Cover Story
Eric Gregg, the legendary plump ump from Philly, opens up about the game, the fans and the prospect of losing his job.
The sun is bright, and a stiff, refreshing wind is blowing in from Lake Michigan, a mile or so from the right field wall of the time tunnel ballpark at Clark and Addison.
It is a Friday afternoon in early August and the Chicago Cubs are yet again one of baseball’s worst teams. But that does not deter nearly 39,000 people from interrupting their day at noon to watch the Northside Nine play two games against the division-leading Houston Astros. There’s still Sammy Sosa and his pursuit of Mark McGwire in the home run derby.
And this is still Wrigley Field.
As the fans ignore the standings and scream for a Cubs victory, the big man in the blue suit standing on the grass just behind third base puts his hands on his prodigious hips and takes it all in. Eric Gregg, West Philly High grad and Major League umpire, says Wrigley is his favorite ballpark, in his favorite city, in part because “I can smell the hot dogs grilling when I walk on the field.”
But this trip is a little different for the 48-year-old Gregg. Earlier this season, the National League — Gregg’s employer — levied a $5,000 fine against the plump ump for exceeding his 300-pound plus weight limit and suspended him for two weeks from July 1 to 14.
And that’s only the beginning of Gregg’s woes. After 23 years in the business, a World Series, playoffs, two no-hitters, first-class travel, soap opera cameos, hot dog commercials, countless charity appearances, a book and the resulting fame of being baseball’s most recognizable arbiter, Gregg will probably be standing on the unemployment line as of next week. He is one of 22 umpires (out of 68 in both leagues) who, pending a highly unlikely last-ditch compromise with Major League Baseball, will be out of a job on Sept. 2.
With his visibility, Gregg is enduring an arduous love-hate relationship with the fans. He is at once beloved and berated, the poster boy for labor stupidity and the arrogance of umpires. At least that’s how it seems from the loud chorus of boos, fat jokes, unemployment jibes and derisive catcalls from the stands that rain down on Gregg from the stands.
Thanks to a controversial and highly questionable labor strategy cooked up in July by the umpires’ union at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott, this will likely be Gregg’s last baseball journey to Sweet Home Chicago.
And oh what a journey it is.
If Eric Gregg is singing the blues, he isn’t showing it on this glorious afternoon in the Friendly Confines.?
“I love it here!” Gregg explodes as he walks over to the home dugout on his way to the umpire’s room between games.
And why not?
Wrigley is a long way from 44th and Haverford, the tough West Philly neighborhood known as the Bottom, across from Drexel Field where Gregg grew up. It’s a long way from the prison where his brother Ernie is incarcerated again. A long way from where his sister Cheryl died of a drug overdose. A long way from West Philly High, where a baseball coach broke Gregg’s heart by telling him he would never be good enough to make the Phillies.
So far this Chicago weekend, it’s been easy going for Gregg, who had no tough calls — and suffered no barrage of insults — working third base during the first game of the Friday doubleheader (yet another uninspired Cubby loss).
As Gregg waxes eloquent about the wonders of Wrigley, several Cubs who had been loitering in the relief pitchers’ warm-up area behind third base jog by and pat him on the back.
“Hang in there,” says Cubs reliever Felix Heredia. “Good luck,” says pitcher Scott Sanders. Gregg turns around and acknowledges the good wishes.
Then he makes plans to hook up for an interview.
“Meet me at the Big Bar at the Hyatt Regency after the game,” he says.
With that, he ambles over to the dugout and walks gingerly down the cement steps and into the tunnel leading to the umpires’ room, a wood-paneled refuge a few steps from a hot dog stand.
The Big Bar at the Hyatt Regency on Wacker Avenue is packed with middle-aged men in suits and slim, sexy women in revealing dresses. It is a power crowd of Board of Trade brokers and out-of-town big wheels.
Into this noisy milieu saunters Gregg, a large, stark contrast in black pants, black shirt and big, white straw hat, with a fine Dominican cigar in his mouth.
On his left wrist are a gold chain and a gold watch. On his right, a silver bracelet, engraved with the words “Big John #10” — testament to “my best friend, Big John McSherry,” another very overweight ump, who collapsed in Cincinnati on opening day 1996 and was dead of a massive coronary before he hit the ground.
Gregg heads straight for the bar, orders a beer and chitchats with some folks who, instantly recognizing him, slap him on the back and invite him to join them. Business cards are exchanged. Then Gregg excuses himself to sit down and talk about life on what may be his last trip to Chi-Town.
