What can I say, I have no belief in God whatsoever, but (you may be pleased to learn) this column will concern Doug Harvey’s autobiography entitled They Called Me God. And if you think he’s kidding, or being funny, or ironical, or anything like that, the subtitle is "The Best Umpire Who Ever Lived," and he means at least 11 of those 12 pompous, self-important syllables. (I’m giving him a pass on "The.")  There have been numerous sports autobiographies written by egomaniacs, habitual braggarts, BS artists, and all sorts of delusional fabricators, it’s practically a requirement of the genre, but I assume that some of that just goes with the territory: in order to succeed at the very top levels in competitive fields populated by people brimming with confidence (or, worse, faking it), sports figures must be driven to believe in their own natural superiority. But They Called Me God takes that drive down roads I’ve never seen before.

This ludicrous (but sometimes unintentionally informative) memoir of Harvey’s long umpiring career is absolutely loaded with iterations and reiterations of that theme: "I don’t believe I ever made a wrong call," appears on page one, and is endlessly rephrased throughout the book. I am not going to run down Harvey’s anecdotes and run tracers on them here, but I did want to use this book as a corrective to something I wrote in my column tracing whoppers in Bill Veeck’s autobiography, which I praised for its modesty.

Harvey’s book is just about the least modest autobiography ever written, this side of Mein Kampf, which I had trouble finishing, so much so that as you read it, you think, "He simply must be kidding here, he’s making fun of himself, isn’t he? No one could be half as full of himself  as Harvey is here, and here, and here, and here…" but no, very soon, you realize that he is NOT kidding, that he really does think this highly of his own fairness, his own integrity, his own eyesight, his own judgment.  After a short while, however, you come to understand that not only is this level of umpiring flawlessness impossible, but Harvey is himself  providing all the evidence you could need to show it isn’t so.

He self-righteously provides anecdotes, for example, that detail his deliberate miscalling of balls-and-strikes, many times in his career, sometimes to teach some smart-ass ballplayer a lesson in manners, sometimes to get back at misbehaving managers, or fans, or league officials, or his fellow umpires, and it’s as if he doesn’t see how these incidents all disprove his central thesis, that his abilities are Godlike and his dispassionate delivery of justice is swift and eternal. It’s hard to read this book and not at least wonder if God is entirely right in the head. (Two brief examples, both from his accounts of major league games: "…on the first pitch, which was outside, I called ‘Strike one,’" from page 161, and "The pitch crossed the plate outside the strike zone. What could I do? I couldn’t change the call. I’d already called strike three. It was the third out. The Dodgers trotted off the field," from page 124.  Both calls stood. This sort of thing is very hard to reconcile with "I don’t believe I ever made a wrong call.")

Or maybe he’s not a crazed Supreme Being, just a sloppy proofreader. The reason I gave up so soon on doing a few tracers was that my first attempt was about a story Harvey tells that I knew, without looking at a single reference book, was years away from being accurate. Harvey first umpired in MLB in 1962 and he describes Joe Torre as the first player he ever ejected. Fair enough, Torre was playing MLB by 1962, but the ejection Harvey describes has Torre playing for the Cardinals, a team he didn’t play for until 1969. I gave up on tracing Harvey’s errors at that point—it would be as easy, and as unnecessary, and as mean-spirited, as drowning a kitten in a bucket. (It was an actual error, incidentally, not just an innocent proofreading lapse--he wrote "Cardinals" or "in St. Louis" three times on page 158. He also has this late-season game taking place vs. the Pirates, whom Torre last played against in 1962 on the 10^th of June. Turns out the late-season game took place on May the 9^th, in Milwaukee, where Torre’s Braves played, of course, not in St. Louis.) But I wanted to describe this book to add something I got wrong in praising Veeck’s modesty.

