ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610070136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BASEBALL
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR.
Not all ballplayers spit and get scratched, it just seems that way.
For example, when the American League president suspended a Baltimore player for spitting in the face of an umpire, it enraged some parties in baseball to the point of walking off the job.
The league felt justice had to be meted out or the sacredness of an umpire's position would be endangered. Players felt the punishment was too severe.
John McGraw was one of those. Disgusted, he up and jumped to the National League.
If you feel like you've just been thrown a spitball, it's probably because you were waiting for the names of Roberto Alomar, John Hirschbeck or some other current headliner to be mentioned. Actually, this story, while it bears resemblance to baseball's current spat, occurred 95 years ago.
McGraw, the Baltimore captain and later a legendary manager of the New York Giants, was upset when Ban Johnson, president of the fledgling American League, suspended a Baltimore pitcher for spitting on an umpire.
Eight years later, umpires got their revenge when ump Tim Hurst spit in the face of Eddie Collins. Johnson, wasting little time in living up to the name Ban, fired Hurst.
While columnists decry the unsportsmanlike conduct brazenly exhibited when Alomar deliberately spat in the face of umpire Hirschbeck on Sept.27 in Toronto while arguing a strike call, and while politicos and evangelical types fret over the future of Western civilization when the punishment for such an abomination is five-game slap-on-the-wrist, the truth is that physical altercations between players and umpires have occurred probably since cavemen batted rocks - then each other - with clubs. Maybe even before.
This is not to condone what Alomar did in becoming the most notorious spitter since the one Gaylord Perry allegedly kept in his pitching repertoire. Judging by the outrage, you'd think the spit really hit the fan. Umpires, though, are mad enough to spit and all but screamed ``Remember the Alomar'' while threatening to sit out the playoffs unless AL president Gene Budig increased the length of Alomar's suspension.
Alomar's ban probably should have been for 20 to 30 games, a punishment for which there is a precedent. When Pete Rose shoved umpire Dave Pallone twice during a 1988 game, then-NL president Bart Giamatti suspended the Cincinnati manager for 30 games.
It is unfathomable why a sport with a history as magnificent as baseball suddenly forgets its past in times of turmoil. There are precedents for almost anything that happens in the game. Even the bad stuff.
Some worry Alomar's egregious act has replaced baseball's great expectations with great expectorations. One day a guy spits on an ump. What's next, the masses wail in anguish, cracking an ump on the head with a bat? Is that what the future holds?
No, it's what the past holds. Authors John Bowman and Joel Zoss devoted an entire chapter of their book ``Diamonds in the Rough'' to the antagonistic relationship umpires have had with players, managers and even fans. In addition to the McGraw-Johnson story, Bowman and Zoss recount tales of actual killings on minor-league ballfields during the rowdy days of the late 19th century.
Umpire Samuel White was killed in Lowndesborough, Ala., in 1889, and Ora Jennings was slain on a field in Farmersburg, Ind., in 1891. Both were killed by blows to the head from irate players wielding bats.
Talk about Murderers Row. Umpires of the late 1800s routinely were assaulted by players and fans. Bowman and Zoss wrote that some umps carried guns for protection, although a Chicago judge ruled in 1909 that umpires had no right to draw firearms, even if confronted by a mob.
There is no justice even in the judicial system for umpires. In 1987, wrote Bowman and Zoss, a New York State appeals court upheld George Steinbrenner's right to publicly rip an ump by saying ``this action of defamation brings into play one of the most colorful American traditions - the razzing of the umpire Gen. Douglas MacArthur is reported to have said he was proud to protect American freedoms like the freedom to boo umpires.''
First in war, last in the American League, the umpires' fate. They are spat upon and dirtied from the kickings of disagreeable managers. Public humiliations are commonplace. Once, when Baltimore manager and career-umpire-baiter Earl Weaver was livid with a call by longtime foil Ron Luciano, he had it announced over the Memorial Stadium public-address system that he was ``protesting this game on the grounds of the umpire's integrity.''
History is littered with accounts of umpires being treated rudely. Even Camelot was no haven for arbiters, judging by Mark Twain's fictional account of an Arthurian-era ballgame in ``A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'':
``The umpire's first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular.''
Even the literati give the umps no quarter:
``And why did they throw that bottle and break the umpire's nose?'' (``A Coming Fanette: The Mournful Ballad of a Girl and a Baseball Game,'' by Walter R. Hirsch)
``Kill him; kill the umpire!'' (``Casey at the Bat,'' by Ernest L. Thayer. Only when the benevolent Casey intervened was the poor ump's skin spared. That didn't stop him from calling a second strike on the big guy, though.)
Even the bard was known to get caught up in the mood of the crowd, for William Shakespeare wrote in ``Henry VI'':
``Just kind death, umpire of men's miseries.''
So, there's really nothing new about the Alomar-Hirschbeck episode. It's just the spitting image of past wars.
LENGTH: Long : 102 linesby CNB