Three Up, Three Down

The following was written by old time Star-Telegram columnist George Dolan. I tried to research when it was written and but came up with no solid leads. It is reprinted here word for word without permission.

Three Up, Three Down by George Dolan

 That oldtimers' baseball exhibition at Arlington Stadium earlier in the summer, which attracted big-name New York Yankee stars of the past, couldn't help but remind Bob Spindle of Fort Worth of what he calls his only real claim to fame.
 Spindle used to officiate football and baseball games and even pro rasslin'. He was stationed behind home plate at an exhibition game between two Major League teams at El Paso 23 or 24 years ago.
 In the pre-game meeting, where ground rules are discussed by umpires and managers, one of the managers requested that the umpires be lenient on their calls. If the home plate umpire wouldn't be too nit-picky about calling strikes, the manager reasoned, then his batting star would have a better chance of hitting a home run or two and giving the crowd a thrill.

Thumbs-Down On Let-Up
 The umpires turned thumbs-down on that suggestion. They'd call it, they insisted, as the saw it. The second time the big batting star was at bat, Spindle recalls, he was out on a called third strike.
 "He didn't like it," Spindle says. "He kept on fussing and called me a few names, which he shouldn't have. If he hadn't used the bad language, I wouldn't have sent him to the showers, but I told him to get off the field. He went to the dugout. I told him to get out of the dugout, that he was going to the showers or this would be a called ball game."
 "(His manager) came out and said, 'I protest this,' and I said, 'You can't protest a judgement call..'" They had words, Spindle says, and the manager employed some vulgar remarks to him that the crowd could hear.
 An umpire, he explains, can let such language go if the crowd can't hear it. "When you let the crowd hear it, that's it," he says. "I told him he would have to go."
 "He said, 'You can't send me to the showers.' I said, 'Well, you'd better leave this field or your team is forfeiting this game.'" The manager left but, an inning or two later, Spindle says, the catcher started "breathing down my collar."

Catcher Next
 "Instead of the umpire breathing down the catcher's collar," says Spindle in an injured tone, "he started breathing down MY collar." The memory still wounds him. "He started fussing because I was calling some balls he thought should have been strikes and he said a few vulgar remarks to me so I told him to join his two buddies in the shower."
 So far as Spindle knows, he was the only umpire ever to throw those three out of the same game.

They were, in order,
Joe DiMaggio,
manager Casey Stengel
and Yogi Berra.


 Bob Spindle is my grandfather. He passed in 1989. I'm sure he loved this story very much, so when I had trouble finding anything else out about it online, I decided to reprint it here. He would have loved sharing this and I hope you enjoyed it.