A Little Off the Top: Umpiring can be a tough sell

Well, baseball season officially started Sunday night, and Opening Day took place all over the country Monday. Locally, umpires, baseball and softball coaches are also getting ready for the upcoming season.

For those of us who umpire, it's that special time of year when we dust off our bifocals, clean the wax off our earplugs, and prepare for that first game by yelling obscenities behind each other's backs to simulate real spectators.

All kidding aside, each year we take stock of where we as a collective group of umpires stand. We hold weekly training sessions to brush up on the rules, positioning and other aspects of the game, and talk about successes and failures from last year.

Did I say "failures"? I meant "challenges" …

As many of you know, local sports officials are never wrong. They just occasionally have a different opinion than you about what the correct call is.

It's these situations that try us the most — the times when we make a call that we know won't be well-received, and we have to make it anyway.

More often than not, being an umpire — or any type of sports official — involves dealing with conflict, even if you make the right call. There's a saying among umpires: You're gonna tick off half the people with every call you make.

There's a lot of truth to that.

For that reason, there is also attrition in the world of baseball umpiring. Like your local high school team in which several seniors graduated last year, we lose umpires every season, too. Sometimes they have increased time commitments at home or a change in job schedule, but sometimes they just get plain sick of the headaches inherent in the job.

The lack of umpires can make it difficult for everyone. Have you ever shown up to a baseball or softball game and they had to pull a parent out of the stands to officiate the game? Happens all the time, and it's a nightmare for the league, the umpires and most of all, that poor parent. Although scheduling problems and emergencies pop up at the last minute, when you see a parent umpiring a game, it's often because the league is simply unable to find enough people to do all the games.

[One of the most rewarding experiences I ever had as an umpire came last year when we pulled a dad out of the stands to be my base umpire during a Babe Ruth tourney. He came up to me after the game and said "I'm never going to say another thing to an umpire again, now that I know what it feels like."]

For this reason, we try to recruit people — often students — just like coaches do. We pair younger umpires with more experienced ones, and give them pointers between innings and after the game. It's a tough process, selling a kid on participating in a sport they love while getting yelled at occasionally, all for $15 for three hours.

But most of all, we encourage them. That's important when you are 17 years old, and a person three times your age is hassling you from the sidelines.

And that's the reality about getting younger kids to try umpiring, or being a basketball, football, volleyball or wrestling referee.

Getting a student to try officiating their first game isn't the tough part — it's getting them to come out for their second game that's the hard sell.

I hear it time and time again when I talk to students about officiating. One of the best wrestlers in his weight class in the county told me last winter he'd never officiate another Little Guy match-up again, after his first try. A star softball pitcher who graduated last year told me last week that umpiring a rec league game was one of the most trying experiences of her life.

Student officials say the same thing over and over — dealing with overzealous parents for about $4 an hour is a tough row to hoe. They could honestly make more money flipping burgers.

Of course, 98 percent of the parents who watch these events are well-behaved 98 percent of the time, but it's the other two percent that make you want to hang up your umpire's mask. While adult officials are considered "equal" with adults watching the game, it's 10 times tougher on a student, who often is unsure of how to react to a parent barking out "suggestions" from the stands.

Conversely, the small percentage of parents who behave like this are all too aware that it's easier to push a student around than someone their own age, and for that reason, student officials often bear the brunt more than an adult.

Students who try to officiate games usually grow up playing that game and have a basic or good understanding of the rules, but nothing prepares them for having to deal with confronting a parent.

In fact, for many well-behaved student athletes, turning around and warning a parent about their behavior is contrary to the values that have been instilled in them while playing sports — respecting authority.

As softball and baseball seasons start up around the county this month, you might see some new faces behind the plates, as a new crop of umpires decide to give it a shot. Hopefully, they will stick with it.

You'd really make their day by walking up to them after the game and thanking them for coming out and umpiring, even if they didn't make the call you wanted 100 percent of the time. And if you think you can do better, well, we're always looking for more umpires.

But I'm willing to bet you're happy just watching from the stands.