page_title: Nestor Chylak
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Nestor Chylak / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: April 7, 1977 was the 1st regular season game in Toronto Blue Jays history. Pictured are Chicago White Sox Ralph Garr (LF) and Toronto Blue Jay Rick Cerone (C). Garr batted lead-off and walked in the first ever at-bat at Exhibition Stadium. The umpire is Nestor Chylak.
context_page_description: Nestor George Chylak Jr. was an American umpire in Major League Baseball who worked in the American League from 1954 to 1978. He umpired in three ALCS, serving as crew chief in 1969 and 1973. He also called five World Series, serving as the crew chief in 1971 and 1977. He also worked in six All-Star Games: 1957, 1960, 1964, 1973 and 1978, working home plate in the second 1960 game and in 1973.
context_section_description: After a year in amateur baseball, Chylak moved into the minor leagues as a Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League umpire. He spent several more minor league seasons in the Canadian–American League, the New England League, and the Eastern League. He debuted in the major leagues in 1954.
  Chylak said that two of his greatest thrills occurred in the early to mid-1960s. In the 1960 World Series, he was umpiring when Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit the home run that allowed the Pirates to defeat the New York Yankees. He worked Sandy Koufax's final game in the 1966 World Series in which Koufax and the Dodgers faced the Baltimore Orioles and Jim Palmer.
  Chylak worked the first American League Championship Series in 1969. On June 4, 1974, he was on the field in Cleveland for "Ten Cent Beer Night". The Cleveland Indians had been struggling with low attendance figures, resulting in this promotion that attracted more than 25,000 fans to the game. Fans became unruly and incited fights with the players, sometimes pouring beer on them. Chylak declared the game a forfeit after he sustained a facial wound from being hit with a chair.
  He was the home plate umpire for the first major league game played by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1977 during a snowstorm at Exhibition Stadium.
  After retiring from the field in 1978, he became an assistant league supervisor of umpires. Chylak was in the umpire's dressing room at Comiskey Park on Disco Demolition Night, a July 12, 1979, doubleheader between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox. Between the games of the doubleheader, unruly fans rioted.  Because of damage to the field, the umpires refused to allow the second game to be played. When American League president Lee MacPhail decided the White Sox must forfeit the second game, Chylak was the one who informed White Sox owner Bill Veeck.
caption: Chylak at home plate during the inaugural game of the Toronto Blue Jays franchise. At bat is Ralph Garr of the Chicago White Sox, and catching for the Blue Jays is Rick Cerone.
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