ROBERT PRICE: He was a pioneering Black umpire, but he also a brother gone too soon | Robert Price | bakersfield.com

2022-05-21 22:54:24 By : Ms. bella Wang

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Death took Art Williams from his devoted younger brother more than 40 years ago, but Audie Williams, pictured, has been with his older brother every step of the way since.

San Francisco Giants catcher Marc Hill, left, has a few words for umpire Art Williams, center, following a first-inning play at the plate when Williams called Rick Monday safe on a close play at San Francisco, July 4, 1977. Art became the first Black umpire in Major League Baseball’s National League in 1972, and the second overall, walking onto a big-league diamond six years after another Black man, Emmett Ashford, first donned the nondescript blue of an American League umpire.

Audie Williams’ wife of 57 years, Dodie, encouraged Audie to work on the book about his brother, Art Williams, as did their daughters Maria and Tresa.

Robert Price is a journalist for KGET-TV. His column appears here on Sundays; the views expressed are his own. Reach him at robertprice@kget.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz.

Death took Art Williams from his devoted younger brother more than 40 years ago, but Audie Williams, pictured, has been with his older brother every step of the way since.

San Francisco Giants catcher Marc Hill, left, has a few words for umpire Art Williams, center, following a first-inning play at the plate when Williams called Rick Monday safe on a close play at San Francisco, July 4, 1977. Art became the first Black umpire in Major League Baseball’s National League in 1972, and the second overall, walking onto a big-league diamond six years after another Black man, Emmett Ashford, first donned the nondescript blue of an American League umpire.

Audie Williams’ wife of 57 years, Dodie, encouraged Audie to work on the book about his brother, Art Williams, as did their daughters Maria and Tresa.

The gift box had a half-dozen cotton balls still wrapped in their botanical husks, a straight-off-the-presses paperback book and a plastic, wallet-sized greeting card.

“Thank you,” the card reads in part, “... for all you continue to do.”

It was addressed “to my brother Audie” from “your brother Art.”

Death took Art Williams from his devoted younger brother more than 40 years ago, but Audie Williams has been with his older brother every step of the way since. Audie was with him in 1972, when Art became the first Black umpire in Major League Baseball’s National League, and the second overall, walking onto a big-league diamond six years after another Black man, Emmett Ashford, first donned the nondescript blue of an American League umpire.

Audie was with his brother in 1979, too, when Art died on an operating table at the age of 44.

How Art Williams ascended that pinnacle of achievement, and how he was prematurely forced back down, is compelling stuff worthy of a Hollywood film. But the story Audie tells in his new book isn’t so much about baseball or n-words hurled from ballpark grandstands as it is about perseverance, focus and faith.

One of Audie Willams’ granddaughters, Lauryn Slaughter, assembled the items for that gift box on behalf of her late great-uncle. There were the cotton balls, symbolizing the blistering agricultural fields of Arkansas and Kern County, where Art’s dreams took flight, where his back and leg muscles grew strong enough to propel him toward those dreams. There was her grandfather's book, soon to be available on Amazon and in local bookstores: “Unbelievable! The Life Journey of Art Williams, Baseball’s First Black National League Umpire.” And there was the plastic thank you card Art surely would’ve delivered to Audie personally if he’d been able.

Twenty years ago, Audie decided it was time to put his admiration on paper but the project languished until a few months ago, when Audie got an unexpected push.

Documentary filmmaker Ed Bartel of Atlanta had seen KGET’s Emmy-nominated, February 2021 story on Art Williams and was so inspired he came to Bakersfield in mid-January to tell Williams’ story again in greater detail. Upon learning of the unfinished book, Bartel and his wife convinced Audie to get to work and complete the project. Audie’s wife of 57 years, Dodie, encouraged him as well, as did their daughters Maria and Tresa.

But the book Audie wrote about Art isn’t just about baseball or race relations in America, which would qualify as worthy, defining themes. It’s about the character of one man and his too-short life of achievement and setback. It’s about his challenging childhood and difficult, identity-forging youth.

Art, the fifth of seven children (Audie was the seventh), was born in Arkansas to farmworker parents, and he picked cotton himself practically before he could read. His parents would place him on their cotton sack and drag him along behind as they moved down the rows. When he was 4, Art hopped off his parents’ sack and started picking cotton himself, and by the time he was a teen, Art was picking 400 pounds of cotton a day.

The family moved back and forth between Arkansas and Bakersfield in the early years of Art’s life, but by the time Audie came along they were Californians. More settled than at any previous time in his life, Art blossomed as a man and as an athlete. He took an unusual path to a most unusual profession.

