Anyone who doubts that Pam Postema is a strong person should take a close look — at her picture and her story. In fact, the pose shown here and in a similar — more revealing — photo in the June 1992 issue of GQ magazine, was her idea. It’s intended as a demonstration of her strength. She wants the world to know that even if Baseball has stripped away her right to wear a pro umpire’s shirt, it has not stripped away her strong desire to work in the major leagues.
As I watched her stride across the elegant lobby of Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel, with her overweight, publisher-assigned escort hustling to keep step, I realized that she literally turned heads. Sure, some people looked because they always look at a blond woman, especially one dressed completely in black. Others noticed a graceful woman in her late 30’s, prettier than plain but short of gorgeous (a description that, from the tone of her book, would probably make her angry).
I think that without knowing it, people were watching the walk, not the woman walking. She carried a quiet confidence, the almost-overbearing presence common to “big time” sports officials, but rarely seen in also-rans. People do notice Pam Postema.
Since 1977, when her name first appeared in a pro baseball box score, no umpire has received even a tiny portion of the attention focused on Pam Postema.
Postema is the woman umpire who spent 13 years in the minors; who one night found a frying pan on home plate; who was kissed smack on the lips by Nashville Sounds’ manager Jack Lind before a game, and who did not throw Lind out of that game; who did eject a batboy; who decided one Florida spring day was too hot for plate shoes and missed four weeks with a broken foot.
Postema is also the woman umpire who worked home plate during the first Triple A All-Star Game; who called balls and strikes during a Hall of Fame game; who became a crew chief in Triple A baseball; who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated; who seemed destined to be the first female umpire in major league baseball.
Baseball released (fired) Postema at the end of 1989. Was she the victim of sex discrimination? Perhaps. Certainly there was discrimination by players and managers. Did that discrimination cost her her job? Possibly. Was she just another minor league umpire who peaked at the Triple A level? Also possible. Or, was she afforded special treatment by baseball — a marginal umpire given every chance, promoted in the hope that experience would teach her enough of what she needed to know to get her to the big leagues so The Game could reap a public-relations harvest? Not likely, but frankly, there’s no way to tell.
Since her release, Postema, who now lives in San Clemente, Calif., has worked as a delivery driver for Federal Express. In April 1990, she filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sexual-discrimination charges against the American League, the National League, the Triple A Alliance and Baseball Umpire Development. She has filed similar charges in federal court and is waiting for a court date. And, she has written a book.
Authors, especially new authors who need publicity to spur book sales, participate in publisher-coerced book tours. Midway through a week-long, five-city tour, Pam Postema was in Chicago and I, as Referee associate editor, was on her itinerary. As we introduced ourselves I had two distinct impressions: It was very businesslike, a lot like meeting a new partner moments before a game; and, when Pam looks at you she looks directly into your eyes. The business approach was easy to understand. But the eyes! I wondered for an instant if she had always looked at people that way, or if she learned to look straight through people when she was fighting nightly battles in the minor leagues.
You’ve Got To Have Balls To Make It In This League is the title of Pam’s book, written with Gene Wojciechowski. Her story touches briefly on her Willard, Ohio, childhood and describes in graphic, lockerroom lingo dozens of the incidents that made her career memorable. She says she “loves” the title, even though she did not make it up (and won’t say who did).
The fact that she survived 13 years on the field in professional baseball is her real claim to fame — to date. But the notoriety gained in more than 2,000 minor league games will pale if she ever sets an umpiring foot on a major league diamond. That remains her goal. Given her pending lawsuit and the continuing “protect individuals’ rights at all costs” posture of the federal courts, it really could happen. Meanwhile, the book has renewed interest in her career and brought attention to the suit.
“I like my book,” she said in Chicago. “It has my voice.” It also has her vocabulary, the language of pro baseball, which punctuates several Postema quotes and many of the italicized book excerpts that follow. (Portions have been edited — for brevity — by Referee.) But before we talked about any of the umpire-manager onfield facials from her minor league days, I wondered why the book revealed so little about Pam’s childhood and only a little about her personal life. “I wanted to write a book about my experiences as an umpire,” she told me. “I didn’t want to write a book about my personal life because I’m a private person. And plus, for 13 years that was my life.”
