By Dan Ronan
Dan Bellino’s phone, email and text messages never seem to stop. His schedule and life are packed full, 24/7/365. He’s been a professional umpire for more than 20 years. He’s a crew chief, taking on the added responsibilities that come with that role. He’s been married to his wife, Katie, for 20 years, and the couple has four children, three boys and one girl, ranging in ages from 11 to 18.
“Katie is my partner in all of this, and I couldn’t do it without her,” Bellino said. “She’s been with me the entire time and she is the rock that holds the family together.”
Bellino, who resides outside Chicago, is a practicing lawyer, specializing in real estate law. This past year, after serving on the MLB Umpires Association (MLBUA) board of directors, he became the union’s president, succeeding Bill Miller. For many years, he and his partners owned a medical equipment business in southern Wisconsin, providing reduced-cost MRI services for people without health insurance.
Bellino’s life and career appear to be moving at a rocket-like pace — not only in professional baseball, but it seems like in every aspect of his life — since growing up in the northern Chicago suburb of Glenview, Ill., where he was a student-athlete at the prestigious Loyola Academy. The Jesuit-run college prep high school is well-known in the Chicago area for both academics and athletics. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound Bellino was a three-sport athlete — a catcher in baseball, a wide receiver in football and a guard in basketball — before going to Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Ill. He attempted to make the basketball team as a walk-on, but it didn’t quite work out the way he planned. However, he found success by taking advantage of opportunities that came his way.
“I didn’t make the team, but the head coach, Brian Hammel, said to me, ‘I really like you as a person,’” Bellino explained. “He said I didn’t quite have the skills, but offered me a manager’s role, with a scholarship. I just wanted to make the team, but Coach Hammel said I was just a bit short on the skills to play at the D-I level.
“I loved being a manager and one of the jobs of the manager is taking care of the officials. I’d take care of their room, do whatever is necessary to make their lives easier. I started looking at things from the lens of an official. So, I started officiating high school basketball, in the IHSA (Illinois High School Association) my last two years in college. When I went to law school, my goal was to be a lawyer and referee Division I basketball.”
Do you see a trend here?
“Managers are unbelievably valuable. No one works harder than a manager,” said Hammel, now a hospital foundation executive in Los Angeles. “Dan was tremendous. After being around him for a while, you could see he had very good judgment. Dan had a pretty good pulse on the team.
“We’ve stayed in touch all these years and when he is out here, we get together and I’ve brought my family to meet him. He is a gem. I have nothing but a lot of admiration for Dan.”
Bellino also attended the prestigious University of Oxford for a semester, and he obtained his MBA from the Brennan School of Business at Dominican University in suburban Chicago.
He also worked for a law firm, Morici, Longo & Associates, and was an aide to Federal Judge Charles P. Kocoras. His terminal law school research paper tackled the controversial topic of the 1999 MLB umpire union job action. Initially, Kocoras was hesitant about Bellino’s choice of a full-time profession.
“The judge asked me, ‘Why? You’re on a great path with the law,’” Bellino said.
Like his relationship with Hammel, another opportunity came up a few years later. Halfway through his studies at the University of Chicago Law School, Bellino became friends with classmate and fellow Chicagoan Rudy Minasian. The Minasian family has a long history in MLB. Perry is the general manager of the Los Angeles Angels. Calvin is the director of clubhouse operations for the Atlanta Braves. Zack was promoted to the general manager’s position with the San Francisco Giants in 2024.
Rudy is a Chicago-area lawyer specializing, like Bellino, in real estate law. It was during a conversation with the family patriarch Zack, then the clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers, that the suggestion of attending umpire school came up.
“Rudy said to me, ‘Dan, if you like officiating, you should go to baseball umpire school,’” Bellino said. “I didn’t even know umpire school existed, and Rudy said MLB umpires have good benefits and a great salary. I was halfway through law school and I researched it, and I told my girlfriend, now my wife, Katie, and my parents and they said they’d support it, so long as I finished law school.
“Right after I finished, I went to the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School.”
Bellino had never umpired baseball and only had officiated 16-inch slow-pitch recreational softball before attending umpire school.
Still, he experienced immediate success. But there was one problem. Bellino’s law school graduation was coming up, right in the middle of the intensive, five-week umpire training program in Ormond Beach, Fla., and he had promised his family he would attend the ceremony. Bellino had a conversation with the legendary Wendelstedt, and the veteran NL umpire and crew chief encouraged him to finish what he started.
