of Fame umpire Doug Harvey passed away, his wife, Joy, told MLB.com's Barry Bloom. He died on Saturday afternoon of natural causes at 87.
Harvey was the ninth umpire elected to the Hall of Fame and one of the final Major League umpires who never attended an umpiring school. Over his 31 years in baseball, spent entirely in the National League, Harvey worked 4,673 games, which was the third most for any umpire at the time of his retirement in 1992.
Inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2010, Harvey umpired five World Series, nine NL Championship Series and six All-Star Games. He served as a crew chief for 18 years.
Harvey began umpiring for a living after his father's suggestion and worked games in the Class C Sunset League at 19. Eventually he would umpire in San Diego in a grueling five-month, 155-game schedule before making it to the professional ranks.
"I remember that while watching Don Larsen throw his perfect game on TV, I told the guys with me that I was going to go into professional umpiring, and someday they would be watching me on TV," Harvey said in his Hall of Fame speech. "They laughed me out of the room. Eleven years later, they were watching me on TV, working my World Series plate job."
Harvey was known for his silver hair that grayed in his 30s, and his style was hard to miss. His methodical-yet-authoritative signals and presence earned him the nickname "God" from players.
Doug Harvey spent all 31 of his years in the National League.
"You always respected him because he came out to his job and [did it] with a lot of class," Joe Torre, a Hall of Fame manager who became the first player Harvey ejected, said after Harvey retired in 1992. "He was very consistent, and that's the highest compliment you can pay anybody."
Harvey was named the second-greatest umpire in history by the Society for American Baseball Research in 1999, and Referee magazine named him among the 52 most influential figures in the history of sports officiating in 2007.
 Ben Weinrib MLB.com
 

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