Once A Knight ...: May 2021

Joe West -- umpire, football star.

If you were watching Monday night's St. Louis Cardinals-at-Chicago White Sox game on ESPN, you saw a lot of umpire Joe West.

Not a pretty sight ... ever.

But the TV crew focused on Mr. West for a full inning -- and more -- because he is about to become the umpire who has called more major-league games than anyone in history.

The focus was on him Monday night because -- stationed at first base -- he was calling his 5,375th regular-season MLB game, tying Bill Klem's all-time record. Tuesday night he will break that record.

Bill Klem was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Joe West a Hall of Famer? C'mon ... be serious.

He has proven that arrogance (always) and incompetence (often) is acceptable in Major League Baseball.

You might have guessed that Joe West is not my favorite umpire. He would rank near the least favorite.

But at least as long as Angel Hernandez and C.B. Bucknor are calling games, West won't be the worst umpire in the big leagues. Nor the most arrogant; Hernandez locks that up every night he steps on the field. That, and most incompetent.

Actually, Joe West is a good umpire when he doesn't doze off and turn lazy. But when he's challenged on a call, he is insufferable, and has been for years.

He's been chosen -- in frequent managers/players polls -- as among the worst umps in the big leagues. To be fair, some voted him as among the best.

Klem umpired in the National League for 37 years, retiring in 1941.

West first umpired in the NL in 1976 and became a fulltime MLB ump in '78. His 43 years is the longest ever for an umpire.

He's worked too many World Series and league playoff games, and he's often been -- willingly -- the center of attention/controversy.

He's known as "Country Joe" or "Cowboy Joe" because, in addition to messing up baseball, he's a country-western singer-songwriter, with a couple of recorded albums.

But we don't sing his praises. No, thank you.

He's 68 and he has said that he will retire after this season. Not soon enough.

However, we have one soft spot for Joe West. Because -- of course -- he has a Shreveport connection.

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When he was a college senior, at Elon (N.C.) College, this umpire-to-be was a quarterback ... and a good one. At least, on the afternoon he played in a national championship game at Shreveport's State Fair Stadium.

It was Saturday afternoon, December 8, 1973. The NAIA national championship game.

He was not the best QB in the game, however.

Joe was Elon's alternate quarterback and he was a passing sensation once he entered the game. But his team was far behind.

Elon was the No. 1-ranked NAIA team. But No. 3-ranked Abilene Christian, with two stars who would make headlines in the NFL in the near future, routed Elon 42-14 before only 4,162 fans in a 33,000-seat stadium.

Entering the fourth quarter -- when West put on his show -- Elon was behind 28-0.

ACC -- now ACU -- was far too good because (1) its quarterback, Clint Longley, passed for 341 yards and three touchdowns in the game and (2) its star running back, freshman Wilbert Montgomery, ran for 159 yards and caught four passes for 79 yards.

You might have heard of them.

That season, before this game, Longley had passed for 2,826 yards and Montgomery had run for 1,022 yards, and combined they had accounted for 61 touchdowns.

They were NAIA All-Americans. Another NAIA All-American running back that year was Walter Payton of Jackson State. You might have heard of him, too.

Bill McIntyre and Jim McLain covered the game for The Shreveport Times. Here are a couple of items from their coverage.

So Elon was no match for an Abilene Christian program that only two years earlier had left the Southland Conference, unable to fund its scholarships that league required. The Lone Star Conference was more affordable for ACC, but it obviously had some recruiting attraction.

Longley would become a Dallas Cowboys QB, famous for his 1974 Thanksgiving Day TD heave to Drew Pearson to beat the hated Washington Redskins and infamous for his locker-room, sucker-punch of Cowboys starting QB and superhero Roger Staubach that was Clint's goodbye to the team.

Montgomery would help run the 1980 Philadelphia Eagles past the Cowboys in the NFC title game and into the Super Bowl.

And Joe West? He left football behind because he also liked baseball and found a role in it.

Many a manager and player has told him -- and told the world -- how much they dislike his umpiring. He doesn't care. He's convinced he's never missed a call.

And we can't get him off our television screen.

But, although few will remember, he had one good afternoon in Shreveport. Of course, he played on the losing side. So there.