Mike Reilly (umpire)
American baseball umpire (born 1949)
Michael Eugene Reilly (born July 2, 1949) is an American former Major League Baseball umpire who worked in the American League from 1977 to 1999 and throughout both major leagues from 2000 to 2010. Upon Ed Montague's retirement in February 2010, Reilly became Major League Baseball's senior umpire; his 4,362 career games ranked ninth in major league history entering the 2010 season. He retired on February 23, 2011, along with fellow umpires Jerry Crawford and Chuck Meriwether.
Umpiring career
Reilly umpired in the World Series in 1984, 1992, 2002 and 2007, and in the All-Star Game in 1982, 1993, 2000, and 2010, calling balls and strikes for the last two contests. He also officiated in nine League Championship Series (1983, 1987, 1991, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008) and six Division Series (1981, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2007). He also umpired in the 1976 Caribbean World Series.
Reilly wore the uniform number 31 after the American League adopted numbers in 1980. He continued to wear the number when umpires were combined into a single staff under the supervision of Major League Baseball in 2000.
Along with Steve Palermo, Reilly was one of the first American League umpires to never use the outside chest protector. Reilly and Palermo came to the junior circuit in 1977, the year the AL mandated all new umpires on staff would have to use the inside chest protector, which had been in use in the National League for decades.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mike Reilly (umpire)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.