John “Beans” Reardon
(1897–1984)
In baseball, nobody thinks of the umpires unless a bad call behind home plate or on the bases changes the outcome of a game. Preferring to let the players be the center of attention, both major leagues discourage modern-day umpires from being too colorful or flamboyant. That wasn’t always the case, however, and one of the best examples was John “Beans” Reardon, a Taunton native who had a great career as a Major League umpire.
Born in Taunton in 1897, Reardon, though small, was a talented young player on local sand lots. He starred in one of the youth baseball leagues playing for a team called the Red Wings before leaving school to take a job at Reed & Barton Silversmiths. In 1913, when he was just 16-years old, his father, one of the most popular men in the city’s Whittenton neighborhood, died suddenly, and when his mother remarried to a California man, young Reardon faced one of the toughest decisions of his life. His mother gave him the choice of staying in Taunton or moving with her to California, and out of concern for his mother, he relocated. Even so, for the rest of his life he continued to refer to Taunton as his hometown.
In California, Reardon resumed his ball-playing career but realized that he would never make a living at it, so he took a job with the railroad and became a volunteer umpire for semi-pro teams on weekends. One day a young ball player, noting his accent, asked him where he was from. Not wanting to test the guy’s knowledge of geography, he said he was from Boston. For a little while thereafter Reardon was known as “Boston Baked Beans” around the amateur leagues, and finally that was shortened to just “Beans,” a nickname that would stay with him for life.
Reardon’s umpiring career began in earnest when he was 22-years old and in the Class B Western Canada League. “The minor leagues were rough in those days,” he said later. “You had to be tough to survive . . . The [league] president . . . told me umpires had been running out on him so fast that it was bankrupting the league’s treasury to pay their transportation home after a couple of days.”
Reardon gained valuable experience in Canada and in 1922 moved up to the Pacific Coast League, where fistfights between umpires and players — as well as between umpires and fans — were commonplace. “I had some fights,” Reardon remembered, “but I didn’t enjoy them. They just couldn’t be avoided . . . When you break in at my weight [ed., 125 lbs.], you have to be ready to fight.”
A minor league umpire during the summer, Reardon took bit parts in Hollywood movies during the off-season. He was a particular favorite of the starlet Mae West and during these years he developed many lasting friendships with show business people. Some of them tried to convince him to give up baseball and take up a career in the movies. He resisted, he said, because he knew that although it might take him years to reach the Major Leagues, it was in baseball that he would be happiest.
Reardon made it to the Major Leagues in 1926, when he appeared in his first game as a National League umpire. It was the beginning of an illustrious 24-year career. During that time he worked in five World Series as well as in three All-Star games, and he came to know the greats of the game on a first name basis as both friends and opponents. He loved Casey Stengel, Frankie Frisch and Hack Wilson; he liked Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson; and he loathed Leo Durocher and Eddie Stanky. He thought Williams was the best hitter he ever saw, and said he simply couldn’t name the best pitcher because he had seen so many greats of both leagues. One of the highlights of his career came in Pittsburgh on May 25, 1935, in a game where Reardon was the home plate umpire. That was the day that Babe Ruth, then playing for the Boston Braves, hit the final three home runs of his career. They were also the Babe’s last base hits because he retired from the game five days later.
Living in southern California, Reardon loved to bask in the sunshine while drinking beer at the racetrack with Al Jolson and other Hollywood friends. In 1946, he purchased a lucrative Budweiser Beer distributorship in Long Beach, California, and was well on his way to becoming a wealthy umpire. Baseball officials didn’t like that, nor did they care for the public perception of an umpire associating with gamblers, so Beans was told to put the best interest of the game first and to stay away from unsavory characters. He complied, but by then he was into his early fifties and had already decided that 1949 would be his last season in baseball. After officiating in his fifth World Series, and watching the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in five games, he called it a career. Earning $11,500 that year, he retired as the highest paid umpire in the game.
In addition to making baseball history in 1949, Reardon also broke the surface of popular culture when his image appeared in Norman Rockwell’s well-known painting, Bottom of the Sixth, featuring three umpires looking skyward as rain begins to fall during a ball game. In the illustration, which served as the cover of an April 1949 edition of the The Saturday Evening Post, Reardon stands between his two old friends, veteran umpires Larry Goetz and Lou Jorda. A print of the illustration, inscribed to Reardon by Rockwell, hung in the umpire’s house for the rest of his life. He called it “my favorite picture.”
After baseball, Reardon lived a long and full life. In the mid-1960s, he sold his beer business to Frank Sinatra for somewhere around a million dollars. He went to the ballpark whenever he felt like it and cheered for the umpires; he bet on the horses whenever the spirit moved him, and he found joy in reminiscing with old friends about his colorful life in the big leagues. He was 86-years old when he died in July 1984.
In a future blog post we’ll look at the career of Hall-of-Famer Mickey Cochrane, one of the greatest Major League catchers of all-time, and a native of Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
