Interview: Dale Scott

Interview: Dale Scott

By Scott Bolohan

In the over thirty years Dale Scott spent as an umpire in the majors, he worked no-hitters, three World Series, and tossed some of the biggest names in the game. But his lasting impact will probably be when he came out as the first active openly gay umpire in 2014.

After being forced to retire in 2017 after a concussion, he finally decided to release a book telling stories about his career. The Umpire is Out: Calling the Game and Living my True Self was written with Roy Neyer, and named one of six sports books to read this summer by the New York Times. The book is full of stories, from humorous to serious, detailing his rise through the ranks, the many run-ins with players and managers, and his decision to come out. It even manages to make an umpire seem like a real, likable person.

We talked with Dale as his Pride Month book tour of eight ballparks had just finished.

In the acknowledgments, Rob Neyer wrote about how he had to convince you to do this book. What was your hesitation and what made you decide to do it?

I was told I’ve got to write a book with all the different baseball stories I have that people enjoyed. A lot of other guys have done umpire books, and they’re funny and entertaining. There are some great stories and all that, but it had been done. I just didn’t want to go down that road. But as Rob pointed out, is that I’ve got the baseball stories with 30-plus years in the big leagues, 37 years in total in professional baseball and I’m a decent storyteller. But I have a totally different story that nobody has.

The response I had in 2014 when I came out publicly was so positive. It was so touching, people were saying that because of me, they had the courage to come out to co-workers or they were amateur officials because of me, or it brought them another step closer to telling the umpires they work with. You don’t think of umpires as gay. So I thought maybe Rob’s right. Maybe this story does need to be out there because it certainly would have helped when I first started umpiring if I had known that a big league official was gay. That would have been somebody to look up to. I’m really glad I did it, because the outpouring I’ve gotten, like in 2014, and now again with this book and the tour in June, has been amazing. There was a lesbian couple in San Francisco. And one of them came to a book signing and had tears in her eyes. She goes, ‘I’ve been following your story since 2014. You have done so much for me to give me the courage and understand that I’m worth something.’ It’s so touching and so humbling. So I think how just sharing my story has affected people in such a profound and positive way. And those are only the people that reached out to me.

What do you wish fans knew about umpires?

I don’t know if people realize how we are our own worst critics. It just eats at us when we kick a call, especially a substantial one. A lot of times on the field, the person they see is very cool and we act like nothing really fazes us. But that also can come off to a fan like we don’t care—we work the game, leave, and don’t give a shit. And that’s just not true. You never go out on the field thinking, ‘Well, maybe I’ll just blow two calls tonight.’ You’re trying to get every pitch and every play right. And that’s knowing full well that sometimes it just doesn’t happen. It’s a difficult job for sure.

I have friends ask me if I take it personally when fans yell at me. It’s just one of the elements. They’re yelling at a uniform. They’ll be cheering me in ten seconds when I call this other pitch strike three that goes their way. They don’t know who Dale Scott is. I did something they didn’t like, and so they’re going to protest a little bit. We get that. But when you hear some of the stuff said on social media, I’m just glad I was never on social media when I was working. And thank god, because I see it now. And I just go, “Oh, man, these people are vicious.” But I wish people knew that I understood we do care. We do give a shit. And we do evaluate what we do out there. And we take it to heart when we make mistakes and are not happy about it. Sometimes I think that gets lost in the venom of their team not getting a call.

In one of the best parts of your book, someone you knew was heckling you—your mother-in-law.

She grew up in San Francisco and is a huge sports fan. And that’s just what you did, you yelled at the umpire. That’s that was as American as hot dogs and apple pie. And that she was yelling wasn’t the issue. It was because I’m leaving her tickets and she’s really close. I know where she’s sitting. And she doesn’t yell with the crowd. She lets the crowd die down and she goes and personalizes it, ‘Dale, that’s outside. Dale, that’s low.’ So now the people sitting around her are going, what’s his name? Oh, it’s Dale. And I’m like, ‘You got to be kidding.’ There’s also the old comp ticket etiquette. If you want to yell at me, that’s fine. But you’ve got to buy your own ticket. That was funny.

You talked about wanting to get the calls right. What do you think of replay?

When it first started, replay was the boundary calls, like fair or foul, home run or spectator interference. I think most everybody was all for that because it was ridiculous to think that the four guys could clearly see something that’s 200 feet away with the glare and white shirts and whatever. You got one shot at it, and everybody else sees the replays but us. And the four guys have to make a call. ‘What do you have?’ ‘I thought was a home run.’ ‘What do you have?’ ‘Spectator interference.’ ‘What do you have?’ ‘I didn’t see it.’ ‘Okay, well, let’s go with home run.’ So that made sense. But we also knew that once that door was opened, it was going to continue to be used and I was a little against expanded replay. I was willing to see how it worked. And, and for the most part, I think it has.