Gregg is anything but apologetic about the stance he and his union brethren took on July 14 at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott when the umpires, fearing they would be locked out when their contracts expire on the last day of the year, opted for a mass resignation.
The move has been blasted by the national media, by major league officials and by the fans.
Pshaw, says Gregg, staunchly defending the action.
“I have great confidence in Richie Phillips,” says Gregg, quaffing his beer and taking a pull off his torpedo of a cigar. “I think we had a good move that backfired on us because 24 American League guys went south on us. If they had stayed with us, we’d have no problem.”
Gregg’s confidence in Phillips, the umpire union’s lawyer, goes back to 1979, the first time the umpires went on strike. There was labor strife again in 1984, and in 1995, when the umps were locked out by the major leagues and the replacements were lambasted by players and managers alike. Each time, the umpires earned hefty raises.
The rationale this time around, according to Gregg, was that baseball, faced with shelling out more than $15 million in severance pay to the resigning umps, would change its tune and deal with the umpires’ union, headed by Gregg’s crew chief and fellow native Philadelphian, Jerry Crawford.
Contrary to the plan, which was hatched by Phillips, a former Philadelphia assistant district attorney, the baseball commissioner’s office told Gregg and the others to pound sand. That it was worth the money and effort to get rid of bad umps and take control of this rogue group of officials.
Gregg, who was rated the second worst umpire in a poll of major league ball players and managers, for all intents and purposes, was fired.
But not for incompetence, he says.
(Even though he is still reviled by many — especially the Atlanta Braves — for his wide strike zone. Many Braves say they lost the seventh game of the 1997 National League Championship Series because Gregg gave Florida Marlins rookie Livan Hernandez too much of the outside part of the plate. Hernandez struck out 15 that night, still a playoff record.)
Sitting at the Big Bar, puffing his cigar, Gregg admits that he would take back his call on Hernandez’s last strikeout. But he denies that the way umpires call balls and strikes these days has contributed to the massive increase in offensive output, particularly home runs. And he strongly objects to the poll.
“It’s cruel, without a question,” he says. “And who rated us? What do players know about umpiring? I cannot rate players. I can say Ozzie Smith was the best shortstop I’ve ever seen, but I can’t say exactly.”
“It’s cruel, without a question,” Gregg says of the players’ and managers’ poll that rated him the second worst umpire. “And who rated us? What do players know about umpiring?”
Girth, says Gregg, is one of the real reasons the league wants him gone.
“There is no doubt that they are discriminating against me because of my weight,” says the gargantuan Gregg, who by now is working on his second beer. “I’ve been in the league 23 years and I’ve never once been called to the office about my ability. It’s always, ‘Eric, you’ve got to lose weight. You’ve got to lose weight. You look too fat on national television. You’re too fat.’”
As for the complaint that umpires are out of control, Gregg says his weight battles are a perfect example of league oversight.
“They say we’re too strong and they say we have to be held accountable,” says Gregg, his already booming voice ratcheting up a few decibels. “We’re accountable. I just got fined $5,000 for being overweight so don’t tell me I’m not accountable. I mean, my kids are in college this semester. In September, they probably won’t go because [National League President Len] Coleman fined me $5,000, took it out of my check, and now I’m a little short.”
Gregg adds that the other reason for his demise is money.
“If they replace myself, Frank Pulli, Terry Tata, they can hire 10 guys for what we make,” says Gregg. “First-year guys, they make $75,000. Guys like ourselves make $225,000. So you figure it out. It’s not the new math.”
Initially, Gregg considered suing baseball for discrimination. But his lawyers told him he couldn’t.
Besides, Gregg — whose neighborhood nickname is Hub, because he was caught stealing hubcaps as a kid — is truly grateful for the lifestyle baseball has given him.
“To be honest with you, baseball has been berry, berry good to me,” says Gregg, imitating the infamous Saturday Night Live Latin ballplayer Chico Esquella. “I’ve got four kids. We just bought our dream house in Narberth. I got two in college and without baseball, I couldn’t have done that.”
Without baseball, Eric Gregg couldn’t have a reporter call the concierge to make last-minute dinner reservations at Morton’s of Chicago.
“My favorite place is Morton’s,” Gregg says. “It’s awesome. Awesome. Pick up the house phone and make us a reservation. They know me very well. Tell them it’s for Eric Gregg, party of three. Let’s say nine o’clock. And ask for Rocco.”
