Hall of Fame umpire Doug Harvey dies at 87Players called him God. Don Sutton once tried to sue him and the National League for "depriving him of his livelihood" after Harvey
ejected him for throwing doctored baseballs. (The league's then-milquetoast president Chub Feeney never imposed the mandatory
ten-game suspension.)
I remember Harvey calling balls and strikes for what proved Sandy Koufax's final major league win---on the final day of the regular
1966 season, when Koufax was forced to pitch the nightcap of a doubleheader on short rest (two days') to clinch a pennant
after Don Drysdale fell in the hole in the first game and was lifted after two innings. Koufax prevailed---even though he had to be
stretched in the clubhouse to get a slipped disc put back into place (one of the men who stretched him: former Dodger Don Newcombe,
who was no shrinking violet) midway through---and Harvey would remember the game this way:
He threw seven and two thirds
innings with nothing but a fastball. And they knew what was coming. And he still won the game for them, and the pennant. It was
the greatest exhibition of baseball I've ever seen in my life.
In one of Harvey's earliest games, Stan Musial was batting when Harvey called a strike three anticipating the pitch's arrival---but it
brokie wide of the plate. Musial didn't flinch. He simply called for his glove from a bat boy and, without turning, told Harvey, "Young
fellow, I don't know which league you came from, but we use the same plate. It's 17 inches wide." Said Harvey remembering that
incident, "That's when I realised why they called him Stan the Man, and I learned not to anticipate the call. That's my gift to baseball
. . . Before, the umpires were always told, 'Be quick! Be decisive!'"
RIP Mr. Harvey.