Umpire diary

Last night I had a three-game umpiring shift at Cap Hill starting less than 24 hours after the five-gamer at Northacres the day before ended. Because I'm the old man of the league staff, I don't bounce back from those brutal five-gamers like the other umps do and I was thus at less-than-100% and would rather not have been working. My feet hurt before we even got going. (Though that last probably had more to do with me wearing the wrong shoes. Those need more insoles.)

Still, it wasn't a bad night. In what might be a first, the many people sprawled all over the field when I was setting up moved out of the way on their own accord, not one of them required cajoling of any kind. Then my first game featured a bunch of players I like and who were happily bantering with me and each other the whole game even though it was a lopsided affair in which the losing side only avoided a shutout with one run in the final frame. It's good that the earlier game featured those folks and wasn't close because of the usual problem of the sun setting directly in my line of sight from behind home plate; on a few pitches/plays I simply could not see. During the worst of it I only half-jokingly said to the pitchers, "I'll warn you right now, I'm just guessing on these." On one pitch I just flat out said, "I couldn't see it, so ball one. It has to be something." Apparently it was a pretty good pitch, if the reaction from the (very understanding) pitcher is anything to go by.

It occurred to me between innings that what we really need at that field is a giant tarp, maybe 60 feet wide and 20 tall, strung between the center/left-center field light poles. Preferably with a mechanized mount and a sort of pulley system and a remote control to shift it up and down as needed when the sun sets. That shouldn't be so hard to put together, right?

Game two turned out to be a mere scrimmage as the favored team only had seven players show up and thus had to forfeit. So instead we did a little mixing and matching of players to fill out two full squads and did six innings of practice; not ideal, but hey, no stakes on a playoff night means no arguments, so I'll take it.

The final game was 180º from the first, a back-and-forth affair that ended 21-19 after a reversal of fortune in the bottom of the 6th. It was also interrupted by (a) soccer shenanigans, including soccer players clumsily shoving their goal structure through the middle of our field because they couldn't maneuver it around; (b) a small child throwing a tennis ball into our outfield over and over again for his dog to fetch until someone finally found the kid's parent/supervising grownup; and (c) a dude on a scooter crossing back and forth through the field, once perhaps not knowing he was in the way, but subsequent times, apparently, just to be an asshat. We didn't finish until 11:15.

No rules or call debates last night either, unlike Sunday afternoon when I had a guy whine about the arc of pitches being somehow insufficient because of not just height but angle, which is not a thing (that's what the strike zone is for) and someone else claim that baserunners who advanced on a sacrifice fly had both left their bases too early and should have been called out. (a) I know from lots of experience that you simply cannot watch more than one baserunner at a time with a sac fly to see when they leave their respective bases, and (b) that's not how outs work. The complainer did make a proper appeal at one of the bases, but it was the one I was not paying the most attention to since it wasn't the run-scoring possibility, so when I signaled "safe" (i.e. he didn't leave early) I was less certain than had they appealed at third, but since the complaint was about both of them I knew it wasn't really based in fact so I just ignored all further protest and moved on. Don't test me on five-game days.

Today I feel much better rested and will not make the shoe mistake again, so when I go to do tonight's single game it should be smoother sailing. It also won't be at Cap Hill, so crazy antics will be at a minimum.