Gregg can’t make the reservations himself because at the moment he’s on my cell phone, talking to an ESPN radio reporter about his gig on The Young and the Restless, his favorite soap opera. “The producer is a good friend of mine. My next role [he plays himself] will be on August 25. I’m at the bus station, buying a ticket to Cooperstown. Here’s my line. ‘Ah, what a busman’s holiday.’ Then I board the bus.”
As we sit in the Big Bar, Gregg downing another beer, me sipping on a Jim Beam, Gregg peels off story after story, many poking fun at his weight and digestive problems.
The funniest story takes place about six years ago in Shea Stadium, where limited facilities forced Gregg to use the fans’ bathroom.
“I get there and there’s a fan in the next stall. And he says, ‘That’s Eric Gregg.’ And he turned around to shake my hand and he pees all over my legs. Un-bee-lievable. And that’s a true story. I’m soaking wet now and I have to go back on the field. Unbelievable.”
Eric Gregg disappears on a trip to the bathroom, emerging out onto the hotel driveway moments later with some bad news.
“There is no more prime rib,” says Gregg, holding his half-full beer glass out on the sidewalk on a nearly nippy night. Gregg still talks excitedly about the feast that awaits.
“What’s great about this restaurant is that they bring you the trays out and show you the food,” he says with a giddy lilt in his voice. “They show you the meat they have. They always have a live lobster I call Willy. About a four-pounder and he moves around. Then they have fish. It is one of my favorite places.”
On the way to the restaurant, Gregg talks about the celebrity-studded hot spots that he likes to hit.
“Usually, I go to a place called Jilly’s, that’s my spot,” says Gregg. “It’s a big-league club that has jazz and disco downstairs. It’s where a lot of the players go. Jordan hangs out there. It’s a nice spot.”
Gregg is confident that he too will get the A-List treatment there.
“My friend Kim Hefner is the manager,” he says. “I am sure I will get a call from her asking for tickets.”
If Eric Gregg is a pariah at Wrigley, the bad vibes do not filter into Morton’s subterranean dining room.
Gregg doesn’t get three steps down the steakhouse stairwell before he is stopped by a balding man in pinstripes.
“It’s unbelievable what’s happening to you guys,” says the man.
“It’s just not fair,” Gregg agrees.
Unsafe at home: Astros second baseman Craig Biggio is called out after trying to score from third base on a fast ball in the eighth inning of what may be Eric Gregg’s last game in Chicago.
Photograph by Andrew Campbell
“No, it isn’t,” says the man. “I hope things work out for you.
“I am a big baseball fan,” the man in the pinstripes tells me. “I enjoy watching Gregg work. I think he is colorful, a good guy and he was good for the game. It’s a shame.”
The man departs and Gregg walks into the open arms of Rocco — aka Morton’s maître d’, Raki Mehra, a gregarious, salt-and-pepper-haired man in a tuxedo.
“I have known him for about 10 or 12 years now, back when he was a skinny guy,” says Mehra, patting Gregg on his ample belly. “He is the most funniest guy I have ever met in my life.”
Mehra leads us to our table, at the front of the room, but before we even sit, Gregg is greeted by more well-wishers.
“Well, we’re hoping the judge rules in our favor,” Gregg tells a 60ish bald guy, who is dining with a comely young blonde in a little black dress. “We have nine guys in the American League with us. Forty-four all together. Now they’re trying to recruit guys from the other side, to get rid of Richie Phillips.”
The waiter arrives. I order another Jim Beam and Gregg shifts gears a bit in the alcohol department.
“Give me a vodka martini, dry,” he says. “Make it Stoli, with three olives.”
The players and managers, says Gregg, are operating under an unofficial gag order concerning the labor strife, a worldview in part borne out a month earlier at the Vet when several Phillies and Braves apologetically said they could not comment about the umps.
The uniformed guys, however, are not mere bystanders, says Gregg. Baseball is trying to bust the umpires’ union. The Major League Baseball Players Association is next on baseball’s hit list, says Gregg.
The items on Eric Gregg’s hit list are rolled to the table on a napkin-draped cart.
Raw steaks. Fresh vegetables. And of course, the lobster.
“Free Willy,” Gregg says with a blast of deep-bellied laughter as he picks up the hapless, wiggling crustacean. From his expression, it’s clear that the title of his book, Working the Plate, refers to more than just umpiring.
Gregg orders the New York Strip, well done. I take the same, rare, and Andrew Campbell, a Chicago photographer who’s shooting Gregg for City Paper, orders the chicken.
Then it’s back to the stories.
