Copyright 2002 Susanne M. Alexander
The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, June 4, 2002
A VIEW FROM BEHIND THE PLATE Who Is That Masked Man? For the Love of the Game
By Susanne M. Alexander
Thwump. A ball meets a glove. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Balls soar
toward the outfield as young ballplayers warm up around the ball
field. Nearby, the umpires get ready to enter the field.
Umpires are as superstitious as ballplayers, and ritual is important.
Umpire Steve Traina is working behind home plate today, and he
and the three other umpires hold a serious pre-game discussion--what
do they know about these teams and their coaches, any history
of trouble with these players, what are field conditions likely
to be like, and of course, who is dating someone special or driving
new wheels. His fellow umpires teasingly go through the checklist
on him and the contents of his ball bag to make sure he's all
set: shin guards, mask, hat, athletic cup, ball/strike/out indicator,
plate brush and pencil, and, perhaps most important, his original
14-year old chest protector and his father's high school ring
off his hand and in his ball bag for luck.
Everything present and accounted for, the crew strides authoritatively
onto the field. Their safety shoes are shining, gray pants creased
and navy blue jackets tailored to fit--a professional appearance
is key for respect. These jackets, or in warm weather their blue
knit shirts, are what has earned amateur umpires the nickname
"Blue." Traina waves and says "hi, how are ya" to each player
and coach as he walks by. They smile back at this particular "Mr.
Blue" and relax, confident the game will be both fair and fun.
This college game will have four umpires, but leagues carefully
watch their expenses, and often use only two or three. It's common
to see only one umpire at a youth game, who really has to hustle
to make calls accurately. In spite of these economy moves, umpires
are in short supply. "There's an explosion of baseball being played
in Northeast Ohio," says Traina, a resident of Olmsted Falls.
"There are thousands of games each summer that didn't exist a
few years ago, and they all need umpires. There's a tremendous
shortage of qualified ones."
Most amateur umpires don't last more than five years, so Traina's
tenure of 14 years is unusual. The pay is low and the working
conditions often challenging, so he says the ones that stay in
it like him, do it for the love of baseball. The ones that stick
around often stand out for their excellence. Traina has also spent
the last 11 years increasing the number of area umpires by running
training sessions and umpire clinics through his Baseball Official
Academy.
Most umpires are clean-shaven, so Traina also stands out for the
dark goatee he sports. Many players recognize him that way. "I've
been behind the plate with a lot of different umpires," says Scott
Bryson, catcher for John Carroll's Blue Streak NCAA Division III
team. "We are out here to have fun, and Steve adds to that atmosphere.
He's having fun when he's behind the plate, and he's having fun
when he's in the field. He shows up smiling with his goatee every
time. We're always glad to see him."
"It's a thrill to walk out onto the ball field," Traina says with
his characteristic grin. "You have the best seat in the house
-- except you have to stand. Every player's at-bat is precious
to them, and it's precious to me too. Every pitch that pitcher
throws is precious to him, and it's precious to me, too. When
they see how much you enjoy the game and see how important you
believe it is, they can start believing it too. I know lots of
players whose memories end up not including whether they won or
lost."
The game doesn't begin until Traina bends down and brushes the
dirt from warm-up practice off home plate, moves behind the catcher,
points his finger at the pitcher and yells, "Play ball!" Once
the game starts, the action shifts toward the pitcher and batter.
They go through their own rituals of grinding their feet into
the dirt and finding the "right" ways to hold their bodies before
the routines of warm-up, windup and play. The ump's job is to
be invisible until he makes a call. As the game progresses, Traina
gets into his own rhythm. Before each pitch he signals to the
other umpires, balls shown with fingers on the left hand, strikes
on the right. He quickly spits around his Bazooka Joe bubble gum.
He hates gum chewing off the field or in his classes, but he claims
he's very wired and doing back handsprings in his mind during
games, so the chewing keeps his body calm and focused.
