve ever wanted, but what should be the best year of my life has turned into a disaster. There’s tremendous stress on myself and my wife. If there’s a saving grace, it’s that my daughters are too young to understand what’s happening.”

Mackenzie is 4, Ashton 3. Lisa, their mother, recently quit her job with the Deland, Fla., parks department to stay home with her daughters. Now she is sending resumes out again and her husband is wondering what “a 37-year-old guy with no other trade” is going to do.

“Strip me of this profession and I have no other avenue,” Hickox said. “For 17 years I’ve either been on the field umpiring or teaching at my own amateur clinics or the Wendelstedt school. We bought a house a year and a half ago and we were thinking of building another. Now that’s out, and I’ll probably lose our current house if I lose my job.

“The frustrating part is that when there was finally an opening, I was hired over the same guys who have now been hired to take my place. If you just count the 900 games I had already umpired at the major league level, I have more experience than most of those guys combined. There was one opening and I was the best of the best. Now I’m still waiting to be told if there was a deficiency to my work or why my resignation was accepted and some others weren’t. The only reason I can think of is that I was supportive of my peers and union, but if honesty and loyalty are a sin, we have much bigger problems than this.”

Baseball hired 25 minor league umpires to replace the 22 whose resignations are being accepted. Some of the 22 are among the highest rated and most experienced umpires and some the lowest rated and least experienced. Baseball’s position is that it took no action while giving the umpires several days in which to rescind their resignations, but the 22 were late to do so.

Now Phillips is pursuing every avenue in an attempt to save the 22 from a strategy that he and his supporters insist was simply designed to draw management into collective bargaining negotiations.

He is seeking a restraining order from the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia that would prevent the two leagues from letting the 22 umpires go after today’s games. He has brought charges of unfair labor practice to the National Labor Relations Board and asked the board to seek a restraining order if it finds the charges against management to be valid. He has filed a grievance with the American Arbitration Assn., which normally adjudicates any dispute involving the collective agreement. That agreement expires Dec. 31, and it is believed that if nothing else saves the 22, they could ultimately be reinstated through negotiation over a new labor contract.

Said Evans, who was reached at his home in Colorado, where he is currently on a week’s vacation, having possibly umpired his last game Sunday in Cleveland: “Nobody wanted to give up their jobs. We were just trying to get somebody to sit down and talk. They had made unilateral changes in the strike zone and evaluation system, among other things, and there was a sense of total frustration because we couldn’t get anyone to talk about it. Our agreement is with the two leagues, but [league presidents] Gene Budig and Len Coleman aren’t making the decisions now. Bud Selig and Sandy Alderson are, and there was a breakdown in communication that concerned us.”

Nevertheless, Evans added, “as devastated and disappointed as I am by what has happened, and as easy as it would be to be bitter, I’m trying to let my demeanor be the same as it is on the field and not act irrationally. We’re a strong Christian family and we’ve taken strength from the prayers and support of our church and friends. Once this immediate crisis is over, they still have to negotiate a new bargaining agreement, and maybe something will happen then. I’ve still got some good years left, this is not the way I want to leave the game. I know it had nothing to do with merit.”

Evans has worked four World Series, nine league championship series and three All-Star games, including the plate in the July game at Boston. He was 23 when hired by the American League, matching Lee Weyer and Larry Barnett as the youngest umpires in major league history. He qualifies for a $40,000 a year pension and a $400,000 severance that starts at $100,000 for 10 years of service and escalates $25,000 a year to $400,000 for 20 and more, a class that includes Tata and West, the country singer, songwriter and inventor of the hard-shell chest protector now worn by most plate umpires at every level. Said the 22-year major league veteran:

“I’m not worried about Joe West. I’ve done very well off the field. I’m worried about guys like Paul Nauert, Bruce Dreckman and Larry Vanover, who are just starting their major league careers and now may have to go find new jobs in their mid-30s. If our American League colleagues hadn’t jumped ship [weakening the resignation strategy and support for Phillips], baseball would be negotiating a new agreement with us right now. Our mistake was in thinking all of our members were together. As it is, baseball took advantage of the situation. We’re victims of Union Busting 101. I mean, we didn’t resign, we were fired.”

Tata agreed, saying he was sickened to think that a 27-year major league career, a job he has devoted two-thirds of his life to, may reach a premature conclusion tonight at Dodger Stadium, where two of his colleagues, Bill Hohn and Tom Hallion, are also on the hit list.

“I’m set financially, I can walk away,” Tata said, “but there’s a pride factor, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone strip me of my dignity or tarnish my image. I’ve worked four World Series and seven league championships and this has nothing to do with merit. We have a commissioner now who wants to break the union, and we have a group of American League umpires with a vendetta against Richie Phillips.”

Tata said he was hopeful of working one more year, adding a little pension and severance frosting under terms of a new bargaining agreement, and then going out on his timing and terms, “but it won’t be hard for me to retire. We’re playing the most important games of the season now, but this hasn’t been fun. You try to keep your mind on business, but I’m working with guys like Hallion and Hohn who aren’t in the same financial situation I am and I have to ask myself, ‘how greedy can I be wanting to work one more year?’

“My wife has MS, and I want to get home with her and enjoy the rest of our life. The umpiring today is the best that it’s ever been, but we’re easy targets. The cameras are everywhere. You see every close play a hundred times. I don’t need the stress anymore.”

The possible loss of a high-stress job is a real stress for Paul Nauert, in his first year as a full-time member of the National League staff, a father of three children 5 and younger and, like Hickox in the AL, devoid of any pension or severance pay or any other job training on which to fall back. Nauert spent 11 years in the minors before receiving his full-time offer on April Fools’ Day, not knowing whether to believe the call from NL umpiring supervisor Paul Runge before calling it “the highlight of my life.”

“I was 22, didn’t have any direction, and a buddy talked me into going to umpiring school,” Nauert said. “I fell in love to the point that I didn’t qualify out of my first school but went back for a second and came out first in the class. I couldn’t imagine that it would take 11 years to reach the majors, but it never got to a point where I considered quitting. All of my evaluations were above average and I figured it was only a matter of time. The frustrating part was seeing so many of my friends quit or get released along the way. There’s so little turnover.”

Nauert got his chance, and now may lose it. He may be umpiring his final game in San Francisco today.

“I grew up in a family of nine kids,” he said. “I had to work to pay my way through Catholic school. If the bowl came around at dinner and you didn’t get any, you were out of luck. I’ve had to fight for a lot of things in life, and I’m not done fighting this fight. Baseball has to explain to me why they’re taking me off the field, why they’re replacing me with guys who don’t have my experience and who I was hired ahead of a few months ago.

“I still love the job and I love the game. I’ve had an exciting year that I don’t want to end, but I’ve had an illustrious four-month career if it does.”

Nauert laughed through the tears. He and 21 colleagues may be shedding more today.

Called Out

The 22 major league umpires who are expected to lose their jobs:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

* Drew Coble, Jim Evans, Dale Ford, Rich Garcia, Ed Hickox, Mark Johnson, Ken Kaiser, Greg Kosc, Larry McCoy.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

* Gary Darling, Bob Davidson, Bruce Dreckman, Eric Gregg, Tom Hallion, Bill Hohn, Sam Holbrook, Paul Nauert, Larry Poncino, Frank Pulli, Terry Tata, Larry Vanover, Joe West.