I learned this my first the first year of expanded replay. We had the Dodgers in Miami. And this is when Don Mattingly was managing the Dodgers. And this was also in that first year, they had to come out to the umpire instead of giving a signal. It was a tie game, the top of the ninth, the leadoff hitter for LA I think walks and he’s on first base, and nobody out. I’m at second base, he attempts to steal, and they throw down. I call him out. So here comes Mattingly, and he said, ‘We may want to take a look at this.’ And so we’re standing there, awkwardly waiting for the bench coach to signal to look at the play. And I said, ‘So this is what it comes down to, Don, that you and I just stand here and just make small talk.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, pretty much.’ Finally the signal is yeah, let’s take a look at it. We go look at it and I’m wrong, so we overturn it and the runner stays a second base. So now instead of one out, nobody on, the go-ahead run is at second with no outs. The next guy hits one off the wall and the runner scores easy. They end up winning the game. So that evening on SportsCenter, they might say something about how originally they called him out but replay overturned it. If we didn’t have replay, they would be like, ‘Look at this play a second, he was obviously safe and the next guy hits it off the wall. That would have been the go-ahead run.’ And you’re just crucified about every twenty minutes as it rolls through and I’m pissed at myself for missing the call. But I would rather miss the call and have a tool such as replay to make sure the call is right. People just want the calls to be correct. And if you have a tool like replay that takes a missed call and corrects it. Most people could care less how it got corrected. It’s just correct, so they move on. So I’m happy with replay, I think it’s done what it’s supposed to do.

You hear the complaint, ‘Oh, it takes too long.’ First of all, we have improved the time on that because we know what we’re doing. But remember, we used to have arguments. Probably more entertaining than just standing around waiting for a replay to be called, but the fact is, there was still a delay. So I don’t buy this delay is killing the game.

Along the same lines, it almost seems inevitable now that on some level, robot umpires are going to be introduced. In the book, you talked about this a little bit and about the art of umpiring. What would we be losing with the robot umps?

When I say the art of umpiring, it’s applying the science of the nuts and bolts of the rules. For example, by rule, the coaches are supposed to be in the coach’s box. An umpire doesn’t enforce that unless the other team says, ‘Hey, we think he’s stealing signs, we want them in the coach’s box.’ Then we’ll enforce the coach’s box for both teams. Remember the neighborhood play on double plays? Because with the art of umpiring at that level, it was accepted. Why? Because you don’t want the infielders getting killed. Now, I’m not saying that you should do that in college, high school, or Little League. You have to adopt the rules to the level of play that you’re doing. And that was accepted at the Major League level. It made fans’ heads explode sometimes. But I would like to also say, with a caveat, that they weren’t off as much as people thought they were. Those infielders are unbelievable. And all they have to do is be somewhere in contact with that base when they have possession of the ball. That’s it, it doesn’t mean you have to stomp on the base. So a lot of times, they did make those plays.

But the point I’m trying to make on this art of umpiring is if a machine says you must stand on or touch second base, and if you had sensors or whatever, it wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, gosh, that was a true throw and the timing was good but he was a little bit off so he’s safe.’ No one wants that. No one likes the centimeter off the bag replay either. That is an unintended consequence of replay. And you’re going to have unintended consequences of an automated strike. So I don’t know what they are yet. I can guess one of them is any part of the baseball goes over any part of the plate in that three-dimensional zone is a strike. What happens if a fast-moving slider is at the front edge of the plate, on the very bottom of the zone and just a little bit of the ball is over the outside corner? That qualifies that pitch as being a strike. But the catcher catches it three or four inches outside and off the ground. That’s a horrible pitch. But if you look at it, by rule, that’s a strike. Do we call those strikes? Rarely. Why? Because it’s not accepted as a strike. And so the automated zone is just going to do whatever it’s told to do, however it’s programmed. The answer is to be careful what you wish for because I think that you will get some strikes that people will think are unhittable.

The plate is 17 inches, a baseball’s diameter is almost three inches. That’s a 23-inch plate almost. I’m not sure if people understand that or grasp that. Plus the on-screen strike zone is horrible. A few weeks ago, I showed on Facebook the exact same pitch from a telecast, the Mets are the home team, the Cardinals are the visiting team and there’s a 3-2 pitch. The Mets had the pitch as a high ball and the St. Louis’ on-screen thing had it at the top of the zone, strike three, same pitch. So I did that to illustrate that these are not 100 % accurate. But I also understand when people watch, that’s the reality.

You talk a lot about ejecting people in the book. Probably the most famous one is where Billy Martin throws dirt on you. But I didn’t know that he also may have put a hit out on you? That’s stuff you’d see in movies.

(Laughs) Yeah, the league received a death threat. I was taken off our next trip to New York that year. Not told why. But that wasn’t unusual, because sometimes there are crew changes. I didn’t really question it. Then fast forward several years after Billy’s death, a biography about Billy said he was so pissed off that he wanted to put a hit out on me. And then I think back to the death threat, I’m going, ‘Maybe this did happen.’

Dale Scott is a former Major League umpire and the author of The Umpire is Out: Calling the Game and Living My True Self, available now.

Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, or on twitter @hxvphaestion and Tumblr.

Scott Bolohan is the founder of The Twin Bill. He ejected one coach in his umpiring career.

The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.