He has stories about being a rookie telling Johnny Bench, “I’m not going to hear no more shit from you.”
About Diet Pepsi commercials in London and hanging out with Eddie Murphy at Stringfellows, where he beat the $30 cover charge by giving the doorman a signed copy of his book.
About how his son Jamie, who was already afraid of the Philly Phanatic, really freaked out when he was in the locker room and the Phanatic came in and took off his head.
Mehra the maître d’ brings us a special order of garlic bread from the chef.
Somehow, between drinks, the conversation turns to race.
Gregg says that there’s been progress. League President Leonard Coleman — who’s ridden Gregg hard — is black. Henry Aaron is senior vice president for the Atlanta Braves.
But “Jackie Robinson would like to have more things happening,” says Gregg. “We don’t have a black crew chief in baseball and I’m upset about that. I should have been the first black crew chief and I got bypassed two years ago and I am upset about that.”
Gregg excuses himself to go to the bathroom. When he returns, I ask him why he got passed over.
“My weight,” says Gregg, sounding a bit like Terry Malloy talking to his brother in the back of the cab in On the Waterfront. “I would have gotten an $8,000 raise. It’s about prestige. Without question. Without question. Without question. I would do it for free. That’s all I want and they took it away from me. It’s a sore subject. It’s bullshit.”
Mehra returns with another loaf.
I ask Gregg about Philly sports media.
“My favorite is [Daily News scribe] Paul Hagen,” says Gregg. “He is very honest and does a good job. Also, Jayson Stark [Philadelphia Inquirer] does a good job. I have problems with Bill Conlin [Daily News]. I think he is a great baseball writer, but he tweaks me on my weight and of all people, he’s as big as I am and that pisses me off.
“I really have a problem with Howard Eskin [WIP]. I think he’s unfair. I listen to WIP. He treats people like shit. I don’t like the way he handles himself. I think he is very unprofessional. I know he has his schtick to do and his ratings are high because he embarrasses people, but I think that is bad for the public. I think he is an embarrassment to the station and I don’t know how he keeps his job.”
Despite Eskin, Gregg says “I love WIP. My favorite probably is Jody Mack [McDonald]. I think he is the most knowledgeable, the most fair. If he doesn’t know the answer, he doesn’t bullshit you, where Howard thinks he knows everything. I like Angelo [Cataldi]. He’s funny, extremely talented, but funny like the whole morning show. I like Conklin, I think he’s great. I love the hockey guy, [Al] Morganti. I even like the brother there, G. Cobb. I think he’s great.”
Nationally, Gregg says he has no use for Boston Globe and ESPN analyst Peter Gammons.
“Don’t like Gammons,” says Gregg. “I think he says things about us that he doesn’t know. I think he comes to us first and asks us first then talks to other people. You can’t go by what other people say. There are always two sides to one story.”
It is no secret that in more than two decades of calling balls and strikes, fairs and fouls, safes and outs, you are bound to piss people off. And they are bound to react.
Gregg has heard it all.
The worst?
“He turned around to shake my hand and he pees all over my legs. Un-bee-lievable. And that’s a true story. I’m soaking wet now and I have to go back on the field. Unbelievable.”
“Calling me Rerun,” says Gregg, who does not like being compared to the “hey-hey-hey” chubby chump in the ’70s sitcom What’s Happening!!
Gregg has one particularly vivid Rerun rerun. It was back in the ’80s and hardass Dallas Green was managing the Phillies.
“Dallas Green one time came out on me and said, ‘Come on now, Rerun, bear down.’ I said, ‘Don’t ever call me Rerun again. If you do, I’m going to throw you out of the game.’”
After that encounter, Gregg got into it with Mike Schmidt. “There was a bang-bang play at first base and Mike’s yelling and I walk away,” says Gregg, pausing between each sentence for effect. “So I listen. Then nobody says a word. I turn around and Dallas Green says ‘Hey-hey-hey’ and I toss him out of the game.”
Gregg breaks out in gales of laughter. He likes Dallas Green.
“Dallas is always fair,” Gregg says. “Next day, he comes back and it’s all over. No grudges.”
Besides, Gregg jokes that his ambition, once he’s out of the business, is to join the boo birds.
“When I’m done,” he says, “I want to sit in the bleachers, drink some beers and yell ‘kill the umpire.’”
As massive plates of good Midwestern beef and poultry are set in front of us, Gregg says that this is a rare treat of late.
