major-league season this spring — both are highly respected among their peers in professional baseball. “I’ve had an association with probably 100 or so umpires in the major leagues,” says Jack McKeon ’63, who managed five major-league teams, including the 2003 World Champion Florida Marlins. “I’d have to put Drew and Joe near the top of that group.”
Drew Coble ’75 & Joe West ’74 make the right calls BY KRISTIN SIMONETTI ’05
hen Drew Coble and Joe West crossed paths at Elon in the mid-1970s, no one could have predicted that the pair would go on to become two of the most decorated umpires in Major League Baseball in the last 30 years. Between them, Coble and West have worked 21 postseason series, including five World Series, and four All-Star Games.
The road to the majors Growing up in Graham, N.C., Coble spent hours on the baseball field. “I played Little League and absolutely fell in love with the sport,” he says. “I played as late as I could every day and every night.” He starred at catcher for the Southern Alamance High School team and was recruited by East Carolina University as well as Elon. Yet Coble, unsure whether he was ready for college, opted to enlist in the Air Force. He played on various Air Force softball and basketball teams that competed throughout the United States and internationally. The experience kept Coble in top physical shape, and when he returned to Graham following his service, Elon baseball coach Jerry Drake offered him a scholarship. Two weeks later, Coble enrolled at Elon and immediately felt at home. During his first year on campus, Coble joined the Iota Tau Kappa fraternity and met West, the quarterback of Elon’s football team. The Asheville, N.C., native was already building an impressive record on the gridiron, leading Elon to consecutive Carolinas Conference championships in 1972 and 1973, as well as a berth in the 1973 naia championship game against eventual champion Abilene Christian. “We were one of those ‘outlaw’ fraternities,” West says of itk. “Drew and I were athletes, and we became friends pretty fast.” Coble recalls one spring when West tried out for the baseball team. That didn’t sit well with football coach Shirley S. “Red” Wilson, who wanted his star quarterback at spring football practice. To satisfy his interest in baseball, West studied the rules of the game and began umpiring local high school contests. “(Joe) used to work at a store in town that I’d go into sometimes, and I would notice he’d be reading his baseball rule book,” recalls Mike Harden ’76, of Graham, N.C., a friend of Coble and West. After football season ended his senior year, West left Elon to take an umpire development course in St. Petersburg, Fla. A few months later, he went to spring training with the Detroit Tigers minor-league camp. He spent two years working his way through the minor leagues before umpiring his first major-league game in September 1976 between the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves. “I figured I could do all that major-league stuff because I’d played football in front of packed houses at Williams High School,” quips West, “but walking on the field for the first time in the major leagues, that was special.” After graduating from Elon in 1975, Coble began working for John Deere in Raleigh, N.C., before taking the advice of some friends, including West and McKeon, and attending the umpire training program in St. Petersburg. Coble earned a minor-league umpiring spot after completing the program and was called up to the al in April 1981. “Once it all hit home, I was euphoric,” Coble says of the call.
As fraternity brothers and student-athletes, Coble and West forged a friendship that has spanned more than three decades. Their bond has withstood career highs and lows, personal triumphs and tragedies, Stars of ‘The Show’ and more than a few rounds of golf. Though their career paths some- Once in the major leagues, affectionately known as “The Show” to times diverged — Coble worked in the American League, West in the players and umpires alike, it didn’t take long for Coble and West to National League; Coble retired in 1999, while West enters his 34th earn sterling reputations. 16
THE MAGAZINE OF ELON