Chapter Two: Gene Autry’s Corral

March 11

The minor-league Angels training camp in Holtville is an arrow-straight ten-mile drive under a huge sky, past serried lettuce rows and concrete irrigation ditches. At the Holtville complex, four baseball diamonds splay out like blades of a giant fan. The hub is a thirty-foot-high rotunda upon which farm directors control workouts and make evaluations amidst snapping flags.

Past the left-field fence of diamond two, we find our facilities—“Autry’s Corral,” named after Angels’ owner and former singing cowboy Gene Autry. It is a long, shingled barracks with peeling paint and jockstrap smells, lockers and showers. It does not remind me of home.

At Autry’s Corral, we get our daily assignments. Two other umpires are in camp this year: two rookies named Chuck Neisler and Dana Demuth, young, pasty-faced graduates of the Bill Kinnamon school. Demuth, only nineteen, has been tagged “can’t miss.”

Today Charlie and I will work Salt Lake (AAA) vs. El Paso (AA) on diamond one. Neisler and Demuth have Quad Cities (AA) vs. Salinas (A). These are not the usual nine-inning affairs. The decision-makers want to see their pitchers throw, and that often means 14, 15, 16 innings. A long time between breakfast and beer.

Umpires are paid chewing-gum money to work spring training. Le grand ripoff. To get us in shape, Baseball says. I am already in shape, thank you, with or without dreary Holtville.

Compensation appears in the form of female pulchritude—young, flashy ballplayer girlfriends who sit in the stands, chatting, distracting us between innings with their sun-bleached hair and swimming-pool tans, plenty of laquered brown skin showing through scanty sun suits. Diamonds in the rough.

March 12

Relentless gale-force winds dramatically alter the character of Holtville contests. At times the players resemble toddlers hitting waffle balls. On diamond one, where the AAA boys play, home runs require a Herculean effort. Even Willie Mays Aikens, whose arms are bigger than my legs, is rendered impotent by diamond one. On diamond three, lovetaps by first-round cuts become 400-foot drives. Diamond three could make a hitter out of Gene Autry himself.

Charlie and I have reconnected; we grow closer. His pearly whites flash frequently now. He chuckles at my jokes, responds with his own. This ghetto kid from Compton is my best friend in OB. If anyone can get me through the Texas League on the right side of sanity, it is Charlie.
March 13

Today we have one of the strangest plays I’ve ever seen or heard of.  I’m working the plate when batter Ken Landreaux swings and misses for strike three. The pitch enters the catcher’s glove, then pops straight out. But before it hits the ground—and before the catcher can reglove it—Landreux’s backswing contacts the ball, dribbling it down the first-base line. Carney Lansford fields the ball and throws Landreaux out at first.

Given the informality of spring training, a crowd gathers at home plate, everyone clamoring to know: “Yeah, but what if Landreaux hadn’t been thrown out at first? What’s the call then?”

My answer is an honest one: “I don’t know.” Seldom do I admit that on the field, but it is spring training and, furthermore, I really don’t know. During the season, I’d have come up with some creative bullshit to make myself sound more certain than I was. In Holtville, we open it up to discussion.

Since Landreaux did not intentionally interfere, common sense suggests that it’s not interference. On the other hand, the catcher was hindered in his attempt to catch the ball (it hadn’t yet hit the ground), and interference does not have to be intentional. This is a play umpires won’t find spelled out in the rulebook, but they still have to make a call. If I had to make it today, I’d call the batter out for interference.

The Landreaux play is a reminder that no matter how many games you umpire, how much you study the rulebook, how many grizzled veterans you talk to, you’d better expect the unexpected to occur.

Consider the bizarre play Charlie and I had in San Jose, our rookie season: Top of the seventh inning, one out, runners on second and third. Duane Murphy of Modesto hits a sinking liner to left. The outfielder charges and short hops the ball. Charlie, on the bases, surprises me and about two thousand fans by calling “Catch!” and thrusting his right arm into the air. Two outs.

‘Uh oh,” cries my inner voice.

“Buzz, buzz, buzz” goes the crowd.

The runner from second, caught off the bag on what is now a catch, tries to retreat, but the throw to second beats him for the third out. But the runner from third has tagged and touched home plate before that out is made. I signal to the pressbox to count the run.

Modesto manager Rene Lachemann sprints out to the infield to argue Charlie’s call. While they’re going chin to chin, San Jose manager Gomer Hodge visits me at home, demanding an explanation in his inimitable Carolina accent. “How the hail can that be a run when the last out was made by a damn force play.”

“Your premise is faulty.”

“My what?!”

“It’s not a force play. It just looks like one because they didn’t have to tag him at second. But it’s not a force—it’s a special case.”

“Spec-y’all case, my arse.”

“Maybe so, but the run still counts.”

“Way-ell, then I’m protesting the game.”

Now I have to signal up to the pressbox that the game is being played under protest. When they announce it over the P.A., the jeers of the home crowd rain down on me. Back behind home plate, I start second-guessing myself: Did I get it right? . . . I know I read that play somewhere . . . What if I’m wrong?

My concentration wanders and I miss a pitch; nobody else notices.

During a pitching change, Charlie gets the clubhouse boy to fetch a rulebook. In between innings, while he is thumbing through the book, Gomer sidles up to me and says, “Yo, Steve . . . y’all getting much pussy lately?”

I eye him suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, sheee-it, I figured we just got screwed, and I was wonderin’ how y’all was doin’.”

If Gomer got screwed, it wasn’t by us. Turns out, I got the play right. I’m relieved, but afterward, in our dressing room, Charlie broods over his missed call. He sits on a bench, dressed only in thermal bottoms, and mutters over and over, “Oh, what a stinky bitch . . . a stinky bitch . . .”

Sympathetic, but glad it wasn’t me, I pat him on the back and pop open another beer for him.