“I don’t party as much as I used to because of my situation with the weight,” he says. “I’ve been working out. This is the first time I’ve had a beer in three weeks. I’ve really been watching my drink. I just weighed myself. I lost six and a half pounds. I can’t tell you what I weigh, but I’m good.”
Regardless of Gregg’s strict regimen, I have finally met a man who can outeat me.
The meal finished and no room left for dessert, Mehra the maître d’ pours us a round of tawny port. Then he invites us to the bar and pours us another.
Before departing, Gregg points to an autographed picture of him going at it with then-Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, which hangs on Morton’s Wall of Fame.
“That’s my favorite,” says Gregg, who downs his last port and urges me to do the same.
“If you want to keep up with the umps, you have to drink like an ump,” he says.
It is just after 11 and Rush Street is crawling with the very hip and the very rich.
Jilly’s, the swank piano bar, is stuffed. Anxiously, Gregg walks up the stairs, creating a path through the crowd like a fullback. He surveys the crowd, looking for his friend Kim Hefner, but finds only a skeezy sharkskin suit guy with a headset.
No Kim tonight, he tells Gregg. She’s in Las Vegas for a week.
“No wonder I didn’t get a phone call looking for tickets,” he says, before looking over the crowd and deciding to leave.
“Let’s go,” he says, somewhat dejectedly.
We descend the stairs, which are as crowded as they were on our way up, and reconnoiter on the sidewalk, trying to figure our next course of action.
We settle on Gibson’s, another swank piano bar across Rush from Jilly’s, favorite of good old Chicago crook Dan Rostenkowski, who used to ring up huge bills there on the taxpayers’ dime.
Haunt of the haute couture horny and middle-aged men of desperation, Gibson’s has a fuck-me atmosphere that is perfect for midnight with a load on.
Somehow, we score three seats by the piano, where the piano man is tinkling some soft-belly blues.
“See that guy over there,” says Gregg, pointing to a dapper gentleman with the entourage of foxes walking out the door. “That’s Marion Barry.”
Gregg, in his element, takes a big puff off his cigar and gets philosophical.
“I remember J.R. Richard,” says Gregg, recalling the great Astros righty. “He was great. He had a great slider. One day I’m working the plate, the next day he had a stroke.”
“You never know,” I tell Gregg.
“You never know.”
It is after midnight.
Gregg has to be at the ballpark by 11 to work first base on a game to be televised nationally by Fox. He is well aware of the pressure that awaits.
We finish our drinks, stumble out and cab it back to our respective hotels.
I’m feeling great,” Eric Gregg says as he gets ready for what will prove to be a very controversial day of umpiring.
It is about 11 a.m. on a wet Chicago Saturday and Gregg and the boys are milling about the Wrigley Field umpires’ room, a combination locker and frat house.
The room is maintained by Jimmy Farrell, a thin, doddering 60-something who for years has ministered to the various needs of the visiting umps. Farrell, a hugely devout Catholic, has over the years decorated the wood-paneled walls with several religiously themed posters and prints, my personal favorite being the picture of Jesus teaching a young boy how to hit.
As Gregg peels off his clothes in the locker room, looking not unlike the Michelin Tire guy, crew chief Jerry Crawford sits down at the desk and talks about stress.
Crawford’s not just responsible for his crew — Gregg, Brian Gorman (son of former ump Tom Gorman) and rookie Paul Nauert, who will also lose his job in September.
As union president, Crawford has to stand up for all the umpires, or at least those members of the warring factions still loyal to him and Richie Phillips.
“Right now it is wearing on me,” says Crawford, a wiry straight-shooter with a sarcastic sense of humor whose father, Shag, was also an ump. “It’s been very steady since we announced our decision in Philadelphia. It’s been nearly four weeks of constant on-the-phone, waking up early in the morning, conference calls. When I go out to lunch with the fellas, when I get back, I have nine messages. It’s very intense.”
Umps are not the only ones calling with questions about the labor strife.
“I have talked to different wives, about umpires in general. They want to be assured we are doing everything we can to get this resolved.”
The families, says Crawford, “are taking it very good, as long as they understand what we are doing, or what we are trying to do.”
(Gregg says his wife Conchita, whom he calls “The Warden,” is also starting to worry. “She has good reason to,” he says.”)
So who’s to blame for this mess?
“I don’t really blame the owners,” he says. “I think it is a [Commissioner] Bud Selig-[vice president of baseball operations] Sandy Alderson deal. They are trying to exert their power. They don’t like my attorney. They have made an issue of my attorney, but my attorney is not the issue. I don’t like their attorneys, but I have to deal with that.”