“I actually said to Harry, ‘I don’t want anyone to know that I am doing this because I don’t want people to think I’m not serious about umpiring.’ So, he kept it quiet. We didn’t tell anyone, not the instructors — Larry Vanover and Paul Nauert — and the others,” Bellino said, still surprised he pulled it off. “Even missing a few days, I got a job. I wasn’t first in the class. Then the next year, Harry called and asked me to be on the staff and teach, and I said, ‘I’m all in.’
“Harry Wendelstedt has always been one of my biggest supporters. Teaching at the school was huge, because I thought about quitting and practicing law full time after my first season, and Harry’s call changed all that.”
Bellino started his professional umpiring career in the New York-Penn League and began climbing the ladder. During the 2006 minor league umpires strike, he spent the idle time studying for the Illinois bar exam, then went back to work in the Double-A Eastern League in mid-June after the three-month work stoppage ended with a new contract.
“I was locked in to take the exam. I was studying and wasn’t paying much attention to the strike and immediately after taking the exam and passing, I was like, ‘All right, when is this strike going to end so we can get back to baseball?’” he said. “Every year I set a goal. I had high expectations to move up every year. It was hard in the minor leagues. I had gotten married, I had student loans and I was determined.”
Along the way up he also worked in the the Midwest League, the Florida State League and ultimately reached Triple-A in the Pacific Coast League (PCL). On June 25, 2008, his first MLB game was at Wrigley Field, just 14 miles from his old high school and less than a one-hour drive from his home. He worked third base when the Cubs played the Baltimore Orioles.
“Dan and I go back a long way,” said MLB umpire Phil Cuzzi, who now serves as Bellino’s No. 2 man on his crew. Cuzzi’s voice was full of admiration for his colleague. “When guys come up from Triple-A, we always joke that they’re on scholarship. One of the things we do is that the veteran guys will take care of the younger umpires. When we go out to dinner, lunch, we always take care of the check. And there were two guys, in all the time I’ve been doing this, that quietly, at dinner one night, told the waiter, ‘I’ve got the check,’ and they snuck off and paid the bill. Dan was one of those guys. It was just a kind gesture on their part to show us that they appreciate us.”
It was almost a year later, June 9, 2009, that Bellino was back in the big leagues part time, working his first plate job on a crew with Cuzzi, Tom Hallion and crew chief Jerry Crawford, this time in Chicago at Guaranteed Rate Field as the White Sox hosted the Oakland Athletics.
“When I worked that game, Judge Kocaras was one of the people in attendance,” Bellino said.
It would take three years of going up and down between the PCL and MLB, along with trips to the Arizona Fall League and winter baseball, but on March 9, 2011, Bellino got the call to join the full-time MLB staff after working 144 games as a call-up.
“I’ll never forget that date,” he said, his voice full of emotion. “I was fortunate. I got up quick. I tell Triple-A umpires when they come up, ‘When you work games in the big leagues, it’s fantastic, but if you’re on the dance floor for several years, the supervisors start counting your failures instead of your successes. Strike when the iron is hot.’ It’s hard to work 500 games without messing something up. There have been some umpires who had more than 1,000 games before getting a full-time job.”
Those who have worked with Bellino and have gotten to know him say his path to a senior leadership role in the MLB umpiring staff, and now the MLBUA, almost seem preordained. Bellino insists he never had a plan in mind.
“I’ve tried to learn everything I can from some great crew chiefs: Joe West, Larry Vanover, Brian Gorman, Jerry Crawford, Ted Barrett, Jeff Kellogg and Tom Hallion. I’ve been lucky. They’ve included me in everything. If there’s a weather situation and they were going to see the groundskeeper or the GM, I went with. I’d go to breakfast with my crew chief, and I’d ask a lot of questions,” he explained.
“If a pool reporter would come in after a game, I would sit in. On the road, I’ve been the rental car guy, the hotel guy, the reservations guy. I have good relationships with the clubhouse attendants, because I did that in college with the referees. I was raised with the approach, if you want to do something, you need to understand all of the jobs that it takes to get it done.”
Recently retired MLB umpire and crew chief Vanover had Bellino on his crew for six years, many of them as his No. 2 umpire.
“Dan is a man of integrity. I taught him at Wendelstedt’s school, and he taught with me as an instructor,” Vanover said. “You won’t find a person of higher integrity than Dan. I’ve watched him over a number of years, and he has grown into a tremendous person and an umpire. I’d walk onto a field anywhere in the world with him, and all of those traits that he has developed are what you need to be successful in this profession.
