With 37 years as a professional umpire, the last 32 with MLB, you can’t help but have a ton of stories. The umpire books I recommend have those and more. Funny, entertaining, revealing, and educational, hearing what happened from the person it was happening to give a unique look to America’s pastime. Being the first active male big 5 sports official (Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer) to come out as gay in 2014, I also understand the added stress that brings and the courage it takes to live your true self on such a big stage.
I wrote...
The Umpire Is Out: Calling the Game and Living My True Self
You can’t help but have a ton of funny and entertaining stories when you umpire professional baseball for 37 years. From Billy Martin’s last ejection to having a secret service umpire in the World Series, Dale Scott’s career on the diamond (1981-2017) has it all. But there’s another story that’s unique only to him.
A personal journey from hiding who you are and living a double life, to coming full circle and being the first active male official in the big 5 sports to publicly come out. A fascinating career and a pioneer for the LGBTQ community.
I had the opportunity to work with Durwood Merrill three consecutive seasons so I know firsthand, the man can tell a story!
You can’t help but be drawn in when reading how Durwood got the umpire bug, quit his job as a high school principal, and follow his improbable dream to become a major league umpire. Then hold on tight, as Durwood’s wild 20+ year ride in MLB will have you laughing for more!
For twenty-one major league seasons, Durwood Merrill has been one of the most colorful characters in baseball. Part John Wayne, part Will Rogers, part Elmer Gantry, this performer has made baseball his stage since he broke into the major leagues in 1976. Like on Luciano in his best-seller, The Umpire Strikes Back, Durwood will share more than two decades of laugh-out loud anecdotes, controversial opinions, and sage advice. He'll make calls on:
Managers: From Lou Pinella to Earl Weaver to Joe Torre, Durwood related tales of his often explosive relationships with top managers of yesterday and today, and the vicious…
Simply put, Dave Phillips has seen it all in his 32 years in Major League Baseball.
From Disco Demolition Night that resulted in a forfeit by the Chicago White Sox, catching famous spitballer Gaylord Perry in the act, to legendary arguments with the likes of Earl Weaver and Billy Martin, Dave was right there in the middle of it. It’s a funny, fascinating, and frank journey of one of the best to ever put on a uniform.
A fascinating personal account of the author's thirty-two-year career as a major league umpire offers an anecdotal history of some of the most outrageous antics and controversial personalities in baseball, both on and off the field.
The road from umpire school to the major leagues is full of roadblocks and detours, a journey that only a few complete.
Bruce Weber dives into that journey, attending umpire school, traveling with minor league crews, working games himself from little league to big league spring training, and interviewing not only professional umpires but players, managers, and a former commissioner.
It’s a fascinating peak behind the curtain from a fan's point of view.
A New York Times reporter describes the perspectives he gained into the game of baseball while attending umpire training school and umpiring games firsthand, in an insider fan's account that also draws on the experiences of dozens of professional umpires. 40,000 first printing.
A different look at the dream of being in the big leagues, this time not from an umpire but the person who puts the field in field of dreams.
David Mellor was a talented player whose aspirations were crushed, literally, after a car struck him in a McDonald’s parking lot. Setbacks, traumas, and unbelievably getting mowed down again by a deranged driver, he unwarily suffered PTSD.
Through it all he persevered to rise up as the Head Groundskeeper of his beloved Boston Red Sox, renowned as one of the best in all of baseball.
"Dave Mellor has built one of baseball's most inspirational stories over the last half-century. Anchored by a love for his family and the game, he survived incomprehensible catastrophes and PTSD to become a pioneering ballfield artist and head groundskeeper for Fenway Park."
-Buster Olney, ESPN
On July 10, 1981, David Mellor was just a baseball-crazed kid, a star high school pitcher preparing to go to college and dreaming of one day taking the mound in Fenway Park for his beloved Boston Red Sox. His dream was derailed as he crossed the parking lot of a McDonald's. He heard the racing…
The day-to-day pressures as an MLB player are enormous. On the field, off the field, in the clubhouse, it’s nonstop.
Doing all of that while hiding who you are as a gay man, compounds everything. Billy Bean takes you with him, from the best player in little league to making it on a major league roster, all while hiding his true self.
Leaving baseball at his prime after the death of his partner, something he couldn’t tell a soul about, Billy’s story is heartbreaking yet triumphant and helped me when I publicly came out as an active MLB umpire.
Billy Bean is the first major league baseball player to publicly discuss his homosexuality and the first athlete in a professional American team sport to do so since all-pro football player Dave Kopay came out in 1975. By 1996, when Bean retired at age thirty-two from the game he loved after ten years as a pro ballplayer for the Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres, he had become disillusioned by the sport that had defined his life. Bean found himself forced to choose between his love of baseball and the man he loved. It was an agonizing end to a career in…
I'm the oldest granddaughter of Leora, who lost three sons during WWII. To learn what happened to them, I studied casualty and missing aircraft reports, missions reports, and read unit histories. I’ve corresponded with veterans who knew one of the brothers, who witnessed the bomber hit the water off New Guinea, and who accompanied one brother’s body home. I’m still in contact with the family members of two crew members on the bomber. The companion book, Leora’s Letters, is the family story of the five Wilson brothers who served, but only two came home.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by one; all five sons were serving their country in the military–two in the Navy and three as Army Air Force pilots.
Only two sons came home.
Leora’s Letters is the compelling true account of a woman whose most tender hopes were disrupted by great losses. Yet she lived out four more decades with hope and resilience.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by one, all five sons were serving their country in the military. The oldest son re-enlisted in the Navy. The younger three became U.S. Army Air Force pilots. As the family optimist, Leora wrote hundreds of letters, among all her regular chores, dispensing news and keeping up the morale of the…
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