I've Gotta Be Armed: 5 Realities Of A Little League Umpire

The fan who's most scared me so far was a guy about three times my size -- a big 350-plus-pound dad whose hand-eye-coordination-challenged son was having a particularly bad night at the plate. Naturally, the blame rested squarely on me, my soon-to-be-dead grandmother, and my hooker girlfriend. After a few innings of hearing about it, I asked him to go to his car to cool off, and I think he did.

I was working the game alone, so afterward I made sure I walked back to my car with a group of coaches. I was taking off my pads when I heard Jumbo begin lumbering over in my direction and call out to me, "Hey Blue."

This was not going to be a friendly confrontation. I quickly pretended to be having trouble taking off my chest protector, and slid one hand over into my trunk to grab an aluminum alloy baseball bat I keep in there.

Fortunately, the guy's wife had sent him over to apologize. He was just there to hug it out with little old me, but that situation could've gone way worse. Yeah, please don't think that I carry the bat because I have fantasies about smacking loudmouths in the jaw. Twenty-three states have realized that parking lot assaults on sports officials are enough of a problem that they have enacted specific legislation pertaining to attacks on us. My state is not one of them.

I'm not the most fight-ready person out there, but I know of other officials who pack heat, or at the very least carry a knife for the express purpose of self-defense. My baseball bat was the closest I'll ever get (my knife was in the front seat), but I'd have used it if I'd needed to.

Oh, and keep in mind that these umpires they're screaming at are often kids themselves. I started doing this when I was 14, and I took the state High School Athletic Association certification course a few years later (minimum age: 16). A lot of us aren't grizzled veterans used to this kind of thing; you can get this job (even with certification) with one 24-hour course and a little field work. No, they don't teach you how to defend yourself if you're jumped by a drunken dad after his 10-year-old got called out at the plate.

These guys seem to have read from some book that recommended umpiring children's sports as a prime pick-up opportunity. ("Women love a man who can make their child cry with a mere hand gesture! The chest pads make you look big and strong, like a bear!") One umpire I worked with tried to get me to observe a signal indicating that he'd noticed a really nice-looking mom in the stands. He'd pat his knees twice, and then pat his chest thrice. He'd then point to one side of the stands, and then hold up a number on his fingers, indicating on a scale of 1-10 how attractive he thought she was. Nobody would have any clue what was going on, because it looked like some stupid umpire shtick, but he wouldn't let the kids play until I'd given a response. This happened two or three separate times during the first few innings, until I guess he'd finally finished scanning the bleachers.

This was not an isolated incident. Another ump once taught me to check the coach's ring fingers while establishing ground rules before the game. No ring on a dad/coach's fingers likely indicated a divorced mom in the stands somewhere. It should be noted that I was around 15 at the time, years away from having any (realistic) thoughts about divorced moms. It's like he looked at me behind the plate and thought, "Oh yeah, we all know why that kid's here. Don't worry, there's plenty of MILF for all of us!"

What's even worse is that, thanks to both the control issues of amateur pitchers with tired arms and the lovely example set by professional ballplayers with vendettas, kids take a lot of pitches to the head. Yeah, they're wearing helmets, but this is what a typical helmet looks like on a kid:

That piece of plastic is wobbling all over the kid's skull. Parents buy helmets with the mentality of "He'll grow into it," and eventually he does (I still fit in the helmet my parents bought me in first grade), but that thing only does so much against concussion protection. I've seen kids fall to the ground from a pitch, and usually a coach just tells the kid to "Walk it off" and head to first base, which is the opposite of what you should do.

No eight-year-old can take a 40-50 mph pitch to the head and not cry at least a bit. Their pain tolerance isn't developed that high yet, so I taught myself to give brief concussion tests through tears, which is a different animal with children compared to adults. I'd ask coaches to keep the kid out for at least a full inning and give them some instructions on care so that I could monitor the kid while I officiated the damn game.

I think the worst problem here was the Mercy Rule. This will end the game if one team has, say, a 10-run lead after five innings. Umpires aren't supposed to keep track of score, but we can definitely tell when one team is really getting the shit kicked out of them (or there's, you know, a scoreboard somewhere). If it gets to be the third inning and the run limit has been met for an inning or two, you'll realize you might be able to get out of work early that day, and you might call the game accordingly.

You have to be fair, but you might give a borderline call at home plate a call of "safe!" out of a subconscious desire to reach that 10-run limit faster. It's almost nicer of you to put a team out of their misery for an afternoon rather than let one team pile it on. Hey, sometimes fairness means bending the rules a little. Just make sure you've got a weapon stashed afterward.

Isaac has seen more musical theater performances than World Series games. Follow him on Twitter or check out his blog.

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