Umpiring major-league baseball may not be among the top 10 career choices of even the most imaginative girls, but Pam Postema is determined to ensure such a dream has a chance of coming true.
The third woman to work as a minor league baseball umpire-and the one to last the longest-Postema, 38, spent 13 years honing her skills and trying to make it into the major leagues. After passing through barriers that would discourage most people, Postema hit baseball`s equivalent of the glass ceiling when she realized that the major leagues were not within the reach of female umpires.
Which is why, in 1991, she filed a discrimination suit against baseball`s American, National and Triple A Alliance Leagues, as well as the Umpire Development Program, which trains and directs the careers of minor league umpires.
(Spokesmen for the main defendants, the American and National Leagues, have refused to comment on Postema`s allegations because of the lawsuit, which is pending in New York Southern District Court).
”Women had to sue to get into the minor leagues, so I guess women will have to sue to get into the majors,” says Postema, who lives in San Clemente, Calif. and is currently working as a driver for Federal Express, after having been released from the Triple A Alliance (the top of the minor league circuit) in 1989.
”Triple A has a rule that after three years, if an umpire is not being looked at by the major leagues, they`ll release you to make room for other up- and-coming umpires,” she explains. ”That is the reason I got released-because both leagues said they had no interest in me.”
But for 13 years, Postema proved herself to be able to handle the job. What was the attraction?
”I wanted to be different; I always knew that much,” explains Postema in her recent book, ”You`ve Got To Have Balls to Make It in This League: My Life As an Umpire” (Simon & Schuster, $20), co-written with sportswriter Gene Wojciechowski.
She says that growing up in Willard, Ohio, while the other girls played with dolls, she preferred football with the neighborhood boys or softball with a local team.
After high school, Postema wasn`t sure what she wanted to do. Because college didn`t appeal to her, she spent the next couple of years working at a variety of odd jobs (including short-order cook and shift worker in a chocolate factory) in Ohio, Colorado and Florida.
It was while working at a restaurant in Gainesville, Fla., that Postema`s mother called to tell her about an article about a woman umpire named Christina Wren. Her mother suggested that umpiring might be something Postema could do.
Wren was one of two women to umpire minor league baseball games, explains Postema, adding that the first woman to break into the profession, Bernice Gera, had to sue for seven years to get a position in the New York-Penn League in 1972.
But after being harrassed on and off the field, including receiving death threats, Gera quit after umpiring only one game. There were no working women umpires when Postema responded to an ad in a local Florida newspaper for Al Somers Umpire School in Daytona Beach.
In order to be considered for umpiring, hopefuls have to attend one of a handful of schools accredited by baseball`s Umpire Development Program, which takes the top candidates to fill positions in minor leagues across the country. Postema contacted Somers and drove to his home in Daytona, Fla., to convince him to accept her in his school.
”I had to fight to get into Al Somers,” she says, adding that she and another woman, who also enrolled in the six-week course in 1977, were the first females he accepted.
Along with learning the rules and practicing her calls, Postema had her first taste of the publicity that hounded her throughout her career. An article in the Sporting News about the first women to attend Somers` umpire school soon was picked up by the television networks.
”My plan to keep a low profile was dead,” writes Postema. ”I wanted to blend in; I got singled out.”
From the beginning, she tried to be one of the guys and to succeed based on her abilities, not her gender, Postema says.
”I always thought that if I worked hard and had the ability to do the job, there is no reason why they wouldn`t put me in the major leagues. I wasn`t interested in the newspaper articles and all the side shows. I just wanted to umpire in the majors.
”And if I wasn`t good enough, I didn`t want to make it then just because I was a woman. I wouldn`t have gone out there and made a fool of myself if I didn`t think I could make it.”
Postema graduated from Somers Umpire School high enough in her class to be offered a job umpiring in the Gulf Coast League, the bottom of the minor-league circuit. (The other woman in the class was not offered a job.)
She then began the life that she would lead for the next 13 years, which consisted of an exhausting travel schedule, a series of umpiring partners assigned by the hiring league-some supportive, some not so supportive-and low salaries.
”Single A ball is the lowest. I was making about $600 (a month) when I first started out and that had to cover everything-motels, food, gas, incidentals. In Triple A (the highest of the minor league circuit), I made about $2,300 a month plus $50 (per day spent on the road).”
By 1980 she had made it to the Texas League, a Double A league, ”one of only 29 minor-league umpires who got bumped up and one of only 16 to make the jump from Single A to Double A.”
The 136-game season kept her on the road, traveling from Texas to Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. By 1983, Postema was invited to umpire in the Pacific Coast League, a Triple A League. At that point, the major leagues didn`t seem far away. However, Postema also was learning that being a woman umpire meant having to work twice as hard to earn the respect of players and managers in order to establish authority on the field.
