Mugsy Thomas, 83: 'He loves his ball'

The former Seabee and semi-professional umpire flows with life, and a big part of that life is playing ball to this day.

By BRANT JAMES

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 9, 2000

BROOKSVILLE -- Ralph "Mugsy" Thomas would have loved a new softball glove for his birthday on Friday. He might have taken it outside for a lively game of catch with a neighbor, just to get it ready for his game on Tuesday.

After Alberta Thomas called him inside for birthday cake, he would blow out 83 candles before he and his wife of 59 years would probably plop on the couch to watch the Cubs game, and the television game likely wouldn't be turned off until the final out.

"Mugsy" Thomas is the most kid-like of kids at heart, in that Mickey-Rooney-in-the-early-days way.

A retired operator at an Indiana power plant, former Seabee and World War II veteran -- and semi-professional umpire for five decades -- Thomas flows with life. It flows like the stories he easily conjures, from the pick-up baseball games with New York Yankees legend Phil Rizzuto on the far-flung island of Samar, the Philippines, to the time he served Ingrid Bergman a drink at the officers club in Sitka, Alaska.

And he flows with life every Tuesday and Thursday on the Deltona Woods fields. Thomas, the oldest player in his three-team 55-and-older league, plays second base, catcher, and runs for men 20 years his junior.

Thomas' three children -- Tim, 53, Denny, 51, and Diane, 46 -- are almost eligible for his league, and he could probably run for them too.

Mugsy Thomas, who earned his nickname at age 72 for the way he contorts his face while batting, is always moving. He plans to continue.

"I'm kind of a hyper guy," said Thomas. "I was playing catch with the telphone man once and he couldn't keep up with me, and that made me feel good because he was a young guy. I've always been quick and I've been blessed not to have the arthritis. I'm going to keep moving as long as I can, because once you sit down in that chair, you're dead."

Ray Krisa, a burly New Yorker who played in the Philadelphia Phillies organization in the early 1950s, is one of Thomas' many admirers and friends on the field and at the local pool hall. He stuck Thomas with his nickname, and never misses a chance to stick his diminutive buddy with a one-liner.

"He's a little short, and I don't like short people," Krisa said. "When I go to hug them I miss. In my book, though, he gets a No. 1 star rating."

In the beginning

Ralph Thomas was born in Chicago in 1917 and grew up 35 miles from his beloved Wrigley Field in Hammond, Ind.

His high school had no baseball team in the post-Depression era, so he started playing fast-pitch softball for a local barbershop team in 1933. That team photo, along with those from most of the teams for which he has played, are squirreled in some corner of the Clover Leaf Farm home he has owned for 14 years.

Thomas was drawn into his second passion -- umpiring -- when he was 16. One of his uncles used to play fast-pitch softball on a sandlot across from his house, and young Thomas would venture over to watch. Eventually he was umpiring for $3 a game, and soon was a regular on the high school circuit.

Thomas later umpired in a local industrial league, and eventually umpired for semi-professional teams and for the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game.

"The money wasn't much, but I loved it," Thomas said. "It was $7.50 for a high school game if you did the plate, $5 for the bases."

Thomas earned his last umpire's check -- $50 -- at an American Legion doubleheader in 1984, not long after he moved to Brooksville. He remembers it vividly, and the reasons why he felt it was time to put his mask and indicator away forever.

"I thought at my age, if I make one call wrong, they say, "Hey, old man, you're too old. Look at you,' " he said. "They would probably nail my jock to the clubhouse."

The Scooter days

World War II interrupted Thomas' life from Jan. 26, 1943, until VJ Day, and he applied his boundless energy to the Seabees, building bases in the Pacific Theater. Baseball still was prominent in his thoughts, however, and he helped stage games at his training outpost in Sitka, Alaska, around rainstorms.

Thomas nearly never made it back from training before shipping out to the Philippines, as his Dutch transport ship was torpedoed by a Japanese bomber.

It was on the island of Samar where Thomas hit another of his Forest Gump-like junctions. After his unit helped build a diamond, the third baseman began sharing the left side of the infield with "Scooter" Rizzuto, a Navy seaman charged with overseeing recreation for the soldiers.

"I was umpiring one day and he saw me," Thomas said. "He liked the action on my calls -- Striiiiiiiiiiiiike one -- and he said, "Tommy' -- he always called me that -- "come to my tent.' He arranged for me and him to get $5 a game to umpire."

Rizzuto and Thomas parted company at the end of the war, and Thomas has not spoken with him since a summer afternoon at Comiskey Park in 1947.

"Phil was sitting in the dugout before the game, and there was this guy yelling at him, but he wouldn't answer him," Thomas said. "When the guy finally got quiet for a minute, I said, "Hey, Joe, you got laundry,' which was what the sisters used to say who did our laundry.

"He said, "Hey, Tommy,' and he told the usher to let me stay when he kicked the loud guy out. I'd love to talk to him again, so much I can taste it."

Back in ball

Thomas' eyes well and his throat grows hoarse when he recalls the day about a year ago when he was told he would never again play softball or drive his car. A routine test for cataracts revealed degeneration that a doctor deemed irreparable.

"I actually started crying," Thomas said. "He left the room and I followed him, and when I walked past Alberta she asked how I did. I told her I was going blind."

Thomas' wife would not let him quit. She took him to a free cataract screening by another physician and sat him down.

"I choked up in front of him," Thomas remembered. "I said, "Doc, it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to play ball anymore.'

"He said he would be the judge of that. Then he put his hand on my knee and told me I was going to play ball and drive again."

Thomas recovered from laser surgery too late to play in his customary Spring Hill league, so he latched on at Deltona, playing with many of the same former professionals he grew to love and inspire the previous 13 years.

"He loves his ball," Alberta Thomas said, "and I love it too. He just loves to be out there."

Thomas said he will play until his eyes betray him again, and then, he said, it's his turn to repay all the kindness, and all the plaques of appreciation, the local leagues have bestowed upon him.

"I owe those guys for all they did," he said. "The hall is already rented."

They probably won't need to book a date for a while.

"He'll never hang up his spikes," Krisa said. "He loves it too much."

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