“He’s just a tremendous person. He’s a very tenacious person in everything he does. He’s got a law degree; you have to have the drive to accomplish what’s he done. Now he’s a crew chief and president of the union. It all lines up; it all makes sense.”
Twelve years after being hired as a full-time umpire, Bellino was promoted to crew chief in 2023. Now, in his 14th year on the staff, Bellino is also putting together an impressive postseason resume. He’s worked one All-Star Game, two Wild Card Series, eight Division Series, two League Championships Series, one World Series and a World Baseball Classic.
If he’s not at the ballpark, either preparing for a game or umpiring a game, Bellino can be found on the phone dealing with a union-related issue, as the union and MLB during the most recent offseason successfully negotiated a new five-year collective bargaining agreement that he said significantly raises the salary and benefits of current umpires and improves the retirement system for umpires. It also makes changes to the work rules to allow MLB to experiment and possibly implement the ABS strike zone challenge system in the future.
Bellino joined the union board as a member in 2013, eventually became an executive committee member, then eventually served as vice president before being elevated to the top role this past winter.
“It’s going to be good for the profession and it’s going to be really good for the next generation, on things like turnover, and it’s going to make sure that when guys finish their careers, they’re not going to be weighing whether they have to umpire one more year just because of financial reasons,” Bellino said of the agreement, noting the senior MLB umpires will see their salaries increase by more than $150,000 a year, getting them close to the level of NBA referees.
The senior umpires will make up to $700,000 annually with bonus money, and all umpires will also get an increase in money that MLB pays them for the use of their images on social media and other outlets. Not only veteran umpires are getting a raise, but newly hired and mid-career umpires will also see a significant pay hike. The daily per diem was increased to $640 a day, with umpires paying the majority of their expenses from that: hotels, clubhouse dues and food. Umpires also always fly first class. Bellino believes the contract is an affirmation that MLB’s executives recognize how good the umpires are.
“The office always told us that they valued us, and this is really the first time where we made significant gains and it’s a contract to build on,” he said.
Bellino’s home life northwest of Chicago is very busy. Katie, his wife of 20 years this past February, is a schoolteacher, now working part time. Their oldest son, Anthony, 18, is a high school senior and a soccer player preparing for college this fall. Grant, 16, and Andrew, 14, both play baseball, and Lucinda, 11, is a competitive cheerleader. “I’ve been stretched too thin many, many times,” Bellino admitted. “Now, I don’t take union issues home. I’m good at managing the union and we have legal counsel, but my law practice has suffered the most, but I don’t want to practice law forever.”
Grant is considering umpiring as a profession and is working travel league youth baseball, and Dan is encouraging him, but with the caveat he must finish college first.
“There will be another Bellino coming. He’s very good. He plays baseball, comes home, changes his clothes and gets his umpiring gear and he’s out there,” Dan said. “I go to his games, and I’ll hear fans and parents say this umpire is really good. But I’m just a dad, watching his son umpire and loving it. I evaluate him and help him. But with the fans, parents have no idea I’m a major league umpire. I never reveal it.”
Bellino often takes family members on the road with him whenever possible and with three MLB teams — the Cubs, White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers — all within a 90-minute drive of their suburban Chicago area home, he often has a companion with him in the car to and from the game.
Bellino is still practicing law, focusing on residential and commercial real estate, and the practice is thriving. “I was building a law practice in case baseball didn’t work out,” he explained. “Getting hired in MLB brought in a ton of business, so I brought in people to help me. I started to specialize in helping people in foreclosures, creating a niche, doing short sales, improving their credit, and I did that. It was very rewarding.
“I’ll probably go three more years, and I’ll keep my license active, but I’m not going to take on any more clients. I take on cases that I really believe in, and a lot of my work is pro bono, and I find it very rewarding. I don’t take cases for the money.”
Bellino believes in the long run his law degree and MBA are making a difference in the way he approaches the game and the success he’s experiencing.
“It did help. It lets them know I was educated, coachable and able to think on my feet, and I think it helps the most in situations, if a manager comes out to argue, a lot of times they’re not sure what they’re arguing about,” he said. “That’s where I can use my law degree the most. Baseball, MLB, likes it because they don’t have any lawyers on the umpiring staff. I’m the only one.
“I don’t regret the path I’ve chosen. Not at all. It’s a challenge. Professional umpiring is a challenge, but everything in life is.”
Dan Ronan is a Washington, D.C. journalist who is the Managing Producer/Senior Reporter at Transport Topics and a news anchor on SiriusXM Radio and all-news WTOP-FM. He is a retired NCAA baseball umpire and a small-college and high school basketball referee.
