Bethlehem's Bill Exaros was well-liked, veteran umpire with strike zone as big as his heart

As big as Bill Exaros' strike zone was, his heart was even bigger.

His friends will tell you that. Fellow umpires will tell you that. Lehigh Valley-area baseball coaches will tell you that.


Then they'll tell you how much they are going to miss him, his caring demeanor, his generosity and his fun-loving personality.

Exaros, a longtime umpire of high school, college and professional baseball, lost his battle with myelodysplatic syndromes (MDS) on Feb 14. Known by many as simply, "The Greek," Exaros was part of the first graduating class from Freedom High School in 1968 before later becoming a partner at Sigmon & Sigmon, P.C. He left behind his wife, Faye, two sons, Scott and Michael, and two grandchildren.


"I miss him now, and I'll miss him forever," said Lou Acello, Exaros' best friend, who is the National Director of the Independent Baseball Umpire Association, LLC. "I almost feel snake-bitten. I'm still kind of numb.

"He was always looking out for everybody else. He was a very unselfish man."

Exaros, 65, underwent nearly five months of chemotherapy treatments and had a bone marrow transplant in an effort to cure his MDS, a group of disorders in which the bone marrow does not produce enough healthy blood cells. Despite his lengthy hospital stays, including at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, and the discomfort and pain he was often in, Exaros never complained. It wasn't his style.

Exaros, who umpired more than 2,000 games, including minor league games at spring training, always had been the type of person who was more inclined to ask about everyone else and look for ways to help others.

When Mike Applegate, a fellow Lehigh Valley umpire, first started umping, he had no equipment. Exaros took it upon himself to give his old gear to the rookie. Not long after, Applegate's wife, Karen, was diagnosed with cancer. Exaros checked in on them both regularly.

"What struck me about him was his compassion for people," Applegate said. "He was the same way up until the time he was hospitalized. He always wanted people to improve and do their best and never fail. He always wanted to help people get better. I owe a lot to him."

Exaros never wanted anything in return, though. He wanted to hear about you and your life, and if it involved baseball at all, that was even better. He was an encyclopedia of the sport. He could rattle off stats and numbers as though he had a piece of paper in front of him. He knew accomplishments of players who many people never have heard of. But he was always open to listening to someone else's opinion about who he/she thought was the best pitcher in the game or the guy most likely to get traded at the deadline.

As knowledgeable as he was about baseball history, what he really loved was being an umpire. He started umping, just out of obligation, at a Little League game, and got sucked in. He eventually started doing high school, college and professional games. He even traveled to Florida for two to three weeks every March where he umpired everything from Division I college games to minor league spring training games to a Phillies exhibition game against Florida State.

Last year, because his MDS and treatments left him unable, Exaros didn't travel to Florida for spring training.

Acello, who had gone to Clearwater, Fla., every year with Exaros since 1996, really missed not having him there the last two years. But he has tons of photos and countless comical stories that don't begin to sum up all the fun moments they had during their 18 years of traveling and sharing living quarters in Florida.

Perhaps none is more memorable than the year Acello shaved Exaros' head. After one particularly hot, humid game in March, the hair Exaros had around the sides and back of his head was still sticking up and wild even after a shower. So when the two were headed back to their hotel, Exaros wanted to stop at CVS, prompting Acello to ask if he had a headache and needed some aspirin. Exaros simply repeated his request. He came out with a bag full of razors, shaving cream, clippers and scissors. He told Acello he was just the man to shave his head.

His longtime friend wanted no part of it.


"I told him Faye [his wife] would kill me," Acello said.

Exaros assured him he already had the green light from Faye. Convinced he was safe to proceed, Acello cut as much of the hair as he could before shaving. It did not go well, though.

"His head was bleeding," Acello said. "I said 'Greek, every time I do it, you're bleeding.' He said, 'Keep doing it. Now he's got these little pieces of toilet paper all over his head. We're laughing. He looks at himself in the mirror. He has a cigar in his mouth and a pair of Sponge Bob boxer shorts on that he got from his grandson, and he's now bald.

"Little did he know I had a camera in my hand and I started snapping pictures."

Acello uploaded the pictures and emailed them to Exaros' colleagues at Sigmon & Sigmon.

After the pair returned to their Pennsylvania homes, Acello's phone rang. It was Exaros.

"He yells, 'Man, she is pissed,'" Acello recalled. "I said, 'You lied to me, you SOB. You said it was OK.' Well, I just want you to know that I told her that you made me do it. He was laughing the whole time. And when he went to work a couple days later, they have copies of the photos I took pasted all over the office.

"He just laughed. He was great for that."

Even coaches struggled to not have a good time in the heat of battle with Exaros around. DeSales' Tim Neiman, who knew Exaros for more than two decades, said he recalled one time he was mad at a call Exaros made. The ensuing exchange changed everything.

"I came out and raised my voice a little," Neiman said. "I knew how far I could go with him. I told him, 'I've never been thrown out by a good umpire.' He said that was a great line and that he couldn't throw me out. Then he asked again, 'Did I really miss that call? I said, 'Greek, I love you but I didn't just come out here to exchange pleasantries."

"… He was perfectly placed in the game of baseball."

So perfect that Neiman, one of the most well-respected coaches in Division III baseball, is having a hard time believing he'll never see Exaros on the baseball field again.

"There's a guy who had genuine respect and love for the game and for people," Neiman said. "There are a lot of things that bother me with umps if you're arguing. Bill was far from those things. He had a lot of experience and did a lot of big games and some pro baseball and none of that ever came across. You never walked away from a game Bill was doing and didn't feel like it wasn't a good day. You were always friends with him no matter what happened between the lines. You could tell that was his makeup and character early on and he had such integrity that he carried with him."

Mandy Housenick is a freelance writer.