Bill Klem
FameRank: 4

"William Joseph Klem", born "William Joseph Klimm", known as the "Old Arbitrator" and the "father of baseball umpire (baseball)/umpires", was a National League (NL) umpire in Major League Baseball from 1905 to 1941. He worked 18 World Series, which is a major league record. Klem was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum/Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953.

If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous athletes! More Bill Klem on Wikipedia.

Your job is to umpire for the ball and not the player.

Baseball is more than a game to me, it's a religion.

There are one-hundred fifty-four games in a season and you can find one-hundred fifty-four reasons why your team should have won every one of them.

An angry player can't argue with the back of an umpire who is walking away.

The most cowardly thing in the world is blaming mistakes upon the umpires. Too many managers strut around on the field trying to manage the umpires instead of their teams.

It ain't nothin' till I call it.

The best umpired game is the game in which the fans cannot recall the umpires who worked it.

That guy in a twenty-five cent bleacher seat is as much entitled to know a call as the guy in the boxes. He can see my arm signal even if he can't hear my voice.

I told the umpires to walk back at least thirty-five feet from home plate. That reduced the arguments."