”You can`t let your guard down,” she says, ”because if they see you are intimidated just once, or if you let just one guy go by-call you a name and you let it go-that just gets around, it spreads like wildfire. You can`t let that happen.”
So, she ejected players whose remarks went too far or whose harrassment kept up after she warned them to stop. She held her own in confrontations with managers who spit tobacco juice in her face while screaming about a call she made. And in the book she recalls how she tried to ignore comments from players like Keith Hernandez who, during an exhibition game between the Arkansas Travelers and their parent club, the St. Louis Cardinals, winked at her and told her she was cute.
”I smiled back, but the whole time I was thinking, `What a stupid thing to say.` What did he think I was there for-to umpire or to look for a date?” she writes.
Despite these incidents, Postema felt she was gaining credibility and a reputation as a good umpire. She was invited to umpire home plate for the 44th Annual Hall of Fame Game between the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves. She had also been sent to Colombia in 1985 and Puerto Rico in 1986 to umpire local games, and was invited to umpire the Venezuelan all-star game in 1987.
”Usually, if you get sent to a winter ball league out of the country, it means that you are a prospect” for the majors, she explains.
But even while she gained ground, she says the harrassment never died out. While umpiring a spring-training game in 1989 between the Atlanta Braves and the University of Georgia, Postema was discussing ground rules with Georgia`s coach and Braves manager Chuck Tanner, when Tanner turned to her and asked her if she wanted a kiss. She shrugged the comment off, but the incident led to more unwanted publicity for Postema.
”There were 30 journalists on the field because I am working home plate,” recalls Postema, pointing out that her publicity value never seemed to fade. ”They are all standing around with cameras and pads, which made Chuck Tanner nervous. He didn`t know what to say, so he comes out with this ignorant line. Here I am, I`ve been an umpire for 13 years, I`m trying to make it to the major leagues. After 13 years, do you think they could separate the gender from the uniform?”
Postema says that she was forced to recognize that even though she had earned respect as an umpire, she had to keep proving herself.
”I could work 50 games and not make a mistake. But in the next game, if I made a mistake, they would say a woman can`t umpire. I thought, `I can umpire, but are they going to let me umpire?` ”
And her problems were not confined to the players and managers. The other umpires never really adjusted to working with a woman, says Postema. ”When I was crew chief (head umpire), if my partner got into trouble on the field it was up to me to get him out of that trouble. But my partners resented a woman helping them. The ballplayers would say, `He`s a man, he can handle it. We don`t want to talk to you.` So I was damned if I did and damned if I didn`t, because then they would would say, `Look, she isn`t helping her partners out.` ”And my partners never felt comfortable when I stepped in. I could see it in their faces. They couldn`t separate the umpire from the sex.”
Despite the difficulties, Postema says that umpiring suits her. ”I love to umpire, I love the challenge of it and I am good at it. I also like the lifestyle. Lots of times when I was ready to throw it in, I thought, `I`ll go out the next day and umpire and if it is just unbearable, that`s it.` But something happened and I`d have a great game the next day. Or nothing happened and I`d get my confidence back and say, `This is the easiest job in the world.` ”
Postema also says that the skills needed for umpiring-good eyesight, a knowledge of the rules, experience in handling tough calls-have nothing to do with gender.
”There is nothing a woman can`t do. I`m proof of that,” she says.
Which are some of the reasons why, when she was released in 1989, Postema filed charges of sexual discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When her suit was rejected, she decided to pursue a civil lawsuit. Postema`s discrimination suit was rejected because the EEOC found no just cause for the case, according to Dan Shulman, Postema`s current attorney.
The EEOC`s findings are not admissible evidence in Postema`s civil case, he said.
Postema says that even if she doesn`t get to umpire again, it is important to try to bring equality into baseball for the women who will come after her. She says she made a mistake by trying to disassociate herself from feminism and the women`s movement. Wanting to make it to the major leagues through her own talents and skills-and feeling that she would have a better chance if she didn`t make waves-Postema refused the support of the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups while she was umpiring.
In the last chapter of her book, she describes the shock of recognition she got when reading an interview in the Orange County Register with a girl who plays on a high school boys` varsity baseball team. In the interview, the girl insists that she isn`t a feminist, isn`t out to prove anything and is only doing it for the love of the game.
Postema recognized herself in that interview and says she realized the fallacy in that kind of thinking.
”How could she not be a feminist? She had invaded an all-male sport and yet acted as if it didn`t matter,” Postema writes. ”She should have said,
`Yes, I`m a feminist, but I also love baseball and I realize that the only reason I`m able to play on a boys` team is because of the strides made by other women.”
Postema says she has learned that ”you can`t break down male-built barriers by pretending they don`t exist. There is no such thing as quietly slipping into baseball. I`m living proof of that,” she writes.
