Former Major League ump from Morristown still calling ’em as he sees ’em

by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Staff Writer

It’s been more than 20 years since Al Forman called his last baseball game, but like many veterans of professional sports, he has a remarkable memory for names and events current during his career.

Forman, 78, grew up in Morristown, where he was a member of the high school’s varsity baseball and basketball teams. He returned to New Jersey last year to participate in his class’s 60th reunion.

“I was a gym rat at the [Morristown] Jewish Center,” he recalled fondly in a telephone interview. “Friday nights the place was half-full [for Shabbat services]; on the High Holy Days, they were always full.”

Forman was in no hurry to go to college upon graduation at the age of 16. After an unsuccessful attempt to join the Navy, he worked in the mailroom of Fawcett Publications and at Epstein’s, a department store in Morristown.

He eventually made his way into the Navy, serving at Virginia Beach, which led to a career in another blue suit.

“They needed a volunteer umpire for a game,” Forman said simply. Donning a catcher’s mask and chest protector and shin guards over Navy denim, he was in business.

He attended Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford for two years after his discharge in 1954, “but this umpire bug had me,” he said. He dropped out of FDU to enroll in the Al Somers Umpire School in Daytona, Fla., where he graduated fourth in a class of 120 in 1956.

Forman immediately began his career in the Class D Florida State League — then the lowest level in the minors — which played on the same fields used by the Major Leagues during spring training. “The league provided a room in each town so you didn’t have to pay for that. The big salary of $300 was divided: $150 salary and $150 expenses.”

As the saying goes, “An umpire’s lot is not a happy one.” An article in the Aug. 25, 1961, issue of Time magazine referred to “the loneliness of a man who is by necessity an outcast. Umpires and players do not mingle, fly in the same plane, or sleep in the same hotel. Their fan mail is light and invariably scathing. ‘I occasionally get birthday cards from fans,’ says the National League’s Al Forman. ‘But it’s often the same message: they hope it’s my last.’”

Like ballplayers, umpires have to make their way up the minor league ranks. After a five-year apprenticeship, Forman made his debut in “the show” on April 11, 1961. Conditions were less than ideal: the weather in Milwaukee for the game between the Braves and St. Louis Cardinals was “bone chilling.” But it got worse. “The next stop was Chicago. We were snowed out, stuck in the [Milwaukee] hotel for three days until they cleared O’Hare Airport.”

Despite working in an era and regions not known for tolerance, Forman said, “I didn’t get any grief [about his religion] until I got to the Major Leagues — only one time.” He ejected Ed Bailey, a catcher for the Cubs, after the player, upset over some of Forman’s calls behind home plate, called him a “Jew bastard.”

Forman never missed any games that were played on the High Holy Days. “I had to work,” he said. “The only one that took off was Sandy [Koufax].” Forman was on the field for some memorable Koufax games, including the lefty’s third no-hitter (June 4, 1964, against the Philadelphia Phillies) and a game with the San Francisco Giants a year later that featured one of the most notorious brawls in the history of sports, when Juan Marichal hit Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro over the head with a bat. Photographs show a shocked Koufax risking injury as he tries to break up the melee. “It was the worst thing I ever saw in baseball,” Forman said.

After leaving the majors after the 1965 season when his contract wasn’t renewed, Forman, who had an off-season job for Seagram’s, worked as a college umpire in the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania area for 16 years. He made a brief return to the majors for one game in 1978 and three more in 1979.

Forman and his family moved to Lake Hopatcong in 1967 and remained there for 15 years until they bought a vacation home in Kitty Hawk, NC. After his wife died, Forman moved to Point Harbor, NC, where he still follows baseball on his satellite dish. He keeps busy as a Rotarian and serves on the board of the local YMCA.

There’s a small but active Jewish community in his neck of the woods. Forman participated in a Passover dinner that attracted 65 celebrants. There’s also Shabbat services once a month held at a nondenominational church that Forman attends on occasion. “When there’s no baseball, I go,” he said.

The baseball bug, once it’s bit, never lets go.