Inclement weather frustrates anxious umpires

It is Wednesday of spring break and under normal conditions we all would have had at least three days of pre-season games under our belts by now here in Maine. However, the snow is finally leaving the ground, aided by the 50 mph winds and rain that have buffeted us for the last four days. We’ve had no games thus far and “the outlook isn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine” for the rest of this week into the next. Some of us have been looking at pitches during indoor batting practice at the local high school; others have been poring over their case book and rule books, looking for the justification for the right answers on their Part 2 Federation exam that was handed back last week. Still others run their Jim Evans Balk video for the umpteenth time, trying to commit to memory the pictures of what constitutes balk and what that will look like in real time. In the homes of those umpires who will do both high school and college games when the fields become playable. a dog-eared copy of Chris Jaksa’s and Rick Roder’s Rule Differences Edition of their monumenal treatise Rules of Professional Baseball, a Comprehensive Reorganization and Interpretation provides easy-to-comprehend verbage that clearly delineates the differences between the NCAA and NFHS codes.

No matter what the activity, the driving force behind them all is the same, boredom coupled with rising anxiety. We’re bored because of the same-old, same-old monotinous empty motions of waking up in the morning, checking the weather forecast, catching a bit of Mike and Mike in the Morning, all culminating in the obvious truth that there will be no games today. We’re filled with rising anxiety because we hark back to Doug Harvey’s words (I think that he is the proper person to which to attribute the sentiment) “Baseball is the only profession where we are expected to be perfect on opening day and improve from there.” Golly, wouldn’t it be great just to be given the chance to get out there to practice being perfect!

Hang in there, guys. Our day is coming. And when it does, you are going to be good. And you’ll be good not because you just lucked out. Vince Lombardi was renown for admonishing his Packers, “There is no such thing as luck. Luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet”. You are going to be good because your preparation reviewing old exams, rewinding the balk DVD, and getting Jaksa and Roder down pat will serve you to the utmost when your first and the succeeding game opportunities presents themselves. Carpe diem!