Tales from Behind the Plate

By Kelly:

I love all parts of the game; playing, coaching and even umpiring, well most the time I love it. I umpire Slow-Pitch adult softball men’s and co-ed and I have been doing it for about 7 years now.

Now you would think umping adults would be somewhat easy and it is most of the time but sometimes adults get a little out of hand. I have a lot of stories to tell, most of them are funny, some you would have to see to believe, and some are downright sad.

So I thought start a series called, “Tales from Behind the Plate”. I’m going to start this series with my favorite story of all time and if you know me I’m sure you have heard it before.

This was my 2^nd year umping and I was doing a Division 3 co-ed doubleheader. Division 3 is where most of the unexperienced players play and it is painful to watch if you’re someone who is an experienced player.

On this night I was umping a team that I had umped a couple times prior and they were a fun team who didn’t care if they won or lost. So one of the older ladies was batting and she hadn’t been on base all year, she made contact with the ball and made it to first. She was so excited and was jumping up and down on 1^st base.

All her team was cheering for her, it was pretty cool but the guy behind was a younger guy probably in his early 20’s. On the first pitch he saw he ripped a shot in the right field gap and took off as fast as he could. I could tell he was thinking triple out of the box because he just put his head down and was off.

In the meantime the lady at first was taking her time to 2^nd base, I mean she had never been there before so she was enjoying the scenery on the way there. At about the same time she reached 2^nd, the batter slid into 3^rd and the ball rolled into the pitcher from the cutoff.

I then walked over to the runner on 3^rd and told him he was out and he was visible upset. He was like, “What are you talking about I’m not out, the ball is at the pitcher”. So I pointed at the runner at 2^nd and told him, “You see her she’s on your team and was on 1^st when you were batting, you rounded 1^st so much you didn’t even notice her taking her sweet time. Sorry bud but you are out.”

At that point I think he realized what happened and slowly walked off the field probably embarrassed. By the time he reached his bench everyone on his team was dying from laughter and he had a smile on his face. He was a good sport about it.

It is fun stories like this that make umping worth it!!!! I hope you enjoyed it and I have lots of stories to tell.