umpire on September 16, 1924, when Jim Bottomley of the St. Louis Cardinals had a record 12 runs batted in. Klem had a number of nicknames amongst the players: his favorite was "The Old Arbitrator", but his jowly appearance also led to some players calling him "Catfish". Klem despised the latter name, and was notorious for ejecting players whom he caught using it. One particular incident involved a player whom Klem ejected after he caught the player drawing a picture of a catfish with his foot in the infield dirt. Klem also dismissed catcher Al López from a game after López pasted a newspaper clipping onto home plate which showed Klem clearly in error calling a play involving López. The catcher had covered the photo with dirt and waited for Klem to brush off home plate. As Klem got older, he began to experience a skin condition that he said related to his nerves. He once commented on the toll that umpiring took on him, saying, "Most baseball fans... feel that these verbal and physical public humiliations [umpires endure] go in one ear and out the other. Well, they don't. They go in one ear and go straight to the nervous system, eating away coordination, self-confidence and self-respect." Late in his life, Klem stated in interviews that he had originated the use of hand signals for umpiring calls. It was difficult to challenge Klem at the time because so many years had passed. Recent research does not yield a clear answer to the origin of hand signals, with credit often going to umpire Cy Rigler. By 1940, Klem had retired and had been replaced by future Hall of Fame umpire Al Barlick. At that time, Klem was appointed the NL's chief of umpires. The league began experimenting with four-man umpire crews in 1941 and Klem appeared in a few games that season so that those games would have four umpires. Klem held the record for most MLB games umpired for over 70 years – at his retirement in 1941, he had umpired 5,375 games, the record until 2021 when it was surpassed by Joe West. He finished his career having umpired 5,375 regular season MLB games (all in the National League), 103 postseason games (all in World Series), and two MLB All-Star Games. He had the longest career of any major league umpire (37 years) before Bruce Froemming tied that