Tales from the ballfield

During my umpiring shift tonight, one of the teams playing was The Leftovers, one of my favorites to call games for (hi, Neal!). Unfortunately, they were on the adjacent field from me and I got stuck with other teams this time while fellow ump Ian got to do their game. Still, I had a fairly good group to work with on my field and things were mostly fine.

But I did have The Leftovers last week, and one of the fun things about them is that they record all their games and often do goofy things with the video. Last week's video didn't include any of the goofy stuff, but it did capture an argument between me and two players from the opposition team, the not-so-cleverly-named Blue Ballers, over a bang-bang call at home plate. (It may be useful to know that the Blue Baller pitcher had been getting on my nerves for a good while before this happened with snide remarks about ball/strike calls.) Usually when someone bitches at me about a call I can say, hey, it's not like we have video replay here. And that's true even when Neal and co. are recording, because I can't exactly ruin their video setup to check it. But, it does mean there's video to review after the fact. And in this case, I can definitively say that the call was...made. Was it right? Wrong? Even with video, I can't tell. Which is good, because it means the arguing players, who claimed (a) the call was made before the runner had reached home plate, and (b) that the runner never stepped on the plate, were both full of shit. Either way, I did a better job than C.B. Bucknor does on any given day, so stick it, Blue Ballers.

Nothing so dramatic tonight, just some embarrassment for me as I reverse-Denkingered a call at first base. I knew it right away, too, but I let it pass because the team it was against was leading by a ton of runs and I knew it wasn't going to matter. Except the other team started to come back. When they got within five I was nervous. Fortunately for me, their lead blew open again in the final inning and my botched call mattered not. Whew!