ActivePaper Archive Umpire Curly Clement, a Cape Baseball League tradition The ump players and coaches love to love - The Register, 7/18/1985

Umpire Curly Clement, a Cape Baseball League tradition The ump players and coaches love to love

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By Tom Meade Robert "Curly" Clement has a job everyone loves to hate. No, he's not an IRS auditor. It's worse: he's a baseball umpire. It's a profession most people are born to, according to former major league umpite Ron Luciano: "You're born, and somebody smacks you. You haven't even had time to do anything wrong and someone's hitting you. Perfect training for an umpire," Luciano wrote in "Strike Two," his book published in 1984. Nobody likes umpires. To be one, says Curly Clement, "you have to love the game of baseball and you have to be crazy." Masochistic. "You have to be crazy to take all that abuse. Abuse from the fans, from the players and from the coaches." Nobody likes umpires, but everybody seems to love Curly Clement. Players and coaches do. Fans? Well you can't have everything. Although there was that one day in 1979 in Fenway Park. Major league umpires were on strike and collegiate umpires were pressed into service. The game, between the Red Sox and California Angels, was being televised coast-to-coast. Before the game, the umpires were introduced, beginning with the crew chief behind home plate. Most of the 34,000 fans ignored the routine announcement...until the announcer got to third base, where Clement was working. "There must have been 2000 or 3000 people from the Cape there that day and when they flashed my name up on the board, 'CURLY CLEMENT,' they all got up and cheered." He was already nervous about working before such a huge crowd and was reluctant even to take the field; then when all those folks from home cheered him, he got even more nervous. Anyone who knows Cape Cod League baseball knows Curly Clement. Of his 30 years as an umpire, he has spent 23 of them in the Cape Cod League. "He is a quality guy, dynamic, a quality umpire," says Fred Ebbett, the league's commissioner. "He is consistent, fair, honest. When he makes a mistake, he tells you he did. "Everyone remembers the bad calls (an umpire makes)," says Ebbett, "but no one remembers the thousands of good calls Curly has made." Curly himself has trouble remembering his thousands of good calls. His favorite call, because it was the best play he's ever ruled on, was a triple play in the College World Series. Some of the bad calls haunt him, particularly the home run hit which he called foul to cost Orleans the game: 'The ball went in the fair territory and it curved around the flag pole. I thought that it had curved before it hU the pole. I was so upset that I had made the wrong call, that I was going to call my commissioner the next day and resign as umpire." Fortunately for Cape Cod League baseball, the coach whose team lost because of the call dissuaded Curly Clement from quitting. Every umpire knows he's going to make bad calls and miss pitches, but few will admit the fact, especially during play. Clement takes a different approach. When he's behind the plate, before the first pitch, he instructs his "only friend on the field," the catcher, to watch for bad calls on pitches early in the game. If the catcher sees a pitch in the strike zone - a pitch Curly has called a ball - the catcher is not to turn to the umpire, but should inform him of the bad call. "It helps me to establish the strike zone," the umpire says. And it establishes an unusual bond between catcher and umpire. Once in a while, when Clement misses a strike pitch and calls a ball, and the defensive coach questions the call, the catcher usually will protect the umpire ,and tell his coach that the pitch was "outside." One catcher wasn't his "best friend" at First. He played for Yarmouth and was at bat: "He had three balls and one strike on him. I pumped a strike on him on an outside pitch, a nice pitch. He turned around and looked at me and he said, 'That was a lousy call and you know it...you stink.' I didn't say a word. On the next pitch, the ball hit the ground in front of the plate and he swung and missed. 1 said, 'Strike Three.' He turned around, and he said, 'See what you made me do, you !$%&!' And he runs to the dugout and while he's putting his gear on, he's still giving me hell from the bench. "When he comes back to catch, he's still giving me hell. 1 didn't say a word, but I went in front of the plate and brushed the plate off and 1 looked at him and said, 'Mr. Catcher, I have had all I will take from you. That's it. You had your say and I had mine. I won and you lost. Now I don't want to hear another peep from you because if I do - if you even ask me what the count is - I'll throw your butt out.' "He never said a word. About three days later, I get him again as a catcher. For two innings I didn't say a word to him and he didn't say a word to me. About the third inning he said,''Hi, Curly. Nice night for baseball.' I said, 'Excellent.' Then he said. 'Oh, I'm sorry for what I did to you three days ago.' I said, 'Mr. Catcher, that's forgotten, history, water under the bridge.' He took off his mask and looked at me, and said, 'You have to be kidding - you don't hold any grudges?' I said, 'No, no grudges.' He thanked me," and from then on Curly Clement had another "best friend" behind the plate. Early in his career, Curly Clement learned that if he misses "seven, eight, nine pitches during a nine inning game, you're doing a hell of a job because you are seeing roughly 300-andsome-odd pitches." But when he makes a bad call on a pitch, he won't "make it up" because a make-up call on a subsequent pitch would "make two bad calls." Batters challenge him, accuse him of wearing a mask with no holes to see out of - if he can see anyway, they say — of being "bush-league" and unfair. But they usually apologize and some even seek his advice about how to climb out of a hitting slump. Other batters depend on Curly Clement for a piece of the good-luck licorice he carries for the ball players. One batter, who was in a terribly deep hitting slump was visibly nervous in the on-deck circle Curly slipped him a licorice and told him that the candy "is sugarless, it won't make you fat and usually there's a base hit in the licorice. The young man popped it in his mouth, came up to bat and slugged a single. Next time up, he asked the umpire for two pieces of licorice. "Sure enough, he hit a double," Curly remembers. From then on, the ball player carried his own supply of Curly's brand of sugar-free licorice. There have been times when Curly's candy has diffused potentially explosive arguments on the field. He is a master of disarming angry players, coaches and fans. In fact, in the past Five years, he has ejected only one player - a few weeks ago - after an argument when the player incited his entire bench to become unruly. "A lover, not a fighter," he keeps cool, practicing prevention against pugilism on the ball field. "This is the number of !