Crawford says the whole situation would be a lot better if the commissioner’s office dealt with the umps directly.
“Sandy Alderson has negotiated in the newspaper,” says Crawford. “He gave a synopsis of what he was offering in USA Today yesterday and he never gave it to me. That’s very unfair.”
Jimmy Farrell pops his head out of the locker room.
“You fellas have any more work that needs to be done?” he asks.
Gregg laughs.
“You fellas?” he says. “You mean, ‘You pricks, what do you need now?’ Any more work. Like he’s concerned.”
Crawford joins in on Farrell, complaining about the laundry, which Farrell is supposed to wash.
“Where’s my jock?” Crawford jokingly bellows. “Where the hell is my jacket? I have a half a sock, it’s soaked from here up.”
Crawford, Gorman, Gregg and Nauert, the youngest member of the crew who is stretching on the floor, wail with laughter.
Quietly, Farrell shoots back.
“I’ll miss you now,” he says to Gregg.
“Why,” Gregg responds quickly. “Are you retiring?”
Cubs GM Ed Lynch, other team officials and representatives from Fox arrive in the locker room to talk about forecast showers in the area.
“No problem,” says Crawford, who agrees to delay the start of the game.”
“How are you guys doing?” Lynch asks the umps. “You guys OK ticketwise?”
Gregg — not one to pass up any freebie — has a request for Lynch. “Can you leave us some Beanie Babies?”
“I think we can find some,” Lynch says. (Ty Beanie Babies is headquartered in Chicago.)
After Lynch leaves, Gregg — ever the opportunist — notes that the Bammer Bears Beanie Babies given out by the Phillies to honor Scott Rolen “are going for $500 each.”
As the rain subsides and the parched Wrigley turf soaks up most of the moisture, the Cubs finally take on the Astros.
It is the busiest game of the series for Eric Gregg, who puts on a little show, playfully punching out Sammy Sosa, who can’t beat the throw on his grounder to shortstop. It is a tough series for Sosa, too, who manages a mere single in 18 at-bats against Houston.
Later, Astro firstbase coach Jose Cruz gets into the act, mimicking Gregg’s fist pump as Astro right fielder Derek Bell grounds out to short.
But the comedy ceases in the sixth.
With two outs, nobody on and the home team down 5-2, Cubs first baseman Mark Grace smacks a low, low line drive that touches down somewhere near the first base bag.
Gregg watches the play and doubles his massive body over, index fingers pointing toward the stands, indicating a foul ball.
The huge crowd bellows in unison.
“Rerun you fat fuck!” people shout. “Hey-hey-hey!”
Cubs manager Jim Riggleman, one of the game’s most mild-mannered people, storms out of the dugout and gets into it with Gregg, who, after several minutes, ejects Riggleman from the ball game.
More abuse rains down from the stands as Grace resumes his at-bat. Popping up to the center fielder, Grace runs towards first and, upon seeing the ball land in Carl Everett’s mitt, explodes in a highly uncharacteristic burst of fury, charging toward Gregg and muttering invectives.
With a big sweep of his right arm, Gregg tosses Grace, the crowd growing apoplectic.
“Eric Gregg was voted by the major league baseball players and managers as the second-worst umpire in the National League,” says one fan seated a few rows behind me in the box seats back of first base. “He is so pathetic. This was so clearly fair, and on top of this he ruined it for the Braves against the Marlins in the 1997 Championship Series. His strike zone moves per inning. The guy is the worst. He might be a nice guy, but this is completely awful.”
As the anger in the stands spills out onto the field, Eric Gregg, target of the venom, turns his back and kicks his right foot toward the crowd as if to say, “Ah, fuck you guys too.”
The Cubs would go on to lose 10-2, another miserable night in a long and miserable season.
In the Cubs locker room, Riggleman wades into a throng of reporters, explaining for the record that he was in the wrong.
“I always get along with umpires,” he says in a soft and quiet voice. “I still get along with umpires. It was a play in the game that could have gone either way. He probably got it right. I don’t know.”
As Riggleman talks, Mark Grace walks out of the trainers room, puffing a butt and wearing a “Get Hard, Go Yard” T-shirt. The reporters watch Grace walk by, then return to interrogating Riggleman.
A Chicago reporter asks Riggleman if maybe Gregg made the ejection “because he was sensitive” about the labor situation.
“No,” Riggleman says flatly. “He let me say plenty.”
