No more blowing whistles, calling strikes for the Crawfords

A photo taken last summer at the Jersey Shore purported to show a recently retired Joe Crawford relaxing. Instead, with his toes digging at the sand, his hands throttling a chair and his seated torso arched tensely, the former NBA referee looked more like a man trying to unshackle himself.

"I had an awful time being out," Crawford, whose 39-year career as one of basketball's most recognizable officials officially ended in June, conceded recently. "I missed the action."

He's found it again, at least the action one finds as a supervisor in the NBA's office of referee operations, his job since Aug. 1. Still, when the 2016-17 season begins on Tuesday, Crawford won't be maintaining order on an NBA court, a conspicuous absence that not only has personal and professional repercussions but shutters what for 60 years had been the family business.

Since 1955 - with the exception of 1976, when his umpiring father was a new retiree and he and brother Jerry were in their final year of minor-league apprenticeship - there had always been a Delaware County Crawford making calls at the highest level of professional sports.

Shag Crawford, who died in 2007, ended his 20-year career as a National League umpire in 1975. In 2010, after 33 umpiring seasons, son Jerry retired to care for his ailing wife. Now, Joe, who likely hung around long enough to guarantee himself a spot in basketball's Hall of Fame, has whistled his last violation.

And so, with none of their children or grandchildren expressing any desire to umpire or referee, a sports tradition has ended.

"There's no one," Joe, 65, said recently. "Jerry's son has an excavating business, and he's too busy for anything else. I've got four daughters. One of them tried refereeing, but she got tired of all the [hassle] and quit."

As Joe found out this summer, withdrawing from the sports spotlight isn't easy for a Crawford.

Consistently rated among the best at their professions, blessed with genetic gifts many peers lacked, the square-jawed, hard-nosed Crawfords seemed born to officiate. Joe and Jerry inherited their father's superb eyesight, fearsome work ethic and feisty assuredness. They also got his intimidating sneer, a look capable of both igniting arguments and wordlessly stopping them.

"You can't be afraid out there," Jerry, 69, said from his St. Petersburg, Fla., home. "If you're afraid, get a dog. Sure, we were all grumpy. But you needed to be grumpy to survive. You had to be able to fight back. As a young umpire or referee, every game is a struggle. Every time you said 'ball,' they said 'strike.' Eventually they look at you and say, 'He might be grumpy, but he got the play right.' That's when you back up and say, 'Maybe now I don't have to be so grumpy.' "

Retirement should be more financially comfortable for his sons than they were for Shag, a onetime West Philadelphia milkman who never earned more than $35,000 a year. Veteran referees and umpires now earn an average of $550,000 and $350,000, respectively.

But officiating's grinding pressures and grueling travel extracted an emotional and physical price from the Crawfords. Shag battled alcohol problems before retiring prematurely. Jerry's bad back sidelined him often. And Joe needed counseling for anger issues.

"It's a tremendous profession," said Jerry, "but not an easy one."

Over the years they adapted to its changes. It used to be that you saw it, you called it and, if need be, you defended it. How officials did that was their own business. But an influx of technology and especially money has turned individuality and controversy into liabilities.

So in the NBA, where Earl Strom and Mendy Rudolph once were as colorful as any player, officials now signal violations as dispassionately as auction bidders. And most referees who, like Joe Crawford, gave as good as they took, have backed off.

"I don't know if I'd get hired today," said Joe. "I was so fiery. Today you're taught to listen, not attack. A couple of times I caused problems by, instead of ignoring a player, saying, 'Hey, what are you looking at?' Now you don't say anything. You let your employer defend your action. That's the key. It's not that you don't have courage. It's just a different time. There's more to lose. Officiating has changed like everything else. And to be honest I think it's changed for the better."

In baseball, the umpires' job has been diminished by the replay revolution, which has mitigated the urgency to get plays right and virtually eliminated those spittle-spewing arguments that were always a quirky and iconic element of the game.