$%&! who have ever given me a bad time in baseball," he says as he raises five fingers. Sometimes, a coach leaves the dugout and picks a fight just for the sake of picking a fight. Once a coach came roaring off the bench, "and he screeched and he screeched. And I said to him, 'Coach, I know what you're doing out here: you're trying to get thrown out so you can get your ball players riled up. But let me tell you something, Coach. I'm going to be here nine innings and you're going to be here too to suffer with me, so go back to the bench because I'm not going to throw you out.' And he looked at me and he said, 'You $%&!!' "Some coaches will come out and say, 'Geez, Curly that was a hell of a call, but I just had to come out to make it look good,' and they'll turn around and walk away." When a coach has a real beef, as MIT's assistant coach did once. Curly can deflect a verbal blow long before it is struck: "He came out to me because he thought I blew a call at first base. And he did come out - running] And I'm standing right there like this (clenched fists on his hips) and I started to laugh. He got no more than two feet away and looked at me and he started to laugh. He turned around and started to walk away. 1 said, 'What happened?' and he looked back and said, 'I forgot what the hell I was going to complain about.'" Then there was the 1982 game in Warcham: "There was a pick-off play at first base. I called the guy safe. The following inning, Wareham was at bat and (the opposing learn) had a pick-off play at first and I called the Wareham player out. Out comes Joe Arnold (Warcham's coach). 'Curly, what happened?' he wants to know. 1 said, 'Joe, you will never believe it.' He said, 'Try me.' So I said, 'The first call, 1 blew it. He should have been out and I called him safe. The second call, I blew it. He should have been safe and I called him out.'' He looked al me and he busted out laughing and he turned around and walked away. "The next inning, (the assistant coach) comes out and he wants to know 'What the hell did you say to Joe? I've never seen a guy so riled up at the umpire and come back laughing so hard.' So I told him what 1 said, and he said, 'I should have known it; it's just like you, Curly, to tell the guy the truth.'" His honesty with players and coaches is born ol respect: "You treat players and coaches the way you would like to have been treated when you were playing ball." He has small, but significant, ways of demonstrating that respect. For instance, during play, he addresses players as "Mister" --"Mr. Catcher, Mr. Short Stop, Mr. Batter" or by surname, or title: "Coach, Commissioner," etc. And he never swears on the playing field. "You treat people with respect, and they'll respect you." The one game participant over which the umpire has least control is the fan. And fans (along with organists who pla\ "Three Blind Mice") are the bane of every umpire's life. The single official, albeit reluctant, reprimand Curly Clement has received was the result of an incident with fans: "The game was in Chatham. Chatham and Yarmouth. I had the plate and all of a sudden something happened - 1 forgot what it was - but the fans from Chatham were fighting with the Yarmouth fans and vice versa. They were both going at it. The coach from Chatham was the guy who instigated it And it was getting out of hand, so 1 got a bright idea to stop it, "I called time out and talked over to the (announcer's) booth and told the announcer to announce thai this is a baseball game between young men and that the fans should stop fighting among each other. If they don't stop, I'm going to forfeit the game to Yarmouth. He announced it over the P.A. system and not a peep came out from anybody." It worked, but the commissioner reprimanded Curly Clement. As far as 50% of the fans are concerned, the umpire is wrong. If a call favors the home team, visiting rooters hate him; if his call favors the visitors, the umpire is a bum io the home team fans. During the big league umpire's strike, one woman actually telephoned Clement alter a Boston Red Sox game and scolded him lor 20 minutes lor calling out Carl Yastr/emski on a slide. Ironically, when Yaz got up after the play, he brushed of the dust and simply said, "Nice call, Ump." But even fans who hate umpires like Curly Clement especially when he is out of uniform. In 1982, during a college game at Boston College, Curly was behind the plate. In the sixth inning, he pumpecf two strikes on the batter and began to feel numbness in his arm. Then he began to sweat. He called time to take a break. Wes Jordan, University of Maine's trainer, realized something was wrong. He ran to the plate to find Curly drenched in perspiration. Jordan asked him about his symptoms

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"You have to be crazy to take all that abuse. Abuse from the fans, from the players and from the coaches. " Once a coach came roaring off the bench "and he screeched and screeched. And I said to him, 'Coach, 1 know what you're doing out herej you 're trying to get thrown out so you can get your ballplayers riled up. But let me tell you something, Coach. I'm going to be here nine innings and you 're going to be here, too, to suffer with me. So go back to the bench because I'm not going to throw you "I said, 'Mr. Catcher, that's forgotten, history, water under the bridge.' He took off his mask and looked at me and said, 'You have to be kidding - you don't hold any grudges?' I said, 'No, no grudges.' He thanked me."