Traina stands straight above the crouched catcher and signals
with a pointed finger to the pitcher to throw his pitch. At the
instant the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, Traina spreads his
feet apart, bends his knees and looks straight over the catcher's
shoulder directly "in the slot," ready to make a call. With a
right-handed batter, he's looking over the left shoulder, with
a lefty, he's eagle-eyed over the right one, always placing himself
in the slot between the catcher and the batter. The view is clear,
even through the black metal cage of his umpire's mask. The batter's
ready and the ball swishes by, thwumping into the catcher's mitt.
At the instant Traina's sure of the call, he yells ball or strike
with conviction, clicks the ball/strike/out indicator in his left
hand and stands back up straight. If the batter is out, his arms
move sharply back and forth as he yells, "You're out!" This is
umpire calisthenics, the flow from up straight to down crouched,
over and over, hundreds times every game.
The rhythm changes, however, when with a thwack, the ball is hit
into the field. Then, every time, he's running onto the field
and pulling his mask off to clearly see the play, an action he
takes whether there's no other umpire on the field or another
three of them. Watch an umpire do this carefully sometime. They
practice it over and over so their hats never come off with the
mask. Keep an eye as well on how often a player chases a ball,
or if the umpire always has spare balls in his bag and speeds
the game up by throwing one out when needed.
At 5'10" and 175 pounds, Traina is often smaller than the catchers
he hovers inches above. Size, though, has nothing to do with authority.
"You're hired to be the boss," says Traina, "but the best umpires
never show that. If there's a bad disagreement though, somebody's
leaving, and it's not the ump."
On the ball field, in the coaches' dugouts or in the stands, the
one umpiring quality prized above any other is consistency. "I
always like umps that I can talk to, that are consistent," says
Ryan McClarnon, a pitcher with the Cleveland State University
Vikings, who played right field at Archbishop Hogan High School
in Akron. "If I throw a pitch in one spot, I want it to be either
a ball or strike every time. I like to know where the umpire's
strike zone is. Steve is consistent and keeps a level head when
people argue with him, and doesn't let it affect how the rest
of the game goes," continues the Monroe Falls resident.
Even when consistent in the calls, every umpire has a slightly
different strike zone. Traina says one of the keys is keeping
it fair by not penalizing the pitcher by squeezing them into a
narrow tin can size strike zone or penalizing the batter by making
it too broad. Catcher Bryson reflects on Traina's performance
throughout the sunny spring double-header games John Carroll played
against the Otterbein Cardinals, which has over 700 pitches and
no "gross misses" on calls and only about three marginal calls
disputed. "He was very consistent and gave the same pitches to
both sides," said Bryson. "The pitchers didn't complain at all
-- what was a strike in the first inning was a strike in the seventh
inning for both teams, and that's really all you can ask from
an umpire."
It's difficult to find Traina, on or off the field, without a
twinkle in his eye. His view of umpiring is that "it's cool as
hell." "You become so fully absorbed by the drama in front of
you that nothing else is in your consciousness," he explains.
"It doesn't matter what name they are calling your mother. The
essence of umpiring is total absorption." Traina says his Dad,
who died in 1994, and his mother, who died in 1979, are with him
as long-time baseball fans on every game, and he winks and says
they agree with most of his calls. At times when there's a loud
female heckler in the stands, he'll tell the catcher that he wishes
his Mom would stop coming to the games.
Traina fell in love with baseball as a six-year-old, butch-cut
Parma boy with stringy muscles, self-described as "a little no.
2 pencil poking out of a white T-shirt." "I played everywhere
and anywhere with from two kids to everyone in the neighborhood,
and as many ball games a day as I could fit in. It could be in
the back yard, the front yard, the street, a nearby tennis court
-- once in awhile luxuriously on an actual ball field. We just
altered the rules to fit the field. One moment we could be sliding
through gravel in the street to be safe or out, and the next game
we might be jumping a tennis net to flag down the other guy's
base hit."
The little t-shirt hit the ragbag long ago. Traina, now 47, retired
from competitive play last year, after five years as shortstop
with the over-30 Northeast Ohio Roy Hobbs League. He coached his
six children, now grown, through baseball and softball. Traina's
hair is going silver, and daily workouts have strengthened his
muscles, but at heart he's still the little boy who carried his
mother's first explanatory diagram of a ball field around in his
pocket until it was ragged.
