No promises to myself or anyone else how long I maintain this, but for this season, I’m officially starting out 1-for-1.
Welcome to the 2009 baseball season!
The weather in Seattle today was perfectly agreeable for a baseball game. When contrasted with the weather of the second half of March 2008, it was very much an unexpected surprise to even be considering wearing short sleeves for my season debut. Despite that optimism, however, the clouds (or haze?) managed to stifle the sun just enough in the time between leaving my house and arriving at the field a mere four miles away to make the jacket an easy, and ultimately correct, call.
Paralleling the improvement in climate conditions over my first game last year was the comfort and confidence level today. Despite it being my first game since early September and admittedly not having done nearly as much rules study as I’d have liked, I felt immediately at ease on the field. I wouldn’t say it’s quite like riding a bike, but it’s in the same vein as that sentiment. I’m conditioned to simply feel better about the world in general when the weather and circumstances tell my biological barometer than baseball is in the air. Well, being dressed to umpire on a warm and sunny day in the Pacific Northwest is about as telling as it gets.
And, to clarify, I did feel great out there today.
The game allowed me to settle in pretty comfortably. None of the several pitchers did anything remotely resembling a balk. I had maybe three close-ish plays on the bases through the seven innings, but nothing close enough to raise even the most-biased eyebrow.
My partner (we’ll use P1 from here on out) did throw me an early curve ball. With a runner on third in the top of the first inning, I settled into the C position (behind and to the right of the mound, for those of you inexplicably reading an umpire blog who aren’t umpires). P1 started giving me a subtle hand gesture to move to my left towards first base. I took a step in that direction, without really knowing why. He repeated the signal, but I just ignored it and stayed in my spot. As the first pitch was delivered, I realized he was telling me I was meant to be in the B position.
I was stunned! Had I forgotten something so basic to umpiring over the break? Is there an evaluator in the stands dialing his mobile phone telling the association how the big-shot Rookie of the Year from last year doesn’t even know where he’s meant to be? I was rapidly scanning my brain pan for what I remembered about positions. Ultimately, I decided I was pretty sure that I had taken the right spot on the field, but was a little shaken in my faith.
Breaking one of my little rules (on the first day) I went in to check with P1 to see what he had for me. As you umpires have already determined, P1 was also suffering from a little early-spring rust. He told me he was trying to signal to me that he realized his error. I told him I missed that part as I was completely trying to figure things out at that point. We had a bit of a laugh and didn’t meet up again until we were walking off the field.
My one bonehead play of the day came in the bottom of the sixth when the pitcher came in high and tight to the batter who was checking his swing, but not fast enough to get the bat out of the way of the ball, which seemed to hit the bottom of the bat and roll into fair territory. I heard from behind the plate a loud exclamation of “NO,” whereupon I was confused about what was happening because I processed the “NO” rather than excluding it from what was happening. I was in the ‘working area’ behind the mound and didn’t move other than to stand up straight and wait for P1 to make some sort of call. The pitcher alertly fielded the ball and started running toward first, at which point the first baseman figured he should probably cover the bag. P1 declared the batter “out.”
I missed my call. That was my responsibility, but I allowed what I now assume to be one of the fans from behind the fence to enter my thought process. Thankfully, it did not effect the outcome, but I will be thankful for the early-season lesson.
This reminds me that early in the game, one of the parents (I assumed it was a parent) shouted as the pitch was being delivered, “There’s a girl on the field!” Seeing how we were indeed in a public park/community center, this was certainly possible and would be a hazard to a child, I turned around to check, as I assume did several others. She then loudly said, “I was just checking!” and had a nice loud self-congratulatory laugh.
I was utterly annoyed at such an immature prank from an adult. We’ve all heard about the boy who cried wolf. Again, this is a situation where I should not really even be hearing or acknowledging noise from the fans, but when safety is involved, you can’t really be too sure. I tend to give parents the benefit of the doubt, but this was a pretty poor example to be setting. Let’s hope we don’t get any repeat performances of similar nature.
Enjoy the season!
