If you are looking for a job that pays nothing yet at the same time offers you the chance to be smacked in the face with a batted ball, I suggest you volunteer to be a Little League umpire.
No qualifications are necessary. Poor eyesight? Slow reflexes? A little rusty on some of the finer shadings of the rules of baseball, such as the difference between a ball and a strike? Not a problem.I found this out a recent November evening when I was rudely yanked out of the stands at my son's Little League game and ordered, possibly at gunpoint, to umpire.
"Why me?" I whined as they dragged me by my ankles toward the field.
"There's no one else to do it," a coach explained.
"But I've never umpired before," I pleaded as they pried my fingers off the chain link fence.
"Stop blubbering," the coach said. "You're getting my uniform all wet."
In previous Little League seasons, we had real umpires to call the games. They had chest protectors and masks and an air of authority that said, "Don't mess with me, or else."
But this season, either because of Newt Gingrich or flagging pizza sales, money was tight and we were unable to afford real umpires, meaning the job was left up to moms, dads or random derelicts rousted from the surrounding woods.
The result has been some rather - how can I put this delicately? - sucky umpiring.
One umpire dad, apparently confusing baseball with cricket, thought that the ball must bounce once before it could be called a strike. A rather sarcastic coach suggested to this ump that the kids might be better off carrying 5-irons to the plate rather than bats.
Heavens knows, I am not criticizing this man. I'm sure he's still badly shaken from the experience and does not need me to make matters worse. After all, we replacement umps operate under a tremendous disadvantage, over and above the fact that we don't know what we're doing. For one thing, because we don't have any protective gear, we have to stand behind the pitcher to call balls and strikes. Given the dim lighting, it is understandable how a pitch that skitters along the ground could be mistaken for a belt-high fastball.
Also, the replacement ump's standard uniform - shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops - does not exactly shout "authority figure" to the players, coaches, and, most especially, the parents in the stands.
My credibility was also diminished by the fact that I had an inordinate amount of trouble keeping track of balls and strikes. (Balls and strikes being relative terms given the fact that I had trouble seeing the plate.) My system was to use the fingers of my left hand for balls and my right hand for strikes. It made me look like a first-grader trying to puzzle out the sum of two plus two, but it was the best I could come up with.
My system worked OK unless I had to make a call on a runner sliding into a base. When I jerked my thumb back for "out" or spread my palms wide for "safe," I erased the ball and strike count from my fingers. If you have never been there, let me tell you that this is extremely embarrassing.
So all in all, it was a pretty traumatic experience that I wouldn't want to repeat anytime soon.
Which was why it made me so glad to hear an encouraging word from my wife when it was all over.
"If I were you," she said, "The next time they ask you to ump, I'd volunteer to work the concession stand."