"Replay is not for me," Jerry said. "I'm glad I'm out. It's replay over baseball, and that's stupid. Baseball is a game meant to be played every day. You have umpires out there. You don't have machines."

Joe's aborted retirement began after he missed the final months of his valedictory season with a bad knee. He retreated to his summer home in Ocean City, N.J., but whatever he imagined retirement to be, he never found it.

"I didn't do well. I missed being around the game," he said. "I have the NBA [TV] package, and I was watching every game, rooting for the refs."

Jerry, like his father, has tried to fill that void with golf. But only recently has he been able to play much. Most of his first six retirement years were spent nursing his wife, Carol, who died of pulmonary disease in April.

"It probably would have been more traumatic for me if Carol hadn't been sick. I was too busy to miss baseball" Jerry said. "But caring for her gave me some purpose and in that sense, I guess, it was a godsend."

Hard as it's been, both sons benefitted from witnessing their father's postcareer struggles.

In 1975, umpires' postseason assignments were rotated. When NL president Chub Feeney asked Shag, a strong union man, to replace another umpire in the World Series, he said no, a refusal that precipitated his departure.

"Him and Chub didn't hit it off," Joe said. "At the end, they wanted Dad to leave. There were some drinking problems and things like that. My father never talked about those things until the end. Then he opened up and said he was the [jerk], that the whole thing was his fault."

Shag lived 35 years in retirement. Restless and tempestuous at first, he was redeemed by golf. When he wasn't at Edgmont Country Club, he was practicing in a field near his Havertown home or, in the winters, inside his garage. An excellent player, in his 70s he scored a hole-in-one at a charity tournament, winning a new car.

"He was a passionate guy. Overly passionate," Joe said. "He was proud of what he did in baseball, and he appreciated what the game gave him. But [retirement] was hard for him. I once asked him how he did that first year away. He said, 'I felt sorry for myself at the beginning. Then I said to myself, what are you, a [baby]? You just go on.' Golf helped him do that."

Joe refereed 2,561 regular-season games and a record 374 playoff contests, including 50 in the NBA Finals. But despite that impressive resume, there were notable stumbles along the way.

A 1998 tax scandal involving airline tickets he sold and failed to report as income led to a suspension. In 2007, he had his infamous confrontation with San Antonio Spurs superstar Tim Duncan. That's when Crawford sought help for anger issues.

"A sports psychologist said I was over-passionate and that I got that from my father," Joe said. "That was our life. My brother and me would go to a Phillies game, and we'd watch [umpire] Ed Sudol. We'd hear our father talk about the profession, and we'd see how passionate he was, and it just rubbed off on us."

Now that he is teaching and supervising officials, Joe can't understand why his more reticent brother, who worked five World Series and a record 12 League Championship Series, isn't doing the same.

"It's a waste to have a guy like that not teaching umpires," he said.

Jerry was president of the Major League Umpires Association in 1999 when, as a negotiating strategy, that union's members resigned en masse. The ploy failed and though Crawford was rehired, 22 of his colleagues lost their jobs.

"My take on it," Joe said, "is that they didn't hire him because of what happened. That affected him really deeply. He came back, but lot of guys lost their jobs. He's still real close-mouthed about the whole thing."

While a retired Joe stayed hooked on basketball, Jerry has mostly abandoned baseball. Occasionally, alone at home at night, he'll watch a game - but only with the sound off.

"I don't care to listen to announcers," he said. "It's always everyone's fault but the players."

And, like his father and brother, he's comforted knowing he was good at a tough job, one that, as Joe noted, "forces you to take a lot of [criticism]."

"We were fortunate," Jerry said. "I wanted to be an ump and became one. Joe wanted to be referee and became one. I thought I was pretty good at it. No regrets. We had fun, and it showed. I loved baseball. Joe loved basketball. That love has to show. People have to know that when you have to take control, you care about it as much as they do.

"I did. And so did Joe."

ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com

@philafitz