Audie remembers the message board at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium that night in September 1972, just before the first pitch: "Welcome Art Williams.” It touched him deeply.

The three-man crew that worked the Dodgers’ 3-2 extra inning victory over the Padres was in fact an all-Bakersfield crew — with Williams, Bob Engel and Hall-of-Fame crew chief Doug Harvey, whose wife’s family lived in Bakersfield.

And from that day until the end of the 1977 season, Art Williams had the honor and the burden of being the NL’s only Black umpire.

He hadn’t set out to be an umpire. He started out as a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher for the minor league Bakersfield Indians, and in 1953 became the first Black player drafted by the Detroit Tigers.

But he was handled poorly by his coaches — in one case, throwing every inning of a 16-inning game, something no coach would allow today — and permanently damaged his elbow.

After three unsatisfying years in the minor leagues, Williams quit baseball and took a job in the Bakersfield sanitation department, eventually rising to supervisor. But in 1968, his friend Engel convinced him to give umpiring a try. With wife Shirley’s support, he attended Major League Baseball’s Umpire Academy in St. Petersburg, Fla., where 200 applicants were vying for 30 jobs. Williams got one of them — and took a pay cut.

And it was off to the northern Rockies and the Single-A Pioneer League. It was here that Williams first really heard the catcalls, the n-words. But he kept his head down and at midseason was promoted to the Double-A Texas League.

At the conclusion of his second year at the Triple-A level he went home to Bakersfield where, no sooner had he walked in the door, the phone rang.

His son, Art Williams Jr., home on leave from the Navy, answered. It was Fred Fleigg, secretary treasurer of the National League.

“He said, ‘Well, Art Jr., tell your dad that he’s not going to the PCL All Star Game in Hawaii,'” recalled Art Jr., who lives in Sacramento. “He’s going to Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, and congratulations on becoming the first Black umpire in the National League.'”

Williams became a celebrity of sorts.

“People would just — shoom! — gather around him,” Audie remembered.

He performed well enough to be selected to the umpiring crew for the 1975 National League Championship Series between the Reds and the Pirates.

He heard criticism for being too timid — odd for an athletically built man 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds.

But he stood his ground often enough — ejecting players and coaches 20 times over a five-year span, including Cincinnati Reds Manager Sparky Anderson three times and, on one occasion, a coach with whom he shared unique notoriety.

Larry Doby had been the first Black player in the American League and the second in Major League Baseball behind Jackie Robinson, who played in the National League. Robinson is the one best remembered today — despite Doby’s having integrated AL stadiums that Robinson never visited. As the New York Times put it in Doby’s 2003 obituary, “In glorifying those who are first, the second is often forgotten.” Art Williams, who followed Emmett Ashford, knew all about that.

It all came to an end for Williams after the 1977 season — the National League declined to renew his contract for reasons never completely made clear. Williams suspected a one-Black-umpire quota system; a new Black umpire was slated to move up the following year.

Bakersfield’s George Culver, who pitched for six major league teams over 10 years, said the abrupt end of his umpiring career hurt Williams badly.

“It just broke his heart when he got fired like that,” Culver said.

Ashford himself told one sportswriter he thought it might have been a performance issue associated with Williams’ too-fast ascent through the minor leagues.

Williams returned to Bakersfield and took a job driving a bus for Golden Empire Transit, the regional transit agency.

He lasted barely a year. In late 1978, he started having headaches and seizures and it turned out he had developed a tumor on his pituitary gland. He didn’t survive the brain surgery. He was just 44.

Art Williams was good for baseball, even if baseball wasn’t necessarily always good to Art Williams. You would have never known it talking to him, though. Like those other Black pioneers of baseball — Emmett Ashford, Larry Doby and Jackie Robinson — it wasn’t about the struggles associated with race — once they yelled “play ball,” it was about the integrity of the game.

His little brother Audie, 81 next month and the last surviving sibling of seven, would add this about his brother: Every day was about integrity, period.

Robert Price’s column appears here Sundays. Reach him at RobertPrice@KGET.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz. The opinions expressed are his own.

Robert Price is a journalist for KGET-TV. His column appears here on Sundays; the views expressed are his own. Reach him at robertprice@kget.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz.

Positive Cases Among Kern Residents: 245,450

Recovered and Presumed Recovered Residents: 240,975

Percentage of all cases that are unvaccinated: 76.38

Percentage of all hospitalizations that are unvaccinated: 83.55

Source: Kern County Public Health Services Department

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