Traina's ongoing passion for being close to baseball on the field
continues with umpiring, or training the latest group of umpires
at his umpire school, the Baseball Official Academy. Sometimes
the school goes on the road for youth baseball clinics as well.
"Everybody always yells at the ump, and I say to them, 'If it's
so bad, you be one!'" says Traina.
Umpire students come as young as 12, and as old as 60. Traina's
version of home runs are taking stockbrokers, electricians, insurance
agents, schoolteachers and ministers and transforming them into
effective umpires. Most trainees have played or coached amateur
softball or baseball, so they are at least familiar with the game,
but umpiring is very different from playing.
Mike Chmielecki, 44, a resident of Cleveland and a master mechanic
for the city of Parma, took Traina at his word and went through
the academy, then called North Coast Umpires, in 1995. "I took
what he gave us in the course at face value and tried to apply
it when I got on the diamond, not exactly knowing whether it was
good information," says Chmielecki, who now spends every spare
minute behind the plate. "As time and experience have gone on,
everything that he said has either been proven true or at one
time or another proved useful. Anybody that took the course and
took what he had to say to heart and applied it, has risen very
rapidly through the ranks of amateur umpiring, and they are becoming
recognized as good officials."
Training and influencing youth to be excellent umpires for summer
games is perhaps closest to Traina's heart, however. At a Medina
Youth Baseball Association training this spring, he and fellow
umpire Pat Smock coach 50 youth to make sure they are confident
and knowledgeable about what they will be doing on the ball field.
Their "prepared schtick" as Smock calls it, helps them engage
the group of largely 12-year-olds for the full 6 hours of the
clinic. They walk into the gymnasium in full uniform and ask the
youth in the filled bleachers what kind of first impression they
are making, instead of if they had showed up in cutoffs and flip-flops.
When the reply is positive, Traina quips that he just looks great,
but he's never done a game in his life. He poses another question
to the boys, and demonstrates his throwing arm by getting a candy
into the hands of the first to answer. Every hand goes up for
the next question, and they are riveted to their instructors.
Bases are laid out on the shiny wooden floor, and Traina and Smock
are soon simulating real and stressful situations and pulling
the students in to role play coaches, players and umpires along
with them. "Are you blind, Blue, that kid was safe by a mile!"
"You wouldn't know a balk [pitcher action that illegally deceives
the runner] if it kicked you in the rear end." "Walked? Are you
nuts? That was a strike!" Over and over they give them pointers
and critique to prevent them from being overly sensitive "rabbit
ears" umpires, remain in control and respond appropriately to
angry comments. They are taught to evaluate the criticism for
merit and growth and otherwise deflect it and let it go. "It's
no good to know the rules if you fall to pieces the first time
someone yells at you," says Traina.
Umpire signals can be critical during games for communication
between umpires scattered through out the field. The classes teach
such things as the home plate umpire touching his watch when timing
on an upcoming call is going to be critical or the rim of his
hat to signal an infield fly. Traina and Smock, both acting not
much older than their audience members, aren't above a little
horseplay though and try and convince the would-be umpires that
they have to make flying motions with their hands for this signal
instead.
"Steve was very animated, with his hands flying and all kinds
of facial expressions. He was all over the gym and never the same
for 30 second at a time," says Bob Galloway, president of Medina
Youth Baseball Association. "Steve never appeared like he was
talking down to them. He had them learn by answering the questions
themselves and just giving them little bits of information so
they would start to think. I'm very impressed with him. I'll have
him around as long as he wants to come. He also tries to help
the association, which to a certain degree is only as strong as
its umpires. If those umpires are doing a poor job on the field,
it can create havoc off of the field. We had a lot of kids show
up for training last year, and they were our best umpires ever.
This year we made the training mandatory. If you wanted to do
any umpiring, you had to have had one of Steve's clinics, because
we knew how much good it would do the kids." Medina has already
hired Traina for the 2001 season.
Smock, 33, lives in Fairview Park. Tall and athletically built,
he frequently uses his quick tongue to poke fun at the fellow
umpires he considers close friends. He and Traina both have other
jobs. Smock works as a fulfillment manager for Malley's Chocolates,
Inc. in Brook Park. Traina sells books to teachers and staff at
schools as a representative for Books Are Fun, a division of Reader's
Digest. "We all have real lives outside umpiring," says Smock.
