Joe West has been around since the 80's at least.
@GrouchoTex @Bigun Sometimes forgotten: Joe West was one of the 22 umpires foolish enough to walk off the cliff when the executive director of the old umpires' union, Richie Phillips, devised the mass-resignation strategy to try forcing baseball government to back the hell off when it began demanding---oh, the horror!---umpire accountability. The whole story was written by the late Doug Pappas in "Summer 1999: 22 Men Out." The general drift:
* Phillips announced the mass resignation of 57 major league umpires effective 2 September 1999.
* He said the umpires wanted "to feel good about themselves and would rather not continue as umpires if they have to continue under present circumstances. They feel in the past seven months or so, they have been humiliated and denigrated."
* The "humiliation and denigration" included umpire outrage when Tom Hallion was suspended for bumping a player. You can imagine the umps' outrage if a player bumped an ump and didn't get suspended.
* MLB redefined the strike zone over umpires refusing to call strikes at the top of the strike zone. Phillips claimed MLB couldn't do it without the umps' approval. (As with many other things, Phillips was dead wrong about that.)
* When the players' union ran a survey of players, coaches, and managers ranking umpires, Phillips dismissed at "subjective." When the commissioner's office asked teams to chart pitches and file reports on umpire strike zones, Phillips denounced it as "Big Brother watching over us." As Pappas observed wryly, "An employer evaluating the competence of its employees. The nerve!"
* When Phillips (on the HBO program
Real Sports) equated umpires to federal judges who shouldn't be subject to voters' whims, Sandy Alderson---who then worked in the commissioner's office---shot back, "Federal judges can be impeached. I got worried when I found out that players were more concerned with who was umpiring the next day than they were about who was pitching."
* Phillips's announcement of the mass resignations included the news that, as of 2 September, the umps would be part of a new outfit, Umpires Inc., that would negotiate to provide umps to major league baseball . . . and that they'd have no supervision or umpire assignment except that provided by, what do you know, Umpires, Inc. "To owners and players alike," Pappas wrote, "this demand was tantamount to a municipal police union demanding an end to civilian control of the police force. Even if the owners had been willing to cede such authority, the screams of the MLBPA would have killed the deal. And the owners weren't willing. When informed of the umpires' move, Sandy Alderson . . . termed the resignations 'either a threat to be ignored or an offer to be accepted'."
* A few of the umpires who didn't have carrot juice for brains got an a-ha!---the mass resignation tactic was really a bid to evade the no-strike clause in the umpires' labour agreement with MLB and, thus, the umps would "abandon the protections of their contract and [leave] themselves at MLB's mercy," as Pappas put it. These umps consulted with their own attorneys and rescinded their resignations.
* Most of Phillips' support came from National League umps including Joe West; the dissenters were a larger group among the American League umps. The American League dissenters not only formerly wanted to dump Phillips in favour of a less confrontational union director, they denounced Phillips publicly and begged colleagues to do likewise.
* By 23 July, MLB hired 25 minor league umps for major league umpiring jobs effective (what do you know) 2 September---and all those minor league umps happened to have major league experience: they'd filled in for the MLB umps taking midseason vacations.
* At the same time, MLB said they'd take back any MLB umpires who rescinded their resignations but said the offer was a limited time offer.
* Phillips shot back with a federal lawsuit demanding MLB give the umps until 2 September to withdraw their resignations.
* Then-American League president Gene Budig said the nine American League umps who didn't rescind their resignations would lose their jobs on 2 September.
* Those nine plus 33 National League umps withdrew their resignations. Oops. The National League said it had only 20 openings.
* John Hirschbeck and Joe Brinkman led a group of dissenters to the Phillips strategy in a statement attacking Phillips and the union, saying, "major league umpires have been seriously harmed because union leadership adopted a flawed strategy that was doomed to fail from the beginning. The advice to quit jobs in order to keep them made no sense at all, especially under a collective bargaining contract that not only ruled out strikes, but also ruled out 'other concerted work stoppage'."
* West was one of the thirteen National League umps now stuck without a job. Meanwhile, the wife of about-to-be-ex-NL ump Ed Montague sent Hirschbeck's wife a thunderous letter denouncing Hirschbeck as "a Judas in our midst who sold us out for 20 pieces of gold." And Phillips himself vowed to fight "absolutely to the death" over, basically, his right to destroy the careers of a third the membership of the umps' union.
* Phillips audaciously filed a complaint with the National Labour Relations Board claiming MLB had no "right" to accept the umps' signed resignations---because they "must" be seen "as a symbolic gesture aimed at inducing discussions between the two sides.''
The postscript:
* Hirschbeck and Brinkman led the creation of the new and still-operating World Umpires Association, with Brinkman saying publicly there'd be no room for Richie Phillips.
* When Hirschbeck and Brinkman's new group held the certification vote, the ballots sent out included ballots sent to the umps whose resignations were accepted in the self-immolating Phillips strategy. The new union beat the old union soundly in the certification vote. The old union filed a grievance with the NLRB but lost, and the World Umpires Association was certified.
* West was one of the umpires who'd be re-hired in 2002 under an agreement between the WUA and MLB. The other rehires included Gary Darling (who retired in 2004), Larry Poncino (retired in 2007), Bill Hohn (retired in 2010), Larry Vanover, Paul Nauert, Bruce Dreckman, Sam Holbrook, and Rich Garcia---who didn't return to umpiring on the field but was hired as an umpire supervisor, instead.
* More of the umps were rehired by 2005, including Tom Hallion and Ed Hickox. Bob Davidson was rehired in 2007 and retired in 2016.
* The formation of the WUA also led to longtime umps Derryl Cousins and John Shulock joining the umpires union; they'd been rejected for membership in the old union after they were forced to cross picket lines during a 1979 umps' strike.
* John Hirschbeck served as the first president of the World Umpires Association. His successor since 2009: Joe West. Hirschbeck retired as an umpire in 2016.
* Last year, the WUA re-branded itself as the Major League Baseball Umpires' Association.
* Richie Phillips died of a heart attack in 2013. The
New York Times headline on his obituary: "Richie Phillips, Union Leader Who Helped and Hurt Umpires . . ."
