Columnist Dean Juipe: Fans can’t sympathize with umps

Dean Juipe

Monday, July 19, 1999 | 9:42 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

The photos that accompanied the initial stories seemed conspiratorial yet may have been nothing more than perfectly representative.

There was Richie Phillips, the blubbery chief of the Major League Baseball umpires union, strolling out of a meeting and simultaneously devouring a doughnut.

Moments later two of the men he represents, Eric Gregg and Rocky Roe, emerged in tandem, each looking more qualified for sumo wrestling than calling a baseball game. The pudgy Roe was disheveled and sleepy eyed, while the gargantuan Gregg is compensating for the railroads no longer using cabooses by employing two of his own.

The three of them are grossly overweight and extremely unattractive. They're poster boys, not for professional baseball but for the "before" portion of an ad heralding the benefits of a Fat Farm.

Newspapers around the country ran one or both of the photos last week as Phillips announced that every umpire in the union was resigning Sept. 2. Readers took their visual cue and in unison denounced the umpires for their greed, as well as their lack of conditioning and apparent sloth.

But even without the unflattering photos, the umpires may not have been able to locate a single person in this country supportive of their position. No need hollering "kill the ump" any more; these guys voluntarily have put a gun to their collective head.

While a strike by the union would violate its collective bargaining agreement with MLB, technically a mass resignation does not -- although it would seem to qualify as a "wildcat" strike. Regardless, the umpires picked the early September date to disrupt the baseball season and, in theory, add to their leverage.

They're not happy making $75,000 to $255,000 per year, plus postseason bonuses, plus first-class travel and lodging, plus a per diem of $200 a day, plus generous vacation time that includes at least three months off, plus a fantastic retirement package, plus what can amount to $400,000 in severance pay for those who are found lacking or have to retire early.

Befitting the arrogance and confrontational demeanor they bring to the games, the umpires are also leaning on their minor-league brethren to walk out. And while those men are underpaid and do have some legitimate grievances, they owe it to themselves not to get drawn into a dispute driven purely by their major-league counterparts.

Baseball fans are tired of the umpires ruining a season. They struck for seven weeks in 1979, they struck during the playoffs in 1984 and they missed the first 120 days of the 1995 season after being locked out in another labor disagreement that resulted in replacement umps having to be used.

If replacements are needed again this season, or even permanently, they'll have the fans' -- if not the players' -- support.

"We're an integral part of the game," veteran American League umpire Durwood Merrill said as the walk-out date was announced, badly miscalculating his own as well as his colleagues' importance.

Merrill was wrong and all these umpires are wrong to be sacrificing themselves like this. They're very much replaceable and no one sympathizes with them.

In fact, at this point the typical fan would just as soon see them all self-destruct.