Local umpire legend Jim Perry went the distance in courageous battle
Longtime umpire, Jim Perry, officiates during an American Legion game at Bill Doenges Memorial Stadium several years ago. Perry, 67, passed away on Christmas Day after a long battle with dementia.
BECKY BURCH/Bartlesville Area Sports
By Mike Tupa
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
(Note: Becky Burch also contributed to this story.)
“Every mornin' at the mine you could see him arrive
He stood six-foot-six and weight 245
Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip
And everybody knew ya didn’t give no lip to big John.”
(Song by Jimmy Dean, 1961)
Replace the name with Jim, reconfigure the physical size and make it a baseball field instead of a mine and you could have a mirror of former umpire Jim Perry.
For nearly three decades Jim Perry called balls and strikes with the best of them — perhaps better than any of them — in Oklahoma high school, college and American Legion Baseball.
“The first thing that comes to my mind was that Jim was a professional,” said Bartlesville American Legion Baseball coach John Pannell. “When Jim took the field you knew you had a great umpire like that calling your game.”
Although health problems coaxed Perry away from umpiring a few years ago, this week he played his final inning of life by passing away on Christmas Day.
Perry was the ultimate force of intensity when the game was live. He took his job as serious as a cardiovascular surgeon.
But in-between innings — or away from the field — his heart wrapped itself around others in need of a boost.
That was the case whether someone had just lost a beloved pet or was far away from the home table.
Former Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise chief photographer — and current Bartlesville Area Sports website photographer, writer and site manager Becky Burch remembered Perry’s compassion during a very difficult weekend.
“During the 2012 Glen Winget Tournament, he comforted me on the day my beloved Chihuahua Tinks suddenly died. I didn’t want to be at the games but (Perry) made it bearable.”
Pannell’s association with Perry went back to Pannell’s playing days in the early 1990s with the American Legion Doenges Ford Indians, when Perry would call their games.
A few years later, while he was playing college baseball in Kansas, Pannell said he moved out to play first base in one game and heard a friendly voice say, “Hello, Big John.”
Pannell turned around to see Perry, working as an umpire, standing nearby.
“He gave me a big hug,” Pannell said. “It felt like the comforts of home.”
Most Bartlesville baseball fans remember Perry as the umpire at summer Legion games — particularly the annual July Fourth Winget Tournament — where he served for many, many years as the umpire crew chief. That duty included the unenviable task of scheduling a relatively small band of umpires for anywhere from 15 to 25 games in four days, depending on the format.
Perry loved calling balls and strikes at the Winget — and he felt at home in front of the Bartlesville fans.
“Working the Winget is one of those things you put on your calendar before you put anything else on it,” he said back in 2011. “You know on the Fourth of July that’s where you’re going to be. … It’s the best two hours of the day.”
Perry could be an imposing sight in his umpire clothing, taking on an aura of a major general.
He stood straight and erect — probably taller than six-feet (but who thought to measure), short dark hair mixed with graying, a thick mustache and ardent focused eyes that could set a brick of coal on fire.
“The way he called the game with his commanding voice and body language always struck me that he should be at a higher level,” said Burch.
In fact, Perry worked on several levels including the Tulsa Drillers. He once called balls and strikes for no less an impressive baseball legend than Albert Pujols.
Jim Perry officiates a Tulsa Drillers game in Tulsa.
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Perry knew his business — and didn’t welcome any “help” from the players.
“For one thing you couldn’t argue with him,” said Pannell. “He was one of a handful of the good really few umpires. He was in charge of the game and 99.5 percent of calls would be correct.
Pannell recalled an experience with one of the greatest Bartlesville High/American Legion baseball players during the past 20 years.
“It was a game out of hand,” Pannell said. “Jim rung (the player) up on a call on the outside in order to help get the game over with. As he walked away (the player) mouthed something (a profanity) to Jim and Jim told me ‘You better get him under control.’”
Pannell went in the dugout and benched the player for the rest of that game — and for the entire next game, which greatly upset the player.
“I wanted to make sure he learned his lesson,” Pannell said. I said we don’t talk back to umpires.”