When Riggleman finishes, our little pack of reporters moves over to Grace, now standing in front of his locker awaiting the questions.
“I disagreed with his call,” says Grace, stoically. “I thought he missed it. He thought he got it right and we argued and he threw me out of the game.”
Another local reporter points out that until today, no Cubs player had been thrown out of a game all season.
“We were overdue,” says Grace, forcing what may be a wry smile. “It’s about time. I just, I saw the ball go over the bag, he saw it differently. I was upset, I was frustrated, I got myself run. Pretty simplistic.… I get along with Eric. We were fine up until that point. It’s just part of the game.”
“Was it anything you said?” I ask Grace.
“You can’t print it,” he answers.
“Oh, I can print it.”
“No you can’t,” he says with a smile, the other reporters cracking up.
“He must be from the Chicago Reader [an alternative weekly],” says one, who then asks Grace if Gregg’s judgment was affected by the labor troubles.
“Oh, I don’t know. Whether he’s pro-union or not didn’t have any effect on what he said to me or what I said to him. I got pissed off and got run.”
No one is allowed in the umps’ room after this game, says a Cubs locker room attendant.
“They even turned away Gorman’s brother,” says the attendant.
Not deterred, I wait for Gregg’s comment.
And wait.
And wait.
After a half hour, the door opens, but it is only Farrell, who scurries up to the concession stand and returns with a six-pack of beer.
Eventually, Gregg emerges, a little bit haggard.
“I really can’t talk about it until I make my report to the league,” says Gregg, who eventually warms up enough to say that even some Cubs admitted he got the play right and that apologies would be forthcoming.
“Did you hear the fans screaming at you?” I ask Gregg.
“Sure I hear it.”
“So what do you think?”
“It’s part of the game,” says Gregg, matter-of-factly, showing not a tinge of bitterness or dismay. “As long as they don’t get personal, it doesn’t bother me. We get no respect. But it’s over, and we’ll be back here tomorrow.”
“You going out with the boys tonight?” I ask him as we walk out to the crew’s green minivan in the parking lot.
“No, I’m staying in tonight,” he says, hopping into the van.
The autumnally cold wind is not the only thing that is frosty before Sunday night’s game at Wrigley. Even under the best of circumstances, Gregg says he doesn’t converse with anyone before working home plate, including his crewmates; he prefers to sit in a chair by himself, rocking and watching TV, usually his favorite soaps. He is in no mood to talk about Grace. Crawford, who has been patient and gentlemanly, politely asks me to leave the umps’ room.
No matter. I walk back onto the field, where I hook up with Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan.
“I think it is very difficult what they are going through,” says Morgan, looking dapper in a brown suit as he sits on the home dugout’s pine bench. “I feel some compassion for the umpires, because, like the players, they have dedicated their lives to become major league umpires. And you shouldn’t just throw that away or push that aside.”
For the most part, the current umpire corps is serving the game well, says Morgan, once the elbow-pumping spark plug of the Big Red Machine who is in town to call tonight’s game for ESPN.
“I happen to think most of the umpires have done a good job of doing their job,” says Morgan, who, nevertheless, is not letting every ump off the hook.
“Make no mistake about it,” he says, trying hard not to notice that his cell phone is ringing again. “There are some guys who have become arrogant. There are some guys who are not doing their jobs [and] most of the other guys get hurt by that. Most of the umpires work hard, are very competent and do their job. And they have some guys who I think at this stage of their lives don’t care anymore.”
I ask Morgan which category Eric Gregg fits into.
“I don’t rate the players,” Morgan says very quickly. “I don’t do that. I don’t rate the umpires. All I do is call the game, and if an umpire has a good game, I say he has a good game. If he has a bad game, I point that out.”
What does the public think?
“They don’t really care,” says Morgan. “They have been brainwashed to the point that umpires are bad people, or are not people.”
Did they make a mistake?
“Oh, there’s no doubt they made a mistake,” says Morgan. “But they were in a box already in my opinion, so maybe it wasn’t as big a mistake as people think. “
Wrigley Field is not the only place on earth where people are wondering about what the umpires are thinking.
Halfway across the globe, baseball people in Japan are questioning the bargaining strategy.
“They screwed up,” says Yasuhiko Tanaka, assistant cameraman and the English-speaking member of a Japanese TV crew that flew from Los Angeles to Chicago to follow doomed rookie ump Paul Nauert. “Yah, they screwed up.”
James Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, knows from trouble.
And Lovell, here to lead the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” says the umpires bought a world of trouble.
Eric, we have a problem.