I wrote that Veeck didn’t write a word about his wartime service in the Marines that cost him half of his right leg, but I hadn’t quite finished re-reading the book, and when I got up to the final chapters where Veeck does describe those events, it would have been a verbose distraction to go back and include in that column the fact that Veeck was less modest than I’d made him out to be. My point still holds: Veeck’s book, even including the description of his amputated leg, overwhelmingly gives credit to other people in a way that Harvey’s book, for example, does not begin to. I credit Veeck with delaying those gory details until long after a reader has gotten the correct impression of him as a man who enjoys giving others credit for helping him along in his career.

Harvey’s lack of credit to others, on the other hand, seems practically sociopathic. (To be fair, Harvey does credit the man who first hired him to umpire, the man who promoted him to MLB, the woman who married him, but all are credited for doing the right thing in recognizing his unparalleled skills. Even when he writes about people he admired, he will utterly vilify their characters. Of Al Barlick, his crew chief, he says, "Though I hated him, Al Barlick taught me so much about my craft…". And he means he hated Barlick, no question. Not for a day, not for a season, but simply detested him. And this was one of his closest friends in baseball.) But you probably work alongside people who have trouble recognizing their own faults, or the virtues of those around them. If they’re not actually sociopathic, and they’re probably not (unless you’re very unlucky), they are certainly angry, mean-spirited, toxic personalities at best.  That’s the range Doug Harvey falls into, by his own admission—somewhere between terrifying hostility and actual sociopathy.

But he had some people who liked him, to judge by the book’s back cover: Nolan Ryan, Ozzie Smith, Tommy John, all have nice things to say about him, though if you read them carefully enough, they don’t actually praise Harvey unambiguously. Ryan’s quote, for example, reads "For me there wasn’t a better umpire in the National League," which could easily imply that for hundreds of other National Leaguers, Harvey was a terrible umpire, or Smith’s just says "Doug Harvey was the ultimate umpire." I wonder if you quizzed Ozzie closely about that, he might not smile and say, "Yeah, well, umpires are assholes."

Harvey is clear, very clear, on who he admired (practically no one) and who he didn’t get along with (the rest of humanity), but the surprising part is who goes on each list.  The most interesting sections of this memoir are the behind-the-scenes stuff, about what the umpires and managers are saying when they argue (a lot of serious swearing), or what the umpires’ lives are like after the games (a lot of serious drinking). If I give you two lists, one of Harvey’s NG list, and the other Harvey’s OK list, do you want to guess which list is which?

Which is the list of Good Guys and which the list of Bad Guys? While you mull that over, I’ll tell you why there are basketball players on the lists: Harvey used to supplement his income by reffing pro and college basketball games, and despite not really knowing the rules of basketball (he was mailed a rulebook two days before he reffed his first game in the ABL) Harvey did OK, mostly because his stock in trade wasn’t knowing the rules as much as it was about projecting authority.  He writes about allowing certain basketball players to beat the living crap out of other players while he, Harvey, looked the other way, as a way to administer justice, a method I’m pretty sure is not in The Referees’ Guidebook.   OK, the Good Guys are on the left, and the Bad Guys are on the right.

No, sorry, the Good Guys are on the right, and the Bad Guys are on the left. Either way, it’s awful hard to tell, just based on the impressions we have of their personalities, which ones Harvey admired and which ones he detested, isn’t it? That’s the part I found so interesting, Harvey’s anecdotes about his run-ins with particular players and managers, and how freely they lost their tempers with him, and he with them, and which ones accepted Harvey’s authority (the key to getting along with him) and which ones resisted it (the key to eternal damnation.)  And btw, I was messing with you—the Good Guys ARE on the left.

That’s the truth, but if you want to check it out for sure, read the book. You’ll never be able to tell which list is which just by applying your pre-conceptions, that’s for sure.  Harvey very simply divided the planet into those who surrendered their will to his, and those who insisted on defying him at times. Very Manichaean.