Continued from previous page and diagnosed a heart attack. Curly was rushed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital where he spent a "touch-and-go" week of intensive care and another week recuperating. That's when the fans came through for Curly Clement. They telephoned, sent cards and prayers. Ball players from NCAA schools and others who had graduated to the big leagues tied up the hospital's switchboard with calls to wish him well. He quit smoking, - began an exercise regimen and recovered sufficiently to umpire 105 games in 1983, 117 last year-in the Cape Cod League and collegiate baseball. He has been chosen to umpire the College World Series twice; collegiate coaches have awarded him a prized plaque for his contribution to baseball; and collegiate and Cape League officials heap praise upon him. But to Curly Clement, the real reward of the summer game is friendship. "Money can never buy the friends I have found in baseball," he says. And the Cape League's Old-Timers' reunion Sunday, July 14, produced ample proof: Curly gave and received more hugs and kisses than nine full innings of calls from behind the plate. Curly divides his time between the North and South. For nearly 20 summers he lived in Hyannis and recently moved to Wareham. He spends spring seasons in the South, umpiring college games in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. Coaches and college families always invite him to stay at their homes. And this year they didn't want him to leave. But he had to return to the Cape and Cape Cod League baseball, the love of his life after Adrienne, his wife of 45 years, who says she hates baseball and rarely attends Curly's games. In baseball circles, he's called the ambassador of the Cape League because he spends so much time bragging about it and encouraging college coaches to send their top prospects here for the summer. He remembers all those players who have gone on to the big leagues, and the ones who did not make the cut, good ball players who played the game well and just enjoyed it, his friends. For Curly Clement, being an umpire is "a privilege" and "baseball is the greatest game in the world," a game he was raised in. His father was a ball player, who had "a chance to sign with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but Curly's grandmother wouldn't let him because she said that baseball players were a , bunch of drunks." Soon after that possibility fell through, the police department in Manchester, N.H., needed a right fielder for their baseball team and recruited Curly's father. But since players had to be policemen, they also recruited him onto the force. His father nourished Curly's soul with baseball, and as a student at Manchester High School West, Curly was such a proficient baseball and football player that in 1938 he won scholarship offers from Cornell, Syracuse and the University of Alabama. He never made it to any of those schools because his father was injured in a motorcycle accident, and Curly had to work to help support the family. It wasn't until the 50s that Curly Clement returned to baseball. That was when John McGinn of Hyannis gave him his start and initial training as an umpire. And good, practical training it was. According to Clement, McGinn was such a tough teacher, "he used to swear and cuss me and spit on my shoes...that I'd come home and cry." But "I'll always be grateful to him...he's such a good friend...! owe everything to him." McGinn also volunteered Curly fdV five nights a week of Little League umpiring with no pay. And after that, he went on to high school baseball. Finally, in 1967, Curly and Cal Burlingame enrolled in umpire school in West Palm Beach, Fla. Umpire school is where they teach you the rules of the game, proper conduct and to hate players, coaches and managers. For Curly Clement, everything stuck except the hate. Danny Silva, then in charge of Cape League umpires, "polished" Curly's umpiring skills, the most important of which, to Curly's way of thinking, is respect for the players and the game. Curly observes his 66th birthday on July 19, but has the broad-shouldered stature and jaunty carriage of a much younger man. This season, he already has called nearly 100 games. Last week, the stress caught up with him. He spent 36 hours in a hospital because he and his doctor thought he had another heart attack. When he missed a couple games last week, word spread throughout the league that Curly did have a heart attack, and the mood in the ball parks was downright maudlin. But medical tests showed his heart to be healthy. The diagnosis was stress and the doctor ordered him to take it easy. The thought of leaving baseball made Curly Clement cry for two straight hours. "It would kill me." Cape League Commissioner Fred Ebbett knows Curly Clement can't leave baseball, so he arranged to cut the umpire's schedule by 60%, to two games a week. Curly had been scheduled to call the Saturday, July 13 Old-Timers' game at Orleans, but instead was appointed honorary umpire with a seat in the stands. But the seat couldn't hold him; he was too busy hugging and being hugged. He also had been scheduled to call the Cape League's All Star game this Monday, July 15 in Fenway Park, but Commissioner Ebbett arranged a substitute, so Curly Clement can rest. He'll probably be in the stands, but not resting. "When I'm not on the baseball field, I'm like a caged lion." But on the field, Curly Clement is a boy of summer.

"Money can never buy the friends I have found in baseball." The thought of leaving baseball made Curly Clement cry for two straight hours. "It would kill me."