A Tale of Two Umpires: Or, Restoring the Legacy of Dummy Hoy

Abstract

A Tale of Two UmpiresOr, Restoring the Legacy of Dummy Hoy R. A. R. Edwards (bio) In April 1951, National League umpire Bill Klem sat down for a series of interviews with William Slocum of Collier’s magazine. Klem served as an umpire in the National League from 1905 to 1941 and umpired in a record eighteen World Series. By sitting down with Slocum, Klem was burnishing his record for Cooperstown. He would, in fact, be voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as an umpire in 1953; this was a break-through moment for the Hall, as Klem and his American League counterpart Tom Connolly became the first umpires ever inducted to the Hall. Klem’s brass plaque reads, in part, “Known as ‘The Old Arbitrator.’ Umpired in 18 World Series. Credited with introducing arm signals indicating strikes and fair or foul balls.” Klem was not shy in taking credit for transforming baseball in the early twentieth century. “When next you go out to the ballpark, you will see many things that are commonplace today, but which came about only after 20 year feuds or—at least—bitter arguments among reasonable men,” he told Slocum. “Many of these innovations are mine. And all of them helped baseball to grow from a country fair attraction to the great, beloved spectacle it is today.”1 One of the innovations Klem directly took credit for was inventing the umpire’s gestures behind home plate. As he put it, “Today, when an umpire calls a strike, his right hand shoots above his head so that everybody in the ball park knows it. If his hand remains at his side, it is a ball. I originated that system in 1906, when my voice went bad and I could no longer follow the custom of bellowing each decision.”2 There are only two problems with this story. One, it is not clear that it is true. And two, it is not clear that it is Bill Klem’s story to tell. Today, when we go to a baseball game, we expect to see umpires call a game. Fans know what these gestures mean. We hold our breath, waiting for the call on a close play at second base. Was the runner safe? We see the sign—yes, stolen base! The sign language of baseball makes the game understandable [End Page 1] to fans in the stands. We also expect to see the umpire gesture behind home plate. We delight in seeing a more vigorous call, with extra English on it, on a called third strike. The story of how umpires started to gesture in the first place is one largely shrouded in myth and mystery. The safe and out signals are especially murky. One thing is clear—they definitely predate the signs for balls and strikes. Baseball researcher Peter Morris concludes in his comprehensive study, A Game of Inches: The Story behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball, that “somewhat surprisingly, umpires appear to have been signaling out and safe before it became customary to have signs for balls and strikes.”3 Indeed, the Chicago Tribune noted in 1907, “There is no rule compelling an umpire to motion ‘safe’ or ‘out’ on the bases, but nearly all of them do by force of habit on plays which are not close.”4 There are reports of isolated instances of experimentation with gestures at various points in major-league baseball in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Baseball researchers have pointed to a handful of stories that detailed such novelties appearing in the 1880s.5 There were increasing calls for gestures from fans around this same time. As baseball increased in popularity and ballparks got louder, fans complained of not being able to follow the game, since they could not hear the umpire’s calls. In 1889, baseball cranks in New York wrote to the New York Sun, debating various solutions to the problem, offering ideas both aural, using bells or gongs, and visual, using hand gestures, to signal the calls.6 There is no indication that any of these proposals were put into action by umpires at that time. Umpires have typically been given...