The Early Years
I’m convinced you can’t understand her drive to reach major league baseball without knowing more about her. A little about the first 13 years of Pam’s life, from her book, introduces a seemingly typical tomboy with a rebel streak:
There weren’t many girls my age in the neighborhood, which was one of the reasons I started hanging around my brother. I know it sounds stupid, but when I was about six years old, I decided I wanted my very own football uniform, complete with helmet. Willard is about 60 miles from Cleveland, so naturally, we were Browns’ fans and naturally I had to have a uniform that resembled the ones the Browns wore.
My parents, who were probably beginning to wonder what sort of daughter they had on their hands, bought the uniform. Not long after that, I was playing in the backyard when another kid ripped part of the jersey. I must have cried for 10 minutes before my mom came out, took me inside and sewed the jersey back up. Another time, while making a tackle on some kid, I split the helmet right down the middle. That would probably explain a few brain-wave problems, eh?…
At one point, I thought about trying to play for one of the Willard Little League boys’ (baseball) teams. My dad even offered to sign me up, although I’m sure some of the stuffed shirts in town would have objected. In the end, I decided it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Looking back, I should have done it. The stuffed shirts would have never known what hit them.
Pam is the youngest of three children. Her parents divorced when she was 16. She survived high school in the late 60’s but had no interest in college, preferring to “be different.” Willard offered a series of manual-labor jobs, no careers. In the farm fields Pam picked onions and cleaned celery; three factory jobs convinced her assembly-line work was not a life. Next came low-budget travel and food-franchise work with Taco Bell, Howard Johnson’s and Red Lobster providing the “highlights.”
Turning Pro
By the summer of 1976, Pam was a 22-year-old Florida waitress with no particular direction to her life. It was her mother who read a story about Christine Wren, a woman umpire in the Midwest (Class A) League, and suggested Pam try umpiring. Several letters and a face-to-face meeting with former umpire Al Somers later, Pam went to Somers’ Umpire School (now Harry Wendelstedt’s School). In June 1977, Gulf Coast (Rookie) League president George MacDonald had her working her first pro game:
What happened… was like a dream. I couldn’t miss a pitch. It was as if the ball were the size of a melon…. Both pitchers were throwing strikes the whole game, which was supposed to be unusual for a rookie league…. I knew MacDonald was there. I knew there was pressure. I could have blown an obvious call. I could have had an argument with a player or manager, overreacted and then dumped the guy. (That’s what we call throwing someone out of the game.) I could have made a fool out of myself. But I didn’t. I kicked ass. Even if it was just for one game — and an easy game at that — I made it. I survived.
It wasn’t long before the dream gave way to reality. Any new umpire struggles to control games and players and managers, but few umpires carry the “baggage” of womanhood. Ballplayers are frustrated when an umpire refuses to back down. With Pam it was worse: In an argument with her, the player or manager had to back down before a woman or be ejected. Plenty refused to back down; so did she. “The more the ballplayers said, ‘Get out of the game; you’re a woman, you can’t do this!’ the more I said, ‘I’ll show you. I can do this!’”
Baseball has been full of conflicts for Postema. After talking with her and (twice) reading her book carefully, I’m convinced many of her conflicts have been internal. For example, her approach to partners. Here’s how her book describes dealing with partners in the minors:
I went out of my way to make the season tolerable. I always figured it was my job to get along with my partner. I didn’t want to be a thorn in anyone’s side, and I certainly didn’t want them to say, “Jeez, I had to work with the woman this year.” So when it was time to buy beers after a game, I paid for more than my share.
Now, telling me what it would be like to work in the big leagues with a court-ordered job, she says: “I don’t have to pamper anybody’s ego anymore. I don’t have to try to make it so my partners will work with me. I couldn’t care less about my partners now. I’m out there to umpire and I’m out there to work in the major leagues.”
Raising the Feminist Flag
Feminist issues are another conflict. She resolutely refused to raise the E.R.A. banner while she was in the minor leagues. Looking back, she says: “I didn’t want to make it by having those organizations push, push, push until the people were forced into having (a woman umpire). I wanted to do it on my own. I was determined that if I wasn’t good enough to be a major league umpire then I didn’t want to be one.”