"Steve's being in sales gives him the skills to communicate well
in a classroom situation," Smock continues. "It's important to
have someone who can keep people entertained and impart their
knowledge at the same time. He relates it back to playing the
game. Most of the youth never officiated before and certainly
have never coached before, and we relate everything back to how
they feel as players. Kids love to talk about baseball, so that
helps quite a bit. Steve is very well received because he works
a lot of the real life reasons why people want to be officials
into the clinic itself." They let the kids know that learning
to manage themselves on a ball field will help them interact with
teachers and bosses for the rest of their lives.
Why would someone want to be an umpire? Even though there
are times of great weather and fun, working conditions can be
lousy. Many schools don't have changing facilities (Traina often
changes in the back of his van). Spring temperatures can be chilly
and winds brisk. The heat from summer sun beating down on layers
of protective gear can be almost unbearable. Fans are often verbally
brutal, particularly at the lower levels of play where umpires
and players are less experienced, and parents are less familiar
with the rules.
"For 'older' folks, being an umpire is a way to stay close to
the game," says Smock. "It's the only opportunity to get in between
the white lines at a really high level, often at a level they
were never able to reach as athletes. It's also another area of
competition -- if you love anything, you want to be near it as
much as you can. If you love the game of baseball, you'll be near
it in any way that you can. Umpires know that they're going to
have to put up with a certain amount of disinterest, abuse and
misunderstanding, but they do so because they enjoy the game and
like being on the baseball field. My favorite place in the world
is a baseball field anywhere."
Umpires also recognize that the on-the-field experiences prepare
them for all the rest of their lives. Handling conflict tops a
list that Farnsworth says includes intestinal fortitude, judgment,
ethics, courage and communication. Traina throws in the ability
to admit when you're wrong, fair-mindedness, confidence, self-assessment,
careful listening, cooperation, teamwork and mentoring.
Marc Thibeault, 24, the new head baseball coach of the John Carroll
University Blue Streaks, admired Traina's control of the game,
consistency and great knowledge of baseball rules, when he was
a pitcher and outfielder on the team. When he took the coaching
position and was a bit concerned about his inexperience, Traina
was one of the first people he called for mentoring. "He came
in, shut the door, sat me down, and said what to look for, how
to handle situations, how to speak to an umpire, how to approach
them even when you are frustrated and upset and you want to express
your opinion," says Thibeault. "He was very helpful in educating
me about where the umpire stands with a runner on first, what
bag he has, who's responsible and how to approach an umpire about
a call I felt went the wrong way. I'm very grateful to Steve for
doing that.
"One of the reasons Steve and I get along well and have a good
working relationship, is we both feel the same way about the game
of baseball," says Thibeault, who is hard to distinguish from
his players on the field. "We're not in it for the flashiness
or the glamour. We both feel that college baseball is important
but not the most important thing. It's one of the things that
makes [players] overall college experience that much better. We
both believe that you have to play the game as hard as you can,
you have to have a winning attitude, but you have to have a lot
of class as far as the way you represent yourself on the field.
As coaches, we're not bigger than the game. Even though he's an
umpire and has some say as far as judgment and decisions about
the game, he knows that he's not bigger than the game, and he
represents himself with a lot of class. And if he blows a call
on the bottom of the ninth on Saturday, I'll wring his neck!"
he jokes.
If Coach Thibeault had gone after Traina though, it's unlikely
that the encounter would have turned ugly. Traina's specialty
is his non-confrontational style on the field. Umpire training
in Cleveland has a long history of teaching this style of "preventive
officiating." Long-time amateur umpire Harry Farnsworth, 69, of
Strongsville, mentored Traina and ran umpiring schools in this
area for 46 years until his retirement in 1995. During the 1979
umpire strike, he was asked to work the plate for the Indians,
where he earned the nickname, "Home Plate Harry." He is currently
chairman of the Rules Committee for the International Softball
Association. Farnsworth is proud of Traina as his protégé. "He's
a tremendous talent. It takes a better umpire to keep them in
a game than to throw them out," says Farnsworth. "It doesn't take
much skill to throw somebody out -- you have all the authority
in the world."
