Poised behind home plate, his masked face thrust over the catcher's left shoulder, burly (6 ft. 2 in., 210 Ibs.) Frank Dascoli, 48, seemed the epitome of the big-league baseball umpire. His gestures were flamboyant and unmistakable; his concentration was intense. His calls were sure: this season a writers' poll voted him the best ball caller in the business. Relying on his "fast thumb" (he once ejected 18 players from an exhibition game), Dascoli insisted on absolute obedience in every game he worked. But good as he was, Dascoli committed the umpire's unforgivable sin: he lost his temper in public. Fortnight ago, for calling National League President Warren Giles "incompetent and spineless," Dascoli was summarily dismissed. Explained Giles, who is also a fast man with a thumb: "The best umpire is the most inconspicuous—except when he's calling a play."
Discretion on and off the field is just one major requirement for the big-league baseball umpire, whose job ranks among the most demanding, the least appreciated and the loneliest in organized sport. Ideally, the umpire should combine the integrity of a Supreme Court justice, the physical agility of an acrobat, the endurance of Job and the imperturbability of Buddha. Before each game, he must perform such lackey's chores as "policing" the diamond and rubbing the gloss off 60 new baseballs with specially aged New Jersey creek mud that costs $12.50 a can. He must know by heart all 550 regulations in the baseball rule book. He must not only keep high-strung athletes from beating one another up, but prohibit fraternizing between the teams. He must make split-second decisions with confident finality, and he must be, or at least appear, totally immune to criticism. Says Veteran Charlie Berry, 58, of the American League: "You go into this business knowing that they'll never build a monument to you."
Boos, Bottles & Bombs. Insulting the umpire is a pastime as old as baseball itself: in organized baseball's first recorded game, in 1846, a New York Nine player named Davis was fined 6¢ for cussing the ump. Umpires have been beaned by flying pop bottles, chased out of ballparks by angry fans, assaulted by umbrella-wielding ladies, and showered with dirt and obscenity by players and managers.
Most of the 37 men in blue who patrol the majors accept insult as a matter of course—"I'd really get upset if they cheered," says the American League's Ed Runge—but few ever get used to it. "You try to rationalize," says the National League's Frank Secory, "but it's not easy. A guy in the stands shouts vilifications, and a psychiatrist says it's healthy for him—it's his safety valve. I know the guy doesn't mean me, personally, and if he saw me on the street he wouldn't know me. But it's hard to stay calm."