Me (in blue) stalling for time while I decide whether it's a ball or a strike.
The recent controversy over the perfect game in Detroit that wasn’t and the umpire’s missed call that caused it brought to mind just how hard it is to be an umpire. I know this because in 1988, while working for a show on TBS called “The Coors Sports Page,” I did a feature story on an umpire school in Florida.
The place was run by Harry Wendelstedt, the veteran umpire. The same Harry W. who incurred the wrath of a 15 year-old (me) by making what I, in my teenage wisdom, deemed a hideously bad call against my favorite team. I mean, I was watching it on a 19-inch TV and it was obviously a flawed call. Harry was three feet away. How could he possibly have missed it? Now, twenty years later, I was riding around Ormond Beach, Florida with Harry and explaining why he was wrong in 1968. He explained that he wasn’t and, since he was the umpire, he had the final word.
Besides, when I got the gear on and took the field to see what’s so hard about being an umpire, I found out. And I’m guessing Harry really did make the right call in 1968. Probably.
I didn’t get an umpiring job out of this piece, of course, but it did win me a Georgia Emmy. The funny thing is, it beat out a feature about some reporter who documented his own heart surgery. Was that the right call? What am I, an umpire?