The Umpire Strikes Back

Here is Ron Luciano, the funniest ump ever to call balls and strikes. A huge and awesome legend who leaps and spins and shoots players with an index finger while screaming OUT OUT OUT!!! Now baseball's flamboyant fan-on-the-field comes out from behind the mask to call the game as he really sees it. There's the day the automatic umpire debuted at home plate-and struck out. The time Rod Carew stole home twice in one inning, and Earl Weaver stole second base-and took it back to the dugout. The pitch Tommy John dropped on the mound, which Luciano called a strike. And there's the fantastic phantom double play, the impossible frozen ice-ball theory, and another first, Luciano picking Harmon Killebrew off second base. From brawls to catcalls, from dugout jokes to on-the-field pratfalls to one-of-a-kind conversations with baseball's greats, Ron Luciano, the only umpire who confessed to missing calls, takes a few grand slam swings of his own. It is baseball at its best.