Ria Cortesio is determined to be the first female umpire in the majors, where few jobs are ever open.
By CANDACE RONDEAUX
Published April 7, 2003
PORT ST. LUCIE - Ria Cortesio's right hand tenses into a fist the instant the ball leaves the pitcher's fingers. The ball lands in the catcher's mitt with the searing slap of leather on leather. She bolts upright from a deep crouch, lean and tall behind home plate, index finger knifing the humid spring air like a bayonet.
STR-I-I-I-KE!
Cortesio's guttural call tears through the thick gauze of March rain clouds hovering over the Mets' minor-league field like buckshot through goose down.
She is not the first female umpire to try her hand at calling balls and strikes for the big boys, but she is the first kung-fu-fighting, tap-dancing Greek to get behind home plate. And judging from her authoritative strike call and swift rise up the minor leagues, she may be the first woman to make it to the big leagues.
A student of Shaolin kung fu, Cortesio relies on her martial-arts training to punch up her calls. She credits that, and years of tap-dancing lessons, with keeping her in shape and on balance.
"That helps to keep you looking like an umpire rather than a ballerina," Cortesio said.
Cortesio's fierce athleticism and no-nonsense home-plate philosophy have also helped secure her spot near the top of the minor leagues' competitive umpiring heap. But the 26-year-old blond from Rock Island, Ill., doubts she'll make it to the majors soon.
"There hasn't been a big-league job open in two years. Most of the umpires in the major leagues are still young. They get three weeks' vacation. Those guys aren't going anywhere," Cortesio said.
Why would they? The average starting salary for major-league umpires is about $80,000. Pay can run up to $250,000 after a few years. An umpire who officiates at the World Series can earn up to $300,000 a year. Cortesio is just one of 225 minor-league umpires living out of a suitcase six months a year for little more than $2,000 a month, plus expenses. She is just one of the hungry, hankering after one of the 68 major-league jobs.
The history of umpires in professional baseball is far from illustrious. Before their labor disputes with the National and American leagues in the late '90s, umpires were poorly paid and regularly treated to saliva showers from angry managers. But female umpires endured sexist comments and much worse abuse over the years.
Other women have umpired in the minor leagues. Before Cortesio, there was Pam Postema, who spent 13 years working her way up before her Triple-A contract was abruptly rescinded in 1989. Postema filed a sex discrimination lawsuit in 1991 that was later settled. Bernice Gera, Christine Wren and Theresa Cox gave professional umpiring a whirl but never came close to breaking Postema's record tenure.
Like Postema and others, Cortesio has taken all manner of hits from the boys of summer along the way. Some of the hits have been figurative, but more have been literal. New York Mets pitcher Al Leiter is one of many baseball bigs who have fouled a ball her way.
"He's a pitcher, you know, so it was no big deal. I didn't have the heart to tell him it didn't hurt," she said.
Cortesio regularly sports bruises the size and color of a lemon. A fast ball to the hip or a slider to the kneecap are all in a day's work. She's not complaining, though.
"I get paid to run around a baseball field and yell at people all day. It doesn't get any better than that," Cortesio said.
Nor does it get any more surreal than having baseball's biggest blowhard trying to knock you down a notch in public after a game. Last year, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner tried but failed to put a dent in the minor leagues' Kevlar queen. It started after Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, rehabbing from an arm injury, gave up some runs while she was at the plate at the Yankees' Legends Field in Tampa. "Nothing against females, but I mean for Roger I think she was probably as excited as anyone in the stands," Steinbrenner said after the game.
The comment led to a frenzy of e-mails and phone calls from curious reporters and even a few of Cortesio's long-lost friends.
"He was really making excuses for why Clemens gave up a couple of runs," Cortesio said "The whole situation was bizarre. What in the world is Steinbrenner, some big-league owner, making comments about a minor-league umpire for?"
A graduate of Houston's Rice University, she learned her trade at the notoriously tough Jim Evans Umpire Academy in Kissimmee. The academy's five-week-long winter program is run like a boot camp, teaching would-be umpires everything from how to call strikes to how to catch heat from maniac managers. Just a few years after graduating from ump school, Cortesio became the academy's first female instructor.
She caught the baseball bug in northwestern Illinois, where homers grow on cornstalks and the hum of sandlot games competes with the roar of katydids every summer. She learned the difference between a fastball and a changeup while playing ball with her cousins in her grandfather's front yard, where "home plate was a big old tree."
By the time she was 16, she was a well-known fixture at the Quad City River Bandits' minor-league games just across the Iowa-Illinois border. She and her cousins regularly sought out players and umpires in the stadium parking lot after the games.
"One of the umpires took me out to lunch, explained all the rules and told me what he did to earn a living," Cortesio said. "And that was it. I said, "I could do that."'
She had just finished college when she signed as an umpire for the Pioneer League shortly after completing umpire camp in 1998. From there, she went on to the Class-A Midwest League, then the Advanced Class-A Florida State League. This season, Cortesio will move up to Class AA play in the Southern League, two steps from umpiring big-league games.
"My knees and back are really looking forward to Double-A games," Cortesio said, laughing.
The step up from Class A to Class AA means there will be three umpires on the field rather than two, and Cortesio hopes that will take some of the ache out of the work. Her protective gear - face mask, shin gards, chest protector and side sack of balls - weighs 30 pounds, roughly one-fifth her body weight.
"Sometimes I'm running around out there and I feel like I've got lead in my butt," she said.
Mike Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation, the group charged with training, hiring and firing minor-league umpires, said the move up is well-deserved.
"Ria's doing really well," Fitzpatrick said. "The average fan doesn't realize the training it takes and how good these people have to be just to get a job in the minor leagues. They have to be in the top 10 percent of their class to reach the upper levels of the minor leagues."
Cortesio's success also has inspired newcomers. Shanna Kook, a young Toronto native with killer calls, was a protege of Cortesio's at the Jim Evans Umpire Academy and has signed with the Pioneer League, which starts in mid June. Kook is also a student of martial arts, but her specialty is tae kwon do.
"There's different things we have to do to sell ourselves as umpires out there, and that's one of the things we both do," Cortesio said.
She hopes her climb will help smooth the way for others, too.
"If Shanna has it easier than I did, then that's wonderful," Cortesio said. "I had it easier because of Pam (Postema). If it gets better and better for women, then that's good."
- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Candace Rondeaux can be reached at (727) 445-4182.
[Last modified April 4, 2003, 14:48:31]
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