- Weber, Bruce.
As They See 'Em.
New York: Scribner, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-7432-9411-9.
-
In what other game is a critical dimension of the playing
field determined on the fly, based upon the judgement of a single
person, not subject to contestation or review, and depending upon the
physical characteristics of a player, not to mention (although none
dare discuss it) the preferences of the arbiter? Well, that would be
baseball, where the plate umpire is required to call balls and strikes
(about 160 called in an average major league game, with an additional
127 in which the batter swung at the pitch). A fastball from a major
league pitcher, if right down the centre, takes about 11 milliseconds
to traverse the strike zone, so that's the interval the umpire has,
in the best case, to call the pitch. But big league pitchers almost
never throw pitches over the fat part of the plate for the excellent
reason that almost all hitters who have made it to the Show will knock
such a pitch out of the park. So umpires have to call an endless
series of pitches that graze the corners of the invisible strike zone,
curving, sinking, sliding, whilst making their way to the catcher's glove,
which wily catchers will quickly shift to make outside and inside
pitches appear to be over the plate.
Major league umpiring is one of the most élite occupations
in existence. At present, only sixty-eight people are full-time major
league umpires and typically only one or two replacements are hired per
year. Including minor leagues, there are fewer than 300 professional
umpires working today, and since the inception of major league baseball,
fewer than five hundred people have worked games as full-time umpires.
What's it like to pursue a career where if you do your job perfectly
you're at best invisible, but if you make an error or, even worse,
make a correct call that inflames the passion of the fans of the
team it was made against, you're the subject of vilification and
sometimes worse (what other sport has the equivalent of the
cry from the stands, “Kill the umpire!”)? In this
book, the author, a New York Times journalist, delves
into the world of baseball umpiring, attending one of the two schools
for professional umpires, following nascent umpires in their careers
in the rather sordid circumstances of Single A ball (umpires have to
drive from game to game on their own wheels—they get a mileage
allowance, but that's all; often their accommodations
qualify for my
Sleazy
Motel Roach Hammer Awards).
The author follows would-be umpires through school, the low minors,
AA and AAA ball, and the bigs, all the way to veterans and the
special pressures of the playoffs and the World Series. There are
baseball anecdotes in abundance here: bad calls, high profile games
where the umpire had to decide an impossible call, and the author's
own experience behind the plate at an intersquad game in spring
training where he first experienced the difference between play at
the major league level and everything else—the clock runs
faster. Relativity,
dude—get used to it!
You think you know the rulebook? Fine—a runner is on third
with no outs and the batter has a count of one ball and two strikes.
The runner on third tries to steal home, and whilst sliding across the
plate, is hit by the pitch, which is within the batter's strike
zone. You make the call—50,000 fans and two irritable managers
are waiting for you. What'll it be, ump? You have 150 milliseconds
to make your call before the crowd starts to boo. (The answer is at the end
of these remarks.) Bear in mind before you answer that any
major league umpire gets this right 100% of the time—it's right
there in the
rulebook
in section 6.05 (n).
Believers in “axiomatic baseball” may be dismayed at
some of the discretion documented here by umpires who adjust the
strike zone to “keep the game moving along” (encouraged
by a “pace of game” metric used by their employer to rate
them for advancement). I found the author's deliberately wrong call
in a Little League blowout game (p. 113) reprehensible, but
reasonable people may disagree.
As of January 2009, 289 people have been elected to the
Baseball Hall of Fame.
How many umpires? Exactly
eight—can
you name a single one? Umpires agree that they do their job best when
they are not noticed, but there will be those close calls where
their human judgement and perception make the difference, some of
which may be, even in this age of instant replay, disputed for
decades afterward. As one umpire said of a celebrated contentious call,
“I saw what I saw, and I called what I saw”. The author
concludes:
Baseball, I know, needs people who can not only make snap
decisions but live with them, something most people will do
only when there's no other choice. Come to think of it, the
world in general needs people who accept responsibility so
easily and so readily. We should be thankful for them.
Batter up!
Answer: The run scores, the batter is called out on strikes,
and the ball is dead. Had there been two outs, the third strike would
have ended the inning and the run would not have scored (p. 91).
August 2009 