Thursday, July 29, 1999Umpires rip 'doomed' strategy
Ability won't be only factor for who keeps jobs
The Associated PressNEW YORK — More than a dozen major league umpires on Wednesday night criticized their leadership for “a flawed and doomed strategy” that apparently will cost 22 umps their jobs.
Meanwhile, baseball officials said ability, racial and ethnic background, and experience will be among the factors used by to decide which 19 National League umpires to take back and which 13 to let go.
After the collapse of the union's planned Sept. 2 walkout, many of the umpires who kept their jobs blamed the mess on the leadership group, headed by union president Jerry Crawford and Richie Phillips, the umps' negotiator since 1978.
“The major league umpires have been seriously harmed because union leadership adopted a flawed strategy that was doomed to fail from the beginning,” said the statement, agreed to by a group that included Joe Brinkman, John Hirschbeck, Dave Phillips, Dale Scott and Rocky Roe.
“The advice to quit jobs in order to keep them made no sense at all,” the group said, “especially under a collective bargaining contract that not only ruled out strikes, but also ruled out "other concerted work stoppage.'”
A person familiar with the drafting of the statement said more than a dozen umps joined in and possibly more. The statement will be formally issued Thursday and will include Wally Bell and Jeff Nelson of the National League, the person said.
Management officials and lawyers spent much of Wednesday trying to make decisions on the NL umps, and they said they expected to make their choices by the end of this week.
On Monday, AL president Gene Budig told nine of his umpires that their resignations were being accepted.
A day after its attempted walkout collapsed, there were no new actions by the Major League Umpires Association. While Richie Phillips said Tuesday he would file unfair labor practice charges against baseball, none was received by the National Labor Relations Board's Philadelphia office, where umpires usually file.
In addition, baseball wrote a letter threatening to seek sanctions against Phillips for filing a lawsuit Monday, a management official said on the condition he not be identified. Federal court rules say suits must be based on “existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument” for changes in the law.
Phillips and union president Jerry Crawford retained Cohen, Weiss and Simon “to take appropriate aggressive legal action against major league baseball.” Cohen, Weiss and Simon has worked for the Air Line Pilots Association and the Teamsters Union.
Forty-two umpires withdrew their resignations Tuesday as the union Sept. 2 mass walkout collapsed amid a lack of support among AL umps.
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Umpires rip 'doomed' strategy