{"id":261165,"date":"2025-10-30T17:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T17:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/261165\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T17:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T17:12:11","slug":"without-him-the-game-doesnt-go-on-cleveland-mourns-ballpark-legend-jack-efta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/261165\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Without him, the game doesn\u2019t go on\u2019: Cleveland mourns ballpark legend Jack Efta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"articleLabel__link\" class=\"articleLabel__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/guardians\/\" title=\"Navigate to Guardians\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Guardians<\/a>Updated: Oct. 30, 2025, 1:07 p.m.|Published: Oct. 30, 2025, 12:49 p.m.<img fetchpriority=\"high\" loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"sync\" alt=\"Jack Efta\" class=\"hero-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/MAV4JPTHVJEK7IVB5VRPYWHMRI.jpg\"\/>Jack Efta served as the umpires-room attendant at Progressive Field from 1995 to 2019. His many duties included coating baseballs with mud.Marc Bona, cleveland.com<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"44XPUT7LMFHUTC25R65CSTYXZI\">CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 The baseball world lost one of its essential behind-the-scenes architects this week when Jack Efta, the longtime umpire room attendant at Progressive Field, passed away at 72 after battling lymphoma.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"75HIQLRG3ZFNHOZS3M3XNG2L7M\">While casual fans might never have known his name, Efta represented the invisible backbone of baseball operations \u2013 those critical figures who make the game possible without ever stepping into the spotlight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--center skimlinks\">If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advancelocal.com\/advancelocalUserAgreement\/user-agreement.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advancelocal.com\/advancelocalUserAgreement\/privacy-policy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GuardiansUpdated: Oct. 30, 2025, 1:07 p.m.|Published: Oct. 30, 2025, 12:49 p.m.Jack Efta served as the umpires-room attendant at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-261165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}