Of course, that’s not only a crazy stance to take in regard to one’s fellow human beings, but it’s also a sensible and practical approach to umpiring, that I can sort of see, if I hold my head like this ;), all twisted around to the side, and squint.  It makes sense, in a twisted sort of way, to concede, once you get on a baseball field, that there’s no point in arguing with umpires, it all evens out eventually, they’re trying their best, even if they aren’t perfect, and you could be the one who saw the play wrong, not him. Maybe the strongest part of this line of thought is that arguments unquestionably have the effect of slowing down the game, and no one thinks the fans pay to watch discussions of fine points in the rule book for extended periods.

Harvey adds to this position one other element: most arguments, in his view, derive from players and managers seeking to game the system, to gain an edge by arguing with umpires so relentlessly, so ceaselessly, so nastily, that the umpires’ only defense against this tedious and unpleasant experience is to concede a couple of close calls to the side that he knows will scream the loudest and the longest about it. Harvey terms this, correctly, "trying to intimidate the ump" and he refuses to give in to intimidation.  His response to someone questioning his judgment is to grind his heels into the ground and refuse to budge. If the argument goes on too long, he tells the would-be intimidator to shut up or get tossed from the game, having wasted his own time and energy while never having won a single advantage. That, Harvey reasons, is their lesson: don’t waste time arguing, you’ll never get anywhere. Never ever ever. Ever.

That’s also the reason players and managers of Harvey’s day did genuinely dislike umps. From their point of view, the umps did make calls wrong—maybe it’s only a tiny fraction of the time, but it’s still got to be more often than "Never," yet umpires used to concede they made a mistake exactly that often: Never. What colossal, arrogant, stubborn jerks!

Now, of course, the use of instant replay, and its grateful acceptance by players, umpires, managers and fans (Harvey’s book came out in 2014, so it was written just as replay was being approved) contradicts Harvey’s silly assertion that no umpire must ever admit making a wrong call. I personally think instant replay is the greatest technological innovation in baseball since anti-fungal powder was invented, and it dispenses justice far more fairly than the most omniscient of umpires ever could.  But I don’t think Harvey’s attitude, however loopy, was totally wrong.

It was necessary, just to keep going out there thousands and thousands of times (Harvey umped 4,673 games by his own count) with confidence and authority. Harvey makes a fascinating judgment when he says that "Umpires are there to keep the players from cheating."  If no one pays money to watch two men having an inaudible argument two hundred feet away, then no one pays money, either, to watch ballgames won by the side with the most skillful cheaters either, and since it’s not cheating if you get away with it, that’s the function that umpires serve first and foremost: to keep the game honest.

So Harvey’s bluster and his braggadocio about the greatness of his skills, knowledge and eyesight just represent his need to project himself as the ultimate authority, not to make an objective analysis of those physical and mental attributes. He draws a fine distinction: "Umpires don’t ask for respect, they demand it."  It’s almost literally like the Old Testament God informing people "I am the Lord your God." Um, OK, cool, did someone say you weren’t? The first thing that you establish (or, if you prefer, that You establish) is who’s in charge, because without that, you got nothing except endless arguments with people who sometimes are liars and cheaters and other times are, like Earl Weaver, even worse.

(The reason Harvey approved of Weaver, btw, was that, as an NL ump, he had almost no contact with him, but the one time he did deal with him, Weaver conceded after a day’s consultation with the rule book that Harvey was 100% correct in his ruling, and that he, Weaver, was 100% wrong. WTG, Earl! Found the secret to getting on Harvey’s good side first shot out of the box!)

To keep the game moving along at a swift clip, to prevent managers from succeeding at gaming the system, umpires of Harvey’s pre-replay day needed to project authority, and maybe even to believe themselves in their infallibility (in order to project it: "It’s not a lie," as George Costanza reminded us, "if you believe it").  So this autobiography is a very useful documentation of the mindset before instant replay came along. Of course, Harvey hates the concept, but that’s okay. He’s representing a mindset, the old-fashioned mindset that hates instant replay. As an historical articulation of how people used to think on this subject, you’ll never find a clearer one than Doug Harvey.