If I had to do it all over again — and I’m not sure I would — I’d make plenty of changes. First of all, I would have said I was an absolute and certified feminist. I would have made so much noise that baseball would have had to cover its ears…. I would have enlisted all the help I could get. N.O.W., the E.R.A. people….
In some respects, my job would have been tougher had I come right out and announced my true feminist beliefs…. I’m guessing the shit factor from the fans, the players, the managers, the reporters and baseball management would have increased tenfold. But in a way, things might have been easier too. No longer would I have had to massage and baby the massive egos of my umpiring partners.
Of course, baseball itself is conflict. Teams in conflict, umpires working to control conflict. Conflict dominates Pam’s description of what baseball is about. It was the one time her eyes drifted from mine. She lost focus, as if she forgot I was there. She looked far away, as if recalling one of those hot summer nights, the air heavy with sweat and the smell of beer and ballpark food.
“It’s not that romantic Field of Dreams that (W.P.) Kinsela has in mind in his book. To me, he’s got a completely different aspect of the game than I have. I’ve got the real game on the field. You just have to be out there on the field or behind home plate to really realize… it’s the real world down there. You have to control it. You have to always be on top of everything.”
Big League Spring Training
Pam stayed on top of things well enough for six seasons to progress to Triple A ball in 1983, then to crew chief assignments. By the time she got to spring training in 1985, she was assigned a handful of American League exhibition games, primarily to give Dick Butler, then A.L. supervisor of umpires, an opportunity to see her work around big league players. It was a logical step in the career progression of an umpire prospect, but it was an eye-opening few days for Pam:
Of the handful of games I did, I can honestly say I did well, but not well enough to deserve a big league offer. I knew how to call a game, how to interpret the rules… that sort of stuff. But I didn’t know how to handle situations as well as the big league umpires did. As much as I hated to admit it, I could see the differences in the way a big league umpire controlled the flow of a game compared with the way I did. I could dump everybody in sight if I had to, but that’s not handling a situation, is it? I could tell you had to be more diplomatic in the major leagues. Fans paid their money to see big-name ballplayers play, not to watch the umpires monopolize the game.
Her next “big chance” before a major league supervisor was in July 1986, when Marty Springstead, new A.L. umps’ boss, was in Phoenix to observe Pam, Jerry Layne and Chuck Meriwether. Pam feels that night ended her chances for a job in the A.L. She was sick, but with Springstead in town, she decided to work the game anyway:
About an hour before the game started, I took some cold and flu pills…. By the first pitch, I was a zombie out there. Whatever they put in those pills almost knocked me out…. I was thinking, “Jesus Christ, I’ve got pneumonia and Springstead’s going to think I’m a terrible umpire.”
Gawd, was I awful that night. A ball was hit to right field and I quit running on the play much too early. The ball could have gone under a fence or something and where would I have been? About 50 yards away, wheezing and coughing. As it was, I’m sure I looked as if I were just wandering out there.
I didn’t belong on the field that game…. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there, go back to the hotel and get some sleep. One problem: Springstead wanted to go get a couple of beers after the game. Well, I couldn’t turn down the American League supervisor of umpires, so I went. Later, during a lull in the conversation, Springstead turned to me and said, “You know, you should have gone all the way out on that line drive to right.”
Springstead was an ex-umpire; he knew when someone had made a horseshit play.
Even though she’d mentally written herself off the A.L. list of umpire prospects, Pam got another, even better opportunity in 1988. Ed Vargo, National League umps’ supervisor, assigned her to a full schedule of major league spring training games. Vargo also spent time with her during the 1987 winter season, adjusting her plate stance. N.L. president Bart Giamatti informed reporters she would get a long, serious look from the senior circuit.
The combination of top talent, big-league-spring-styled pressure, news media attention and the new “Vargo” stance more than Pam could handle. As the 1988 spring drew to a close, her confidence was down:
Every day I would return from work and check my messages, just in case Vargo or Giamatti had called. They had to make a decision soon, and to be honest, I didn’t like my chances. Except for a couple of games behind the plate, I felt as if I wasn’t doing too well. I still couldn’t get the hang of Vargo’s style and I was running out of time.
