Why I ump town ball
By Tony Jones
This opinion piece first appeared in the Minnesota Star Tribune
I started umpiring baseball when I was 14. You might have seen me in 1982, riding my Schwinn Varsity bicycle through the streets of Edina with a catcher’s mask hanging from the handlebars and the old-style, outside-foam chest protector slung over my back.
Over the years I climbed the ranks of baseball officials, through Little League, then high school and American Legion, then college. In 2001 I worked a Gophers game, a bucket-list item for me. But I had two young children at home and, as much as I liked umping, I no longer had the time. So I hung up my shin guards and armored shoes and spent the next 19 years coaching my boys and watching baseball from the bleachers.
Then the pandemic happened. I’m a writer, which is a lonely profession, and COVID-19 restrictions only compounded my isolation. I reached out to my former umpire association and asked if they needed umps, and the response was immediate: “When can you start?”
Lots of guys were getting out of umping during the pandemic, especially older guys who feared getting sick, so it wasn’t hard to find used gear for sale online. And before I knew it, I was back behind the plate.
But things had changed. I’m no longer a young man. I’ve had two back surgeries and a knee surgery, and currently have a torn meniscus in the other knee and torn rotator cuffs in both shoulders. I quickly decided that I was not going to try to get back into the college ranks, nor was I going to ump high school. I was going to focus exclusively on that gem of Minnesota summers: town ball. That’s our state’s colloquial term for amateur baseball, a summer league overseen by the 101-year-old Minnesota Baseball Association.
Major League Baseball is on the All-Star break, and the Twins are meh again this year. So allow me to tell you what I love about town ball, in hopes of convincing you to visit a ballpark near you.
Players swing wood bats, meaning that instead of hearing the ping of aluminum, it’s the crack of a bat, as God intended.
I see Division III college pitchers who can throw in the mid-80s mph, and 35-year-old curveballers who make the young batters look like fools. More than once I’ve had a father-son battery (that’s baseball lingo for the pitcher and the catcher).
Speaking of catchers, they still give hand signs to their pitchers – no headband radios here. And no Automatic Ball Strike robot adjudicating the zone. Just me. So catchers have to frame pitches, which is an art.
Batters still bunt in town ball, and baserunners still steal.
The players and managers rake and chalk the diamond before the game. And after the game, one of them gets on the riding mower in the shed and drags the field with a section of cyclone fence and a beer in hand.
Speaking of beer, they’re three bucks. And the burgers are cooked over coals. I like going to Watertown, Minn., because when they pay me out of the concession-stand till at the end of the game they also hand me a pork-chop-on-a-stick. I also like going to Dundas and Gaylord and Pierz and Nisswa. And a bunch of other towns with teams and ballparks — too many to mention.
These days the town ball players and managers don’t argue much. Once in a while someone gets hot at me, but mostly they’re grateful to have an ump. If you haven’t heard, the ranks of sports officials are dwindling because it’s no fun getting yelled it.
To be sure, it’s not always fun. Being Minnesota, some games are played when it’s 48 degrees and sleeting, and others when it’s 98 degrees and 90% humidity. Last week I took a foul ball off the arm. Last year I took one in the throat.
But I’ll take those hazards of the job for a 2 p.m. game on a Sunday afternoon in a small town. Over the left field fence is a cornfield, and the town cemetery is down the right field line. Kids who run into the cemetery to retrieve foul balls get anywhere from a quarter to a buck when they return them to the concession stand, and the local business sponsoring the foul balls gets a shout-out from the PA announcer. The fans chirp at me more as the game goes on and more of those $3 beers are consumed. And the music played on the PA between innings is classic rock, as God intended.
You should c’mon out to a game in your town. Or drive an hour to a town with a ballpark and spend a Sunday afternoon with me. After the game, kids get to run the bases, and we can sit in the grass-field parking lot, have a beer, and discuss the calls I got wrong.
Tony Jones, of Edina, umpires amateur baseball around the state, and is the author of “Son of Helena,” his first novel.
