01/25/2026
While out of town yesterday my assigner flew a single umpire 7 inning double header spring ball games at Palo Alto (Stanford) high school in the San Francisco Bay area, a 3-hour one way trip. I’m thinking with my high school season quickly approaching it is a great way to knock off the rust. I accepted the games.
When I came home at 3:30 pm, I began pulling my umpire uniforms and gear out of storage and began going through my equipment bag, and laundered uniform pants, shirts and ball bags. When they were as ready as needed, they were placed in the car for a 9:00 am departure the next morning.
Game day, I’m up at 5:30 am. It’s now 7:30 am and I’m writing a short story about what a 30-hour period in the life of an umpire is like.
It’s now 9:30 pm and I’m now back home, after driving for 6 hours (half in heavily congested bay area traffic), and 4-hours spent umpiring one-man, double-header baseball all within a 12+hour time span, all for $250.
While most everyone who has never umpired baseball might conclude, this sounds completely nuts. But for myself and many others who have umpired baseball, it's obviously not about the money. What we see is an opportunity to get better at what we do. And as the games turned out, 4 hours spent in beautiful 61-degree, warm sunshine, on a mid-winter day was phenomenal. The precious spring day weather in mid-January, the appreciative, courteous and respectful coaches, players and fans were my reward, for any suffering during the drive and the time required doing it. And this is why we umpire, because when you love what you do, the price and time required to do it is seldom a factor.
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