Special Article

Special Article

Read, White, and Blue

By Collin Agee

In May, we considered MLB.com’s list of the best baseball books. This month, we’ll look at a smaller set of books written by umpires.

They Called Me God: The Best Umpire Who Ever Lived

By Doug Harvey with Peter Golenbock

A legendary, Hall-of-Fame umpire shares colorful on- and off-the-field stories from his career and discusses the fine art and technique of officiating. (Evidently, he never met Anthony Mayer.)

Planet of the Umps: A Baseball Life from Behind the Plate

By Ken Kaiser with David Fisher

Known for his larger-than-life personality, Kaiser delivers a hilarious and insightful look at the highs and lows of a major league ump.

Called Out but Safe: A Baseball Umpire’s Journey

By Al Clark with Dan Schlossberg

Recounts a 30-year professional career, spanning over 3,000 games, two World Series, and two All-Star games.

Umpires: Classic Baseball Stories from the Men Who Made the Calls

By John C. Skipper

Features first-hand accounts from 19 major league umpires about pivotal baseball moments, such as Don Denkinger’s 1985 World Series call.

Kill the Ump! My Life in Baseball

By Dusty Boggess as told to Ernie Helm

This 1966 paperback is out of print but available online. It was published and distributed as a promotional giveaway by a Texas beer company that Lynton “Dusty” Boggess worked for after his retirement as a National League umpire from 1944 to 1962. Boggess augmented his colorful tales (related in third person by Ernie Helm) with strong opinions and suggestions on improving the national pastime, notably the unrelenting, if elusive, effort to speed up the game.

The Umpire Strikes Back

By Ron Luciano (New York: Bantam Books 1982)

The first of four Luciano books written with veteran author David Fisher and published by Bantam Books. Luciano was an American League umpire from 1969 to 1979; his flamboyant style, gregarious witticisms, and basic insistence on having fun on the job made him a fan and media favorite, but not always appreciated by managers, players, and league executives.

Luciano’s most autobiographical book includes his exploits as an All-American football lineman at Syracuse University and his unrelenting feud with Baltimore manager Earl Weaver. Strike Two (1984) primarily draws on anecdotes and assorted battlefield observations from fellow umpires. In The Fall of the Roman Umpire (1986), he chronicles his final years as an umpire and calls on several players to recall their lengthy struggles to make it to the big leagues and stay there. Remembrance of Swings Past (1988) is crammed with more amusing anecdotes on strange plays and weird rules predicaments as well as the most intriguing characters he encountered, restrained, and debated with in the course of controlling the game.

Center Field on Fire: An Umpire’s Life with Pine Tar Bats, Spitballs, and Corked Personalities

by Dave Phillips with Rob Rains, (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2004)

Widely praised as one of baseball’s most respected umps in his 32-year career, primarily as an AL ump starting in 1971, Phillips was thrust into several of baseball’s more bizarre controversies: the George Brett pine-tar saga, the Albert Belle corked-bat caper, being the first umpire to formally discover that Gaylord Perry included a spitball in his repertoire, and, as reflected in the source of the book’s title, working the infamous Disco Demolition Night of 1979 in Chicago’s Comiskey Park.