“I think they made a basic mistake of just handing in their resignations,” says Lovell, who is the first to admit he is no expert on this subject. “There is a beautiful cartoon in one of the news magazines, ‘You ejected yourself, but now you are calling the shots.’ “It’s a really bad thing.”
Speaking of astros, Craig Biggio, the Houston Astros second baseman, is one of baseball’s classier acts. Deep in the labyrinthine innards of Wrigley, Biggio stops on his way to the field and empathizes with Gregg and the others.
“It’s just a bad situation right now,” says Biggio. “The way I look at it you are talking about people’s lives. They have families. Rent to pay. Kids to feed. This is a very, very bad situation. I want to wish them luck and hope they get it all rectified because you never want to see something like this happen. Imagine doing something for 25 to 30 years then all of a sudden being kicked out of your job? I don’t like it. Hopefully we’ll get things all worked out.”
Is Biggio bothered by the strike zones that change between each umpire?
“Some guys are high ball, some guys are low ball,” says Biggio, scoffing at the notion that umpires are ruining baseball. “It doesn’t matter. The umps do a tremendous job. Everyone has their own strike zone. Everyone is different. It is up to you as a professional hitter to adjust to it.”
The only thing Biggio asks is that the umps be consistent.
And Eric Gregg is consistent, Biggio says.
“Eric is fine,” says Biggio. “I’ve known him for 12 years.”
As fate would have it, Craig Biggio is the first batter of the ballgame. Micah Bowie, the big left-hander the Cubs picked up in a deadline-day trade with Atlanta, grooves a fastball on the extreme outside of the plate, the living edge of Eric Gregg’s notoriously wide strike zone.
Strike one, Gregg motions with his little fist punch.
Biggio, one of the game’s best hitters and a league leader in walks, works the count full.
Bowie throws another fastball, hits that edge once again.
Biggio looks at the pitch and takes a step toward first.
“Strike,” calls Gregg. Who, like Biggio asks, is nothing if not consistent.
In the bottom of the second, Mark Grace steps out of the dugout and the crowd buzzes in anticipation of the first meeting between these two men since the great ejection, which was played over and over again on Chicago and national TV.
Grace steps up to the plate. Gregg steps over home, his back toward Grace and sweeps the plate. It is the first move in a four-step ballet that would see the combatants eventually make up, the two getting closer with each graceful Grace at-bat.
Gregg might have made peace with Grace, but he sure doesn’t impress Astro shortstop Tim Bogar in the top of the fifth.
With two men on, two men out and a two-run Astro lead, Bowie throws a ball that is so low it falls out of the catcher’s mitt. Gregg calls it strike three.
For a long few seconds, Bogar just stands there, showing his displeasure with the call. Gregg holds his fire and the inning ends without further incident.
Except in the stands, where the Wrigleyites are merciless.
“Hey-hey-hey!”
Umpire Brian Gorman, working third base tonight, can hear the onslaught of fat jokes.
He turns to the crowd, sticks out his belly and pats it, to great roars from the stands.
For Eric Gregg, the final insult would come in the bottom of the eighth.
With a man on first and nobody out, the Cubs losing again, this time 6-2, Gary Gaetti fouls a fastball off Gregg’s mask, sending him reeling several steps backward, like he was hit in the face by an uppercut.
As Gregg stumbles toward the brick wall behind home plate, yelps of approval cascade all around.
“That was a wake-up call!” screams one particularly emotional fan who’s had too many beers. “Remember it, asshole.”
One inning later, Cubs second baseman Jeff Blauser pops up to the second baseman. The game is all over.
And so is Gregg’s trip to Chicago.
After a long cooling-off period, after his colleagues depart for their flights to New York, where the crew will work Shea Stadium, a very weary Eric Gregg emerges from the umps’ room and walks toward the parking lot.
“What did Grace say to you?” I ask.
“He apologized,” says Gregg, his prophecy apparently fulfilled.
“Is it really the last time in Chicago?” I ask him, wondering if he is as confident as he was when he arrived three days ago.
“I hope not,” says Gregg, softly, without his earlier bravado. “I hope not.”
Tough night? I ask him.
“It’s no tougher than normal,” says Gregg, walking out the doorway and into the night. “I’m a little shaky, but I’m all right.”
Gregg and his 21 fellow doomed umps are awaiting a National Labor Relations Board ruling on their union’s request for a preliminary injunction against the firings. A spokesman for the umps said on Aug. 23 that no decision is likely before Aug. 30.
