Still no bingo

Yesterday's umpiring shift had a lot of "atmosphere," if you will. Sirens galore, dogs bounding all over the field, oblivious park-goers getting hit by fly balls, a not-really-a-traffic-accident automotive altercation. Lots going on.

Oh, including two pretty fun games, the first of which breezed along and was finished in under an hour and the latter of which took a while but ended in a come-from-behind walkoff victory for the home team when they plated five in the bottom of the 7th inning.

That second game was marred by machismo, though.

There was one guy who was being an ass pretty much the whole game. Yelling a lot, cussing out kids who deigned to kick their ball into our outfield, generally advertising his lack of serenity to all. Then when the game was over, during the handshake/high-fives between the teams, he slapped an opponent's hand so hard he wrenched the guy's shoulder and nearly started a fistfight. Fortunately, his team took charge and moved him off the field before things could escalate too much, but there was some pushing and words exchanged and general hostility being stoked, and this from someone who was on the winning side. You can bet I reported him to the league; we'll all be keeping an eye out when his team plays, keeping a pretty short leash on him. It won't take much more for him to find himself added to the league's banned list. The rest of his team is cool, though, and they promised me they'd handle the situation "in house," but I'll believe it when I see it. I mean, I know they'll try, but I've seen this kind of attitude before and I kind of doubt it's confined to the softball diamond.

Midway through the shift, we also had this as an accompaniment:

I think what happened is that the driver of the red truck deliberately bumped the back of the Prius out of impatience; not sure of it was a light-turning-green thing or what, but that's my guess. When the Prius driver naturally became concerned about being bumped from behind and didn't move on but wanted to see what was going on behind him, the truck driver lost his shit and started screaming, leaning hard on his horn, calling the other driver every cuss word he could think of. (He and the problematic softball player could be twins separated at birth.) One of the other players and I mused that the truck driver ought to just keep it up as the police station is just at the end of the block; attract their attention and he'd really learn the folly of impatience. Didn't happen, though, as the truck driver eventually just drove over the various barriers to go around the Prius, running a red light in the process. Then the Prius driver calmly looked at the back of his car, got back in, and went about his day. Way to perpetuate the stereotypes of Prius drivers and pickup truck dudes, fellas!

Anyway, on the whole it was a pretty good afternoon/evening, even though the games were playoffs and a couple of times guys got in my face about close calls at the plate. Also, for about half an hour I was looking right into the sun and had to basically guess at a few things that I could not see; I didn't take much flak for that, though. I curse the city planners who situated the fields this way.

Also, it was as close to a bingo shift as I've had yet:

All I needed was for the one spikeball group to launch one our way, but for once they were playing at a respectful distance away in deepest center field.

I'll get another chance in a few hours, though, I'm back out there tonight for three games. After which I plan on coming home to watch the Mariners play the visiting New York Metropolitans on time-delayed TV and eat an entire pizza, assuming nobody at softball spoils the M's game for me ahead of time.

Tagged Umping, Posted on June 1, 2026 at 4:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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