Locking Horns With Vargo
The call never came and Pam went back to the minors for 1988. A full schedule of major league games in spring training 1989 was another disappointment. Then, in the middle of the 1989 season, what should have been a career highlight, working the plate in Buffalo, N.Y., for the first Triple A All-Star Game, televised on ESPN, turned out to be the beginning of the end.
Remember that Vargo had spent long hours adjusting Pam’s plate stance. The problem was, she didn’t like his adjustments. In fact, after trying to make the change she gave up and returned to her old stance. That was obvious when Vargo saw a videotape of the All-Star Game:
“I saw that tape,” he said on the phone a few days later, “and you’re not working my style. I want you to work my style. If you’re not going to work my style, then you’re not going to work in the National League. If you’re not going to do as I say, then I don’t want you in my league.”….
F—ing Vargo. I had had a good game that night in Buffalo. But he insisted that I had missed a bunch of low pitches. Well, I hadn’t, and unless you’re standing three inches behind the catcher, watching those pitches zip past the plate like I had, you shouldn’t say a thing….
Imagine (his) nerve, though: “His league.” That’s right, The Ed F—ing Vargo National League. Still, I could sense that Vargo didn’t think I appreciated what he had done for me, which, to be honest, was true. So far, he had screwed up my umpiring style, hurt my confidence, made me and the other young umpires look like fools by ordering us to call high pitches strikes….
A New Attitude
The 1989 season was her last in the minors. Her federal suit is pending. She wants a jury trial. “I firmly believe,” she says, her eyes boring in, “that if I wasn’t a woman I would have been in the major leagues right now. That’s why I filed the lawsuit…. I’m not saying that I’m the only umpire who never made it up to the big leagues and who had big league ability. What I’m saying is that I’m the only one who didn’t make it because of my sex.”
I left the interview convinced her perseverance is from a very real passion for baseball. But I wonder if her passion is for the game or for the “three hours of work a day and travel” job.
She says that since being released, she has not seen a baseball game in person. She has not umpired in three years. But she says she feels tempted once in a while: When she passes a game, she’d like to check to see if they need another umpire, “but I haven’t yet. It’s not like I don’t miss umpiring because I miss umpiring. I don’t miss the jerks and assholes in baseball, but I miss the job. I miss the traveling.”
I have the distinct impression that Pam Postema has spent a lifetime playing roles: Pre-teen tomboy with a football uniform because there weren’t many girls in her neighborhood; field worker because there weren’t good jobs available; strict non-feminist because she just wanted to be another umpire, working her way to the majors. If all that’s accurate, her book foreshadows her next role:
My whole career I said I was doing things for myself. But starting now, I’m determined to get back in baseball and do it for every f—ing woman in the world. I don’t care. To me, it isn’t about being a big league umpire anymore. I’m past that. If I somehow manage to force my way into the big leagues, great — I’d love to show those assholes that they were wrong about me. But if I don’t make it, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
The new Postema couldn’t care less about baseball and all that America’s pastime shit. What I care about now is equality. Instead of being one of those mild-mannered types, I’m going to be one of those raging, over-the-top kind of feminists, and you know how they can be, kind of crazy. Crazy Pam.
Pam Postema File
Age, hometown: Born April 4, 1954; grew up in Willard, Ohio. Now lives in San Clemente, Calif. (about 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles).
Occupation: Since being released from baseball, has been a delivery driver for Federal Express.
Pro baseball umpiring: In 1977, attended Al Somers’ Umpire School, Daytona Beach, Fla. Minor league umpire, 1977-89: Gulf Coast League (Rookie, 1977-78), Florida State League (Long A, 1979-80), Texas League (Double A, 1981-82), Pacific Coast League (Triple A, 1983-86), American Association (1987-88), Triple A Alliance (1989). Released after 1989 season.
Legal matters: In April 1990, filed sexual-discrimination complaint with U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming she was dismissed as an umpire on the basis of her gender. After investigation, EEOC rejected her claim. Later, she filed a still-pending gender-bias lawsuit vs. American and National leagues.
Her book: Concurrent with the start of the 1992 baseball season, her book was published by Simon & Schuster. Titled You’ve Got To Have Balls To Make It In This League, it was co-authored by Gene Wojciechowski.
Previously in Referee: Features appeared in the 8/86 and 7/90 issues.
Photo: Bob Messina
