Umpire Diary

I'm a week into the Winter League with my umpiring gig. I thought I might start posting notes on the experience this year; we'll see if it remains interesting enough to continue as the year progresses. But for now, some bits and pieces...

• Firstly, unlike prior winter league seasons, it's not just me and basically two other guys vying for shifts. Everyone wants hours now, even though it's 39 degrees and wet out there. Hard to argue with that, everyone needs extra dough in the age of the Felon47 crash-and-burn economy. But it's disappointing to me because I'm getting two shifts a week, which translates to four or five games. I'd rather have three, or six or seven games; I could use that extra hundred bucks a week and I would get to see my favorite players more often.
• Speaking of favorites, last night I got to see some, including boku no ichiban suki na senshu, who generously provided me with hot cocoa and baked goods. She's awesome. (She also homered with a fly ball that hit the foul line and evaded the left fielder. Sugoi.) The evening prior I had another fave team, called Pitch, Please!, and razzed the Orioles fan wearing the Jim Palmer jersey for striking out and thus batting like a pitcher. Which, unfair, as Jim Palmer had 13 extra-base hits in his 19-year career, which is likely 13 more than any of us on the softball field could manage in the bigs. Anyway, great to see Megan, Joel, Wyatt, Ray, Aidan, Owen, Emma, "Oil Can" Boyd, and the rest of the gang from Sunday and Monday evenings.
• Last Wednesday night's action I don't remember much of, because that shift was dominated by my having to call paramedics to the scene. A gal playing third base took a line drive to the face. It was pretty scary (mostly for her, there was panic for a bit) and very bloody, as many facial lacerations can be. It was severe enough that the paramedics decided it was more than they could handle and they called a "real" ambulance and had her taken to Harborview. Fortunately, I rarely have to call for medical help; I think this was the fifth time(?) in however many years I've been doing this, and I would like for it to be the only time this year. Yesterday afternoon while at the league office I asked if we'd heard from anyone on her team as to her status and no one had followed up! Holy crap, someone dropped the ball there.
• Weird for winter league, I've already had three teams I didn't know, including two that were what we call "indy teams," people that sign up as individuals and are thrown together, many of whom haven't played much softball in their lives. Generally, these are fun groups because they signed up to be social rather than be competitive, and even if they play like they could only ever aspire to the relative success of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, they have fun doing it. Winter league has historically been near-exclusively populated by the die-hards, the teams that sign up all the time and have been around for years, so it's strange to have so many newbies. I can't recall the last winter I had to give the Opening Day Speech more than once, but I've given it three times already.
• The day after my first shift I was seriously feeling my age, as my legs were ridiculously sore. Shows just how sedentary my "off-season" was. Get fitter, you lazy bum.
• Sunday was rainy and unpleasant, which for games at Capitol Hill is actually a good thing in the sense that few other people are using the park. So there was no BINGO! this week:
  

  

No new shifts until Sunday. Stupid economy making people want my hours. Alas.