OFFICIATING : It’s Perhaps the Most-Thankless Job in Sports, but Somebody Has to Do It

It’s the loneliest job in sports. Being an official means being booed, abused, hated--sometimes feeling like you don’t have a friend in the world.

Most aren’t paid enough for what they do--running the games often can be no small accomplishment. Indeed, they pay a price to be part of what they love, sports.

Not that they’re gods. Officials are, from all accounts, quite human. They can carry grudges. They can be vindictive. They’re certainly not infallible. For the most part, they’re good at what they do under far-from-ideal circumstances. They must control action, make fast decisions and weather the wrath of one side or the other, sometimes both and often the fans.

“I don’t care if you are God, you’ll get arguments,” says American League umpire Joe Brinkman. “You’ve got to have nerves of steel.”

And according to Brinkman, an umpire must never, never hope to be liked. “If (Earl) Weaver saw you on the street, he’d still think you were a bad guy, the scum of the earth.”

Two recent incidents, in baseball and hockey, have focused a spotlight on officials and their often troubled times: Cincinnati Reds Manager Pete Rose’s shoving of umpire Dave Pallone, resulting in a one-month suspension for Rose and a $10,000 fine, and New Jersey Devils Coach Jim Schoenfeld’s confrontation with referee Don Koharski that cost Schoenfeld a one-game suspension and $1,000.

While an official’s life in any sport is not easy, National Hockey League referees may have the most difficult job. Certainly, the conditions under which they work resemble those of a tightrope walker: They must watch the puck while dodging it, avoid speeding skaters and their frequent collisions while judging the players’ actions and rendering decisions based on a largely subjective rule book.

“My dream is for both coaches to shake my hand after a game and tell me I did a great job,” an NHL referee once said. “But I know it will never happen.”

But Ron Luciano, who is experienced in two sports, believes that baseball umpires are the Rodney Dangerfields of officiating.

“In football, officials are always treated with respect,” he says in his book, “The Umpire Strikes Back.” “Throughout my entire career, high school, college and pro, I never once raised my voice to an official. If I were penalized for holding, I was thankful they’d only caught me that one time and not the three times before.

“When they made a bad call, I gritted my teeth and maybe muttered under my breath and accepted their stupidity as part of the game. So when I started umpiring, I expected the players to treat me with the same amount of respect. It didn’t take me long to learn the facts of baseball life.”

It’s a continuing education for umpires. Two of the worst incidents: Bill Madlock, then with the Pittsburgh Pirates, shoved his glove into umpire Jerry Crawford’s face, which cost Madlock a 15-day suspension and a $5,000 fine; Billy Martin, when managing Oakland, was suspended one week and fined $1,000 for bumping umpire Terry Cooney, then repeatedly kicking dirt from around home plate onto the umpire’s suit.

For the most part, players and umpires co-exist, although the feelings on both sides can be bitter. For instance, three years ago the relationship between Steve Palermo and Eddie Murray was so bad they never even nodded at each other on the field.

Almost unanimously, players don’t want to be quoted talking about umpires because, as a prominent American League player said, “The last thing you want to do is make one of them mad because they never forget. It seems like now there are so many of them who come to the park in a bad mood. You say one wrong word and you’ve set him off. It’s not so much true for me as for the young kids. I swear the strike zone on kids is about three inches, and if they say anything, the umpire yells, ‘Who the hell are you? Get out of here.’

“I’ve heard that television replays have stopped umpires from carrying out vendettas, but it’s still bad. The game won’t be any good until they put a mike on ‘em. Until they know people are going to hear the things they say to players.”

Orioles coach Elrod Hendricks remembers one of his first games in the majors, when he was behind the plate and a pitch was called a ball. “I held the ball to see where it was,” said Hendricks, “but the umpire thought I was doing it to show him up. He started yelling, ‘Don’t you try to show me up, rookie.’

“I told him I wasn’t, but when I came up to hit, he told the catcher to set up outside. The pitch came in, and he called strike one. He told the catcher to move a little more outside and called strike two. By the time he called strike three, the catcher was a foot outside. I got the message right there.”

“Consistency” is the quality good umpires strive for and players and managers hope for in umpires.

“Players want someone who’s consistent and works hard,” says umpire Jim McKean. “If you hustle to get in position to make the plays and establish a good consistent strike zone, you won’t have any problems.”

“The thing that makes a good one,” says Orioles Manager Frank Robinson, “is the same thing that makes a good anything else. He’s got to be consistent.”

Like officials in other sports, umpires usually have some early connection with the game and want to stay in it in some capacity. It can merely be a fondness for the sport, or as in the case of the National Football League even a requirement that officials have played the game on some level. Officiating and coaching are obvious ways for one to stay connected to a favorite game. But being an official takes immense self-control and discipline.

“You have to be a special-type person to do this job,” says Rich Garcia, who is considered, along with Palermo, among the best American League umpires. “The abuse doesn’t bother me because I never thought you had to take it. As far as what the fans say, you don’t even hear that. One of the important things is learning to control your temper.

