About Joe West and Greg Bonin
Joe West
Joe West spent 46 years behind the plate. 5,460 games. More than any umpire in Major League Baseball history.
Born in Asheville, North Carolina and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, West entered the National League as an umpire in 1976. Over the next four decades he worked five World Series, multiple League Championship Series, and was on the field for some of the most memorable moments in baseball history — including Nolan Ryan’s fifth no-hitter and Willie McCovey’s 500th home run.
In 2021, West surpassed Bill Klem’s all-time record of 5,375 career games umpired. He retired that same year as the most experienced umpire the game has ever seen.
But West was never just an umpire.
Known as “Cowboy Joe,” he is a singer-songwriter who has performed at the Grand Ole Opry alongside Merle Haggard, Mickey Gilley, and Johnny Lee. He served as a pallbearer for Boxcar Willie. He released two country albums — Blue Cowboy (1987) and Diamond Dreams (2008) — and once had the Los Angeles Dodgers use his music as walk-up songs during a live MLB game.
West has described his music as “two chords and the truth. It’s simple. It tells a story.”
The same could be said of his career.
Rain Out is Joe’s latest chapter — a field drying product born from a lifetime on the diamond, trusted by MLB spring training facilities and hundreds of programs across the country.
Greg Bonin
The originator of Rain Out. The man who turned a rain delay into a problem worth solving.
Greg Bonin umpired in the National League from 1984 to 1999, then worked across both the American and National Leagues from 2000 through the end of 2001. Over an 18-year career, he umpired 1,746 Major League games.
His résumé reads like the game's biggest stages — the 1991 All-Star Game, the 1998 National League Championship Series, and two Division Series in 1996 and 1997. His time on the field ended in 2002, after a head injury ultimately forced him off the diamond.
But like Joe, Bonin was never done with the game.
Greg owns the patent on Rain Out and has spent more than 15 years helping get games back underway after rain delays — turning mud into playable dirt and getting players back where they belong.