"People misbehave, get excited, cuss, yell at you, call you a
name," says Traina. "Well, you can throw them out and have a lot
of bad feelings, a game that's not very pleasant from that point
on, and there's more heckling and arguing, not less. "Baseball
doesn't have a 5-yard penalty or a technical foul. All you have
is the A-bomb. There are no half measures -- you either don't
eject them or eject them. Once you eject them, there's very little
more you can do to them. There's not much to prevent them from
standing and yelling for the next five minutes. If you did it
to save time, you've lost.
If you did it to restore order, you've lost. It's helpful to acquire
the kinds of interpersonal skills that restore calm and order
to the game."
Smock works with Traina to teach those skills in the classroom.
An umpire for nine years, Smock also crews regularly with Traina
on the field. He says the umpire crew considers themselves the
third team on the field besides the two ball teams, also striving
to do their best. The level of mixed feelings that occur at ball
games towards umpires contributes to a tight feeling of camaraderie
between the members of the umpiring crew. "There are times when
things get stressful, and your crewmates are the only people you
can rely on 100 percent of the time," explains Smock. "Every umpire
goes through training on how to handle stressful situations. We
enter and exit the field together as a safety thing -- you don't
know who your enemies and who your friends are at any given time."
Jay Murphy, coach for the last four years of the Cleveland State
University Vikings baseball team, which competes at the NCAA Division
I level, hires Traina regularly as an umpire for CSU games. "He
has the type of personality that he can control a volatile situation,
and at the same time, smile and make light of something if it
does occur that actually is funny. What happens sometimes with
umpiring is you run across an umpire who believes they are the
law, and there seems to be no gray area. That's unfortunate, because
there are a lot of gray areas in baseball."
Umpire Chmielecki says misconduct seems to be on the increase,
as he threw more people out in the 1999 season for arguing, cussing,
illegal actions, throwing bats and so on. He says parents who
want to see their boys chasing the dream of professional baseball
can be a pain when he strikes their sons out.
To deal with that very issue, Galloway says Medina Youth Baseball
ensures that their umpires of all ages are well trained. They
have instituted a zero tolerance policy with coaches and parents
in their relationship with umpires and their decisions. Rules
are laminated and posted at the fields. Coaches are responsible
for backing up the umpires. Communications have to be civil. People
can be asked to leave the game, or banned from city sports altogether.
Lest anyone get benched by all the talk about stress and lose
sight of the long fly ball up in the sun, it's important to remember
that they umpire because it's fun. When Smock talks about working
on the field with Traina, enjoyment is a key word. "He enjoys
the game, getting into the game, enjoys the emotion of the game
without being extraordinarily flamboyant," says Smock. "He knows
the show is not him, he knows the show is the players on the field."
Enjoyment, however, does not a successful umpire make. It's confidence.
Knowing the rules so calls are made with certainty. Carrying yourself
with appropriate authority. "Folks know they're going to get a
quality game and hard work out of him every time," said Smock
about Traina. "There's a certain relaxed confidence about him,
he works hard, and does a good job every time he's on the field.
I think that translates well -- players and coaches feel that
he's very at ease and very relaxed about all that he's doing.
That helps to foster that feeling of respect they have towards
him."
Beginning umpires often struggle with confidence. When an umpire
appears to question his own judgment, however, it can open him
up to negative feedback from the stands and the dugouts. "I believe
that umpires handle situations if they have an understanding of
the rules of the game, and they are in the right position to make
the call," says Coach Murphy. "Then they make the call and umpire
the game with a level of confidence. You can usually tell when
an umpire questions his own judgment.
"Whether it's the right call or the wrong call, they've got to
come across like they believe in what they are doing. That's vitally
important to both ball clubs." If the umpire hustles and is in
the right position to make an accurate call, coaches and fans
rarely have a conflict with the officiating on the field. "I'm
a big believer that if the umpire is in the right position to
make the call, then they eliminate the doubt that they did see
it," says Coach Murphy. "If they aren't in a position to make
the call, if they are willing to discuss it with another umpire,
that shows me they have integrity for the game, and they want
to make the call right."