“We go into certain games knowing there might be problems. We read the papers and follow the game. We talk about it before the game. We know when a team or a player is going bad, that you’re more likely to have problems. You try to stay away from these people. You walk away from the arguments. You ignore it.

“I remember in 1982 when Texas was going so badly (and Don Zimmer was about to be fired as manager). On a third strike, the plate umpire said the catcher dropped the ball. I was at third base and came running in and said, ‘No, no, he caught it.’ I wouldn’t have said a word if I wasn’t absolutely sure, but Zimmer came running out and said, ‘Is everything going to go against this team?’ He said a few more words, but I just walked away. What was the point?

“Now, you don’t always walk away. You have to get respect. (In Garcia’s first two games behind the plate in the big leagues, he ejected Dick Williams, Ed Figueroa, Ellie Rodriguez, Billy Martin and Frank Lucchesi). I remember one night a manager showed up me and my crew, and the next night I went to the park ready. Something happened, and I showed him up and ran him. He said he couldn’t understand it, but he knew. He’s still in the league and I have a very good relationship with him.”

Umpires’ rights were emphatically upheld recently by National League President A. Bartlett Giamatti, whose action against Rose was praised on two counts by Richie Phillips, executive director of the Major League Umpires Association: It was severe and it was swift.

“As important as the severity was his sending an immediate signal,” said Phillips. “It was important to the umpires that Giamatti send a signal to baseball that this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.”

Phillips expressed concern over the angry mood of the crowd in Cincinnati at the time Rose twice pushed first base umpire Pallone, and thought that Giamatti’s penalty would help prevent managers and players from berating an umpire in a way that could incite a crowd and lead to violence and injury. “If managers and players don’t behave in that fashion,” said Phillips, “fans won’t be incited to a frenzy as they were in Cincinnati.

“Part of the reason for the 30 days was their (the fans’) behavior. I speculate that Rose would not have gotten 30 days, but it was so frightening.” Pallone was the target of various objects thrown by some Reds’ fans.

As difficult as a baseball umpire’s life can be, hockey officials may have tougher times-an opinion suggested by an authorty in a third sport. Darrell Garretson, chief of the National Basketball Association’s officiating staff, says of hockey referees, “They have to skate their tails off, dodge the puck and make the calls. At least our basketball is a little bigger than the puck.”

Despite the size of the athletes and emotion of the games, officials in pro sports are rarely even bumped by players. Garretson cites “a good rapport” among NBA officials and players. Art McNally, supervisor of officials for the National Football League, notes the “power of the commissioner” to penalize any acts of violence by players.

Of course, there are exceptions. Garretson remembers a game he was calling in which former New York Knick Willis Reed “grabbed” him. “I thought I was dead right there,” said Garretson. “His hand covered my forearm. At the same time, Willis is saying to me, ‘I don’t mean you any bodily harm.’ I said, ‘Willis, you have to go.’ He said, ‘I know.’ ”

Several years ago, McNally said an NFL player “really belted” an official on a play--it was an interception and the official was hit from behind as play went the other way. The player was suspended one game, thus losing a sizable percentage of his pay.

In confrontations between officials and coaches or managers, basketball coaches can be particularly explosive, Garretson believes, because they are confined to a limited space. “A hockey coach can walk up and down behind the bench,” he says. “A football coach can walk it off between the 40-yard lines. A baseball manager can go up and down the dugout. But a basketball coach is right out there before God and everybody.”

“Coaches are a special breed,” and a confrontational one, says Garretson. “Their jobs depend on wins and losses and they always think you’re taking away their job. When you (officials) get a little more gray in the hair or the hair gets a little thinner, you may not be affected as much by things you hear.” But coaches don’t mellow with age, said Garretson, “because their situation doesn’t change--they still have to win.”

Both the Rose and Schoenfeld incidents occurred on nights that victory eluded their teams. Schoenfeld didn’t get close to referee Koharski until after a 7-1 defeat in Game 3 of the Devils’ playoff series with Boston, but when he did he berated Koharski in a manner that was ruled by the NHL to be “demeaning to the official.”

Fans have been known to be more abusive, however. John McCauley, the NHL’s director of officiating, was punched in the face by an angry fan in New York in 1979 after the Soviets beat the NHL in the Challenge Cup. It took two years for him to regain full vision. He wasn’t even the ref that night. He was the standby official.

McCauley considers officiating “one of the most exciting professions--I’d probably equate it to being a skilled surgeon or a trial lawyer. There’s satisfaction in doing a job a lot of people could not do.” But the pay is not great--ranging from $36,000 to $75,000 a year for the dozen NHL referees--and most NFL referees have been ground down and are ready to retire in their mid-40s.

McCauley’s cardinal rule has to be any official’s bottom line: “We work on the philosophy that if you’re right nobody remembers and if you’re wrong they never forget.”