If not for Perry, Pannell might not have been able to impart such a crucial message — not only to the specific player but to the rest of the team.
Pannell also recalls an entirely different kind of player experience with Perry.
At that time Kyle Minton handled catching duties for the team.
“Early in the game Jim leaned down to (Minton) and asked, “Do you want to call this game?’ Pannell said.
Minton was confused at first, but Perry told him if Minton thought a pitch was a strike to tip the mitt up and if Minton didn’t like it to stick the mitt down and Perry would call a ball.
Perry also appreciated others that were an appendage of the action — even the media, of which he made an award-winning career for several decades with newspapers in Claremore, Owasso, Tulsa and Cushing.
“I met Jim through him umpiring games for the Doenges Ford Indians and Glen Winget Memorial Baseball Tournament,” said Burch, a full-time journalist since the late 1980s. “He worked at the Claremore Daily Progress when I met him. He took his umpiring very serious yet kept up a good humor during games as well, often speaking to people in the stands during innings or kiddlingly striking a pose for my camera.”
Perry sometimes struggled through periods with little peace, at least of the physical comforting type.
A horrific car crash in 2003 nearly took his life — and should have ended his umpiring career. As it was, it cost him the opportunity to officiate at the 2003 American Legion World Series hosted in Bartlesville.
Even though unable to participate on the field, Perry still attended the event at Bill Doenges Memorial Stadium and fulfilled his duty as umpire chief. With tears of gratitude and pleasure blurring his vision he even threw the ceremonial first pitch (to then Indians catcher Scott Eslicker).
A prognosis his ball-calling days were over was pre-mature.
For a man of lesser character, discipline and determination that might have been a case.
But a burning desire to get back into the “yard” — as he referred to a baseball field during a 2011 interview — spurred him to do what it took to return.
In fact he was back behind the plate for the 2004 Winget tourney.
In 2007 he made one of the most momentous calls in Winget history. With flood waters congregating behind the outfield wall like an angry ocean of conquest, Perry made the decision to call off the tourney after water started to seep in through the bottom of the cement walls.
Once again he graced the Winget tourney and other baseball games for many years.
Frontotemporal dementia proved to be too big a foe to earn a free pass off, according to his brother-in-law Bill Hancock. It claimed Perry’s life at age 67.
But memories of happier times remain framed in Hancock's landscape of recollections.
“Well, we got lost hiking the Blue Goose Trail in Big Bend National Park with insufficient water,” he said in a Facebook statement. “We played 90 holes of golf at the Hobart Country Club one July Sunday with insufficient beer. We camped three frigid December nights at Skipout Lake in Oklahoma’s Black Kettle National Grassland with insufficient everything.
“We played hours of baseball in the pasture next to the Perrys’ house on the edge of Hobart. He cleverly dubbed the place Cowchip Stadium.”
Perry, a three-sport athlete at Hobart High School, also officated basketball, softball and wrestling. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Officials Association Hall of Fame in 2022, according to Hancock.
It would have been a longer run if not for the medical condition against which he waged a valiant battle.
“Jim … fought an unwinnable fight for years but the dementia finally won on Christmas Day and he gained his heavenly wings,” said his wife Diana Shrader Perry in a Facebook statement. “He will be dearly missed but I know now he is pain free and swinging the golf club again and I’m sure he will be calling those balls and strikes too. Until we meet again.”
Even though his days of walking on baseball fields — at least in this mortal realm — are completed, Perry’s presence will continue to loom larger at Doenges Stadium as long as there are those to remember.
Old umpires don’t die — their throaty salutation each spring and summer of “Play Ball!” echo through the decades, long after they’ve put away the counter and hung up the mask.
As long as there is baseball, there will be Jim Perry — and the countless others that cumulatively constitute the vibrant soul of The Great American Pastime.
And there has not been or will be anyone quite as much a spark in that soul as Jim Perry.
Services are Friday (Jan. 3) at 2 p.m. at the Strode Funeral Home Chapel in Stillwater.
Jim Perry: Oct. 19, 1957-Dec. 24, 2024