He also gets some stuff dead-right: his five rules of umpiring are pretty useful. Listen to the ball hitting the glove. Stop running before you try to judge how an outfielder’s glove does or doesn’t meet up with the ball. If you really can’t tell if a ball over the first- or third-base bag is fair or foul, call it fair. Before you call the tie going to the runner, make sure it’s actually a tie. And finally, the black is not a part of the plate—the plate itself is white.

Now you might disagree with any of those judgments, or with all of them, but that’s not the point. Harvey’s point is that these rules force him to rule consistently, and ruling consistently is better than ruling correctly.  At least that’s how I take it—Harvey doesn’t quite express it that way, but I think that’s what made ballplayers call him "God." (That, and the white hair.)  He was consistent, you knew what you were getting, so you could adjust your game to meet Harvey’s standards, and that’s all ballplayers want from umpires, a consistent standard that doesn’t vary depending on the umpire’s mood that day.  Harvey always was in same mood: stubborn, arrogant, and dictatorial, and the ballplayers appreciated that consistency.

That consistency is curiously inconsistent, incidentally. Harvey is very big on telling every player and manager who deals with him what his simple rules are for how they may address him. There are very few things he will allow someone to call him. He names them explicitly, and tells them in advance that any name other that these few will mean an instant ejection. Okay?

Now it’s a small thing, but those very few names are listed several times throughout They Called Me God. ("God," btw, is NOT one of the names he lists, though when Lenny Dykstra greets him with "Hello, God," he let Lenny stay in the ballgame.)  And each time Harvey enumerates those names it’s a slightly different list: Sparky Anderson gets told he can call Harvey "sir" or "Mr. Umpire" or "Mr. Harvey" (p. 218); on page 158 that list appears as "sir," "Mr. Umpire," or "Doug"; on page 203 the list becomes "Mr. Harvey," "sir," and "ump." On page 194 he writes "Al Barlick taught us that they were to call us sir or Mr. Umpire and if they called us anything else we were to eject them."  On page 180, the list gets rendered as just "umpire" (no "Mr.") and "sir." It’s a small point, but you’d think if you’re going to repeat a two- or three-item list, any variance from which means an ejection, you’d want to render it consistently, but no.  And, despite his lists, calling him just plain "Harvey" and "Harv" was ok too, because dialogue with Tony La Russa, Dick Williams, Lou Piniella, Walter Alston and others uses that form of address and God lets it go. Oh, well, there are certain textual inconsistencies in the Old Testament, too, that doesn’t seem to bother too much those who believe in it, either.  

The book’s mood is itself curious: it’s a sort of deathbed confession, though Harvey is still with us and reasonably healthy for a man who was diagnosed with fatal throat cancer and given two months to live in 1997. But even that grim information, which is given very early in the book and casts a long shadow over most of what follows, illustrates his stubbornness. Embarking on his umpiring career, the young (but already graying) Harvey was given two pieces of advice by the big-league scout who first noticed his umpiring talent: dye your hair and stop chewing tobacco. Harvey, naturally, refused. "If they don’t want a gray-haired, tobacco-chewing umpire, they’re not getting me."

That advice would have prevented him from getting cancer. (Well, maybe not the hair-dye part.) He quotes his doctor:  "Nothing else" besides chewing tobacco gave him throat cancer. And to his credit, after being diagnosed with a death sentence, Harvey went around the country counselling young people never to start chewing tobacco. What he doesn’t do, and which I found a little odd, is to re-visit his initial response to the man who first advised him, and whom he first ignored, about chewing tobacco.  There’s not a word of regret for blowing off that sound advice, not a word of self-recrimination for his stubbornness, not a word of belated apology to the scout who told him not to chew tobacco in the first place, just lots of words on how hard he worked spreading the word to junior-high school students about avoiding his fatal error.

This is not a biography of the examined life, to say the least. Doug Harvey is about as unself-reflective as it gets, but the book is nonetheless valuable to understand how someone gets to be that way, and to stay that way, for his entire life. Just never admit to making a single mistake, ever, and you, too, can become the best umpire who ever lived.