What, exactly, is the ump's authority to throw the music guy out, or have the music turned off? This is not only a ridiculous overreaction but overreaching. What if the music guy just ignored the ump? Could the ump order a forfeit? I can't imagine that would be proper.

What, exactly, is the ump's authority to throw the music guy out, or have the music turned off? This is not only a ridiculous overreaction but overreaching. What if the music guy just ignored the ump? Could the ump order a forfeit? I can't imagine that would be proper.

Would these have been acceptable?

Steve McMichael, the former Chicago Bears player turned pro wrestler, was ejected for talking #### to Angel Hernandez during the 7th-inning stretch at Wrigley back in 2001.

Homage to Ralph Kramden:

It looks like Ken Kaiser, Jocko Conlan, Durwood "You're Out, And You're Ugly Too!" Merrill, and of course Ron Luciano have autobiographies, Luciano being the one who was smart enough to grab the title "The Umpire Strikes Back". Then there's this book about a season with Hunter Wendelstedt, and Ron Luciano's other 25 books. Is that all?

Working the Plate: The Eric Gregg Story by Eric Gregg

I'm guessing that Dave Phillips, Tom Gorman, Durwood Merrill, Ron Luciano, Dave Pallone, and Dusty Boggess included in their books an anecdote about an organist playing "Three Blind Mice", and Pam Postema, Bob Motley, Billy Evans, Jocko Conlan, Ken Kaiser, Jim Joyce, Emmett Ashford, and Eric Gregg did not.

Gerlach has elicited entertaining stories from these figures under fire--about their lonely travels, their dealings with umpire baiters, battles for unionization, breaking through the color line, and much more. From Beans Reardon, who came up to the National League in 1926, to Ed Sudol, who retired in 1977, here is a witty and telling portrait of baseball from the boisterous Golden Age to the Jet Age of Instant Replay.

To provide this unique—if controversial—look at major league baseball as umpires see it, Lee Gutkind spent the 1974 season traveling with the umpiring crew of Doug Harvey (crew chief), Nick Colosi, Harry Wendelstedt, and Art Williams, the first black umpire in the National League. The result is an honest, realistic, insightful study of the private and professional world of major league umpires: their prejudices and petty biases, their unbending pride in their performance, their inside perspectives on the game, and their bitter criticism of the abuse often directed at their profession and at their conduct. As relevant today as it was in 1974, this illustrated chronicle shows how little has changed in the lives and duties of umpires in the last quarter century.

Guided by his passionate love for the game as he wrote The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand!, Gutkind attempted to present the umpires in a positive but realistic light: "I portrayed them as real people, honorable, hard-working and dedicated, but with warts and flaws like the rest of us. But they didn't want to be compared with real people; they wanted to be umpires—on a plateau above most everyone else." Since the publication of this book in 1975, neither Harvey nor Wendelstedt have communicated with Gutkind, with Wendelstedt even denying that Gutkind traveled with the crew.

Steve McMichael, the former Chicago Bears player turned pro wrestler, was ejected for talking #### to Angel Hernandez during the 7th-inning stretch at Wrigley back in 2001.