No longer behind a mask, Eugene umpire is being recognized

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - After 31 years behind the plate as an MLB umpire, Dale Scott knows how to recognize a strike.

Throwing one is, uh, another matter.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers asked Scott to throw a ceremonial first pitch earlier this month, he was honored of course, but also a little apprehensive. His first question: Could he just hand the ball to the catcher instead?

“I emailed back and said, ’You do realize why I umpired, right? I can’t throw,’” said Scott, a Eugene native who graduated from Sheldon High in 1977.

But there he was June 8 at Dodger Stadium, throwing a pitch to longtime MLB crew chief Bill Miller. The ball arrived with no problems - a borderline strike, right on the black - and Scott greeted his former coworkers with hugs as the crowd cheered.

For Scott, 58, who worked his final game behind the plate in 2017, the spotlight is a bit surreal. Umpires never want to be the center of attention, and when they are, the crowd usually isn’t applauding. To be throwing first pitches and riding in parades has been an unexpected postscript to Scott’s MLB career.

“None of this I ever would have imagined when I got into this game,” he said.

That’s partly because, for most of his time in the majors, Scott had a secret. It was essentially an open secret, known to friends and colleagues but not by the general public.

Scott is gay, a fact he revealed publicly in 2014. He’d kept it quiet all that time because he worried that players and managers would treat him differently if they knew.

The response has been overwhelming, he said, and far different from what he imagined. Along with recognizing his MLB career, the Dodgers invited him to throw the first pitch because June 8 was their LGBT Night. The Orioles invited him to do the same thing at their Pride Night on June 27.

“You’ve got to understand, it was a constant vigil to hide my sexuality throughout my career,” said Scott, who lives in Portland with his husband, Michael Rausch. “It would have been horrifying for me to think, when I was young and in the first part of my career, that anybody had found out I was gay. It would have ruined it.”

Scott figured he had enough challenges as a young umpire trying to earn his stripes. He’d started umpiring as a teenager in Eugene, splitting time between baseball and his job as a disc jockey spinning top 40 records at KBDF-AM. A typical Friday night involved umping a baseball game at Spencer Butte Middle School, then heading to the gym to DJ a junior high dance.

“You would have some of these players look up and go, ’Wait a minute, that guy called me out on strikes today,’” Scott said. “They started calling me the umpire with the golden voice.”

After studying TV and radio at Lane Community College, Scott went on to umpiring school, which was the rite of passage for anyone hoping to reach professional baseball. He spent a season in the Northwest League before quickly climbing the ranks and earning a major league contract in 1986.

Today, umpires will spend several years going back and forth between the majors and minors before getting a full-time contract. At the time of his call-up, Scott had worked only one game in the American League.

“It was fantastic for me to get a job in the American League at the age of 26,” he said. “Quite frankly, I wasn’t ready.”

For the first year, Scott was treading water. By year No. 2, he was in over his head.

Like a pitcher attacking the hole in a hitter’s swing, players and managers can sense when an umpire is struggling. They’ll find the weakness and exploit it, as they did when they saw Scott losing his confidence.

Right before the All-Star break in 1987, Scott was summoned to a meeting with Marty Springstead, the AL’s supervisor of umpires. Scott knew he was struggling but couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Springstead wasn’t fooled. He told Scott the truth: He was performing poorly, and if things didn’t change, he’d be out of a job.

“It’s a real hit on your pride and ego and that kind of thing, but I also knew he was right,” Scott said. “Something had to change.”

Instead of going on vacation after the season, Scott went back to work. He spent time in the instructional league developing a new stance, then went to the Dominican Republic for winter ball. Those were unusual steps for an established big league umpire, but it was what Scott needed to get his career on track.

“My career just shot off after that,” he said.

Scott would go on to work three All-Star Games and three World Series, assignments reserved for the top umpires in the league. The first World Series call came in 1998, the year the Yankees swept the San Diego Padres.

Scott also worked the World Series in 2001 (Yankees and Diamondbacks) and 2004 (Red Sox and Cardinals), but those first moments on the World Series stage are what he remembers most vividly.

“In 1975, the first game I worked was like Spencer Butte at Madison, and now here I am at Yankee Stadium, Game 1 of ’98 World Series,” he said.

In 2014, Scott was interviewed for a feature in Referee magazine, a niche publication for sports officials. As part of the story, he did something that seemed innocuous at the time: He included a picture of he and Rausch together, identifying Rausch as his husband.

The two have been together more than 30 years and were married in 2013. Their relationship wasn’t a secret to MLB; Rausch was listed as Scott’s domestic partner on MLB paperwork and often sat with the wives and girlfriends of other umpires at games.

They still took steps to be discrete, such as traveling separately when Rausch joined Scott on the road. Rausch respected Scott’s choice to keep their relationship out of the public eye but eventually decided it was easier to stay home.

“Ultimately I just kind of stopped going on the road with him,” said Rausch, a graphic artist from Portland. “I understood the way it had to be and what his decision was, but after a certain point it was like, ’I don’t need to subject myself to this so much.’”

By 2014, Scott decided there was no point in hiding anymore. He didn’t intend the picture to be a grand pronouncement, just an acknowledgement of reality. But other outlets picked up the story, and soon Scott was being recognized as MLB’s first openly gay umpire.

That title wasn’t on Scott’s mind when he came out, but he said it’s been gratifying to see the response, especially from other gay umpires who aspire to work in the major leagues.

“It’s such a release and relief to have that out,” he said. “We’re just people, man. We’re living our lives like everybody else.

“I’m not trying to throw this in people’s faces. I’m just trying to let people know that, hey, this is who I am.”

Scott had intended to work a few more years before retirement, but a series of scares behind the plate altered his plans.

He suffered a concussion in 2016 when he was hit by a foul ball off the bat of Seattle’s Jean Segura. Then, in April 2017, the big one: a foul ball from Baltimore’s Mark Trumbo struck him directly in the mask, causing Scott to stumble and collapse behind the plate. He was carted off the field on a stretcher and spent the night in a Toronto hospital for evaluation.

When he found out what happened - and that Scott was going to be OK - Rausch had a sense of what was coming.

“In the back of my mind, I thought, ’I think this is it. I think this is the last time he’s going to take this,’” Rausch said.

MLB doctors told Scott that, even with the advancing knowledge of head injuries, it was impossible to predict the long-term consequences of another concussion. That, coupled with the elevated risk factors for certain hereditary diseases, compelled Scott to hang up his gear.

Scott spent the rest of 2017 on medical leave before announcing his retirement. He doesn’t miss the daily grind, but he did have one regret.

“I wish I’d had a farewell tour,” he said. “I’ve got friends all around the country in different major league cities, people who work at restaurants and bars and hotels, people I’ve known for 25 or 30 years.

“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. That’s not a big deal, but I would rather have done that than the way I went out.”

In a way, Scott is getting that now. He never wanted to be the center of attention, but after all those years wearing a mask, it’s nice to be recognized for who he is.

Even if it’s harder to throw a strike than call one.

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com