Disgruntled fans in the stands sometimes yell "Throw the bum out"
and mutter about replacing "Blue" with lasers to ensure more accuracy.
Traina disagrees. "You could use laser beams, computers and videotapes,
but what good is that? It's not people. A pitching machine could
throw a strike every time, but that's not much fun for boys who
want to be pitchers. It's about getting sweaty, dirty and scared
and still swinging. It's about stress, heat, cold, getting yelled
at and still seeing how good we can do. That's the thrill of it."
No matter how hard an umpire tries to get the calls right, however,
the standards are impossibly high. "If I call 400 pitches and
get 396 right, the fans, players and coaches will remember the
4 I 'kicked'," says Traina. "If a player makes an out 7 out of
10 times, he is an all-star. An umpire with that record has worked
his last game. The fans can say anything they want about any umpire.
Umpires won't say anything derogatory about fan behavior -- we're
not allowed. We are silent, without a voice, and it hurts the
public perception of umpires. People never know the good we do,
but they remember every perceived blown call."
Traina's record might put him in the upper levels of NCAA umpiring,
but he readily admits to occasionally "kicking" or blowing a call.
His umpire crew razz him after a spring game where the Cleveland
State Vikings play against the Akron Zips in front of a lost-in-Jacobs
Field audience of a few hundred. "A left-handed batter was up,
and the runner on first steals," said Traina. "The batter swings
at the ball, but I don't see it because the catcher jumps up,
gets the ball and throws it to second base. I check with the catcher,
and he didn't see it either. Next pitch I called 2 balls and 0
strikes. I got the call wrong and the count wrong, and nobody
said a word. Good thing the player didn't walk!"
One of the little recognized and appreciated contributions of
umpires to baseball is informal player coaching, especially at
the younger levels of play. Traina says the kids will often "do
goofy things," and he'll explain the rules, help them with positioning
their bodies and improve their understanding of the game. As for
umpiring youth games, Traina shakes his head ruefully at often
abusive parent behavior, and says the game is supposed to be for
the kids to have fun. About umpiring youth games, Traina says,
"It's not for the faint of heart, but it is for the big of heart."
Informal coaching and assistance lessens, but goes on at the college
level too. "Don't you think that strike was a little far on the
outside, ump?" might be a mid-game question from a catcher, careful
to not turn around and give the coach or fans a clue he's questioning
the umpire's call. "Nope, right in the strike zone, son, you were
positioned just a little too far to the right," might be the response.
When a player at the John Carroll game hits his foot with the
ball, and being tough demands he not react to the pain in front
of everyone, Traina slowly circles the almost-clean plate and
brushes it off so the player has an extra minute to recover.
With a mask over the catcher's face and one over the umpires face
as well, they can banter with each other non-stop and the players
in the dugouts and fans in the stands don't have a clue. "There's
constant chatter, talk and interplay between the players, coaches,
opponents and the umpires," says Traina, who often asks them how
school or the baseball season is going. "You don't hear that from
the stands, and you certainly don't hear it on the TV or radio.
The batter comes up in this hard-fought tooth-and-nail game, where
everyone sees the sweat and blood, and says to the catcher, 'Was
that you and your girlfriend in town last night?' and he responds
with enthusiasm, 'Yeah, we were dancing until two.'" "There's
a vocal part of the game that is unheard from the fans' point
of view," says Traina. "It's one of the most enjoyable parts of
it."
Traina keeps his love for the game ever present. He says, "Anybody
who can do this -- stand behind the plate with nothing in your
hands while the ball comes whizzing at your face, and you can't
blink, yet alone move a muscle, and you really don't know if a
12-year old kid's going to catch the ball or not, and then you
get yelled at and rise above all that for a few dollars, and you
get the joy of breathing that wonderful dust -- once you experience
that, you are changed forever in a good way."
Tagline:
Euclid free-lance journalist Susanne M. Alexander has been known
to lose her voice from yelling at ballgames, although never at
the ump, of course.