Life Lessons From Behind the Plate

 

I did not ask for the job.

In fact, I had successfully avoided it for years.

But here I was on a hot Thursday evening trying to fiddle and fuddle with the umpire’s gear.

I was about to call balls and strikes for my son’s little league game.

Yikes!

Nervously, like someone who doesn’t quite belong, I crept behind the catcher and assumed my position at home plate. I thought about what “umpire voice” I might create. I might have even smiled at the idea that behind the COVID and umpire face masks and fashionable shin guards, I could become whoever I wanted for the next two hours.

I could be a bully umpire with a booming voice. I could be the friendly umpire who gave free advice to all within shouting distance. “Kid, make the tag this way at home plate. And by the way, when you invest, it is important to diversify your assets.”

I might torment these elementary school pitchers with a strike zone so small it would lead to temper tantrums on the mound. Or the opposite – calling a strike zone so lenient the hitters would snarl at me as I called strikes on pitches in the dirt or over their heads.

But as reality snuck in, I actually tried to do what good umpires do – stay out of the way and approach invisibility.

Around the 3^rd inning, still struggling to position my COVID and umpire facemasks, I noticed something interesting.

A perfect pitch came toward the plate. Down the middle, waist-high.

“Strike” I shouted in my best umpire voice.

I heard grumbles from batter and parents alike. These were noises of disgust, communicating something like, “Really, you called that a strike?”

I began to listen closer.

Every pitch, whether I called “ball” or “strike” and regardless of how clear the correct call was, there were those grumbles.

I quickly learned to silence this background noise, realizing there was no pitch where everyone was going to be happy with how I called it.

In a way, I wish life and work blatantly grumbled at everything I do as it did that day on the baseball diamond. It is quite liberating to know that you no longer live to please everyone around you. Behind home plate, it was clear that pleasing everyone was not possible.

And thus, even though I was there to “ump” while the little leaguers "played", now I was the one with the biggest smile of all. I might have even been the one having the most fun.

Now, if only I could get these two darn facemasks to stay on.