The baseball season is closing in on its home stretch. (Mixed sports metaphors.) The baseball season is always long with much boredom and some excitement. (Shohei is oh-mazing; Judge is airing them out; and Skenes may be a new pitching phenom.) Perhaps this should get me to reminisce about my baseball career, but that was mediocre (a generous assessment) and ended with high school. (However, I did hit a walk-off home run in my first organized game. I was twelve. I never matched that highlight. Cue Springsteen and “Glory Days.”) Instead, for some reason I am thinking about my professional baseball career, for during summers of my high school years, I umpired games for which I got paid.

My town did not have the official Little League youth baseball, but it had its own version run by the Recreation Department. It had divisions by age—nine and ten, eleven and twelve, up to eighteen.

I got the job by passing a test but not one that measured the ability to call a baseball game with any accuracy. Instead, it was like a school exam, except this one was on the rules of baseball. I went off to Joe Hauser’s, the local sporting goods store. (Hauser, known as Unser Joe, had his own amazing baseball career. You can check it out.) I bought a baseball rules book and read it a few times. I was good at tests and was confident, especially because I had been tipped off to the trick question that appeared every year. It asked what the proper call was if a line drive hit the pitching rubber and bounced back into foul territory between third and home without touching anyone. Of course, the correct answer is “Foul ball!” (Every semi-literate baseball fan knows that the distance from the pitching rubber to home plate is sixty feet six inches, but most do not know whether that is to the front or back of home plate. Even fewer know where the measurement is to the front or back or center of the pitching rubber.) Not everyone who took the exam on a spring evening (all boys, of course; I don’t know what would have happened if a girl had showed up to be an umpire) was a diligent student, but I was, and I easily got one of the open umpire slots.

In every job I have had, I have learned things. With that first job, I may have learned something about discipline and responsibility, and so on. But I certainly learned in detail about baseball rules. I also learned a few tips about umpiring, but I can’t imagine how. We had no mentoring about calling balls and strikes or about baserunners. Maybe I read it somewhere; maybe somebody who had umpired for a while told me that it was easy to determine when a pitched ball was too high: Crouch down until your eyes are level with the top of the strike zone. Of course, any pitch above that was a ball. Balls thrown near knee height were much harder to call.

In those days there were separate crews of umpires for the National and American Leagues. In the days before the American League adopted the designated hitter, the game in both leagues was supposed to be the same. Even so, the umpires did some things differently. They wore different protective gear and also positioned themselves differently. The American Leaguers stood squarely behind the catcher and looked over his head. The National Leaguers looked over the catcher’s shoulder. My favorite team was in the National League so I adopted the shoulder position.

I thought that I knew how to call balls and strikes, but I quickly learned that calling the bases was not as simple as I may have assumed. I was the only umpire in games with nine- and ten-year olds or for eleven- and twelve-year olds. I had to make all the calls at home plate and at other bases as well. When there was going to be a play at first base, I would jog out to a place between the pitcher and the base. Most often the call was obvious, but soon I learned the limits of human eyesight. If the call was close, I could watch when the feet were on the bag or I could watch when the first baseman caught the ball. I could not do both. Then, somehow, I learned that umpiring was not just seeing but also listening. Major league umpires at first base watched the feet but listened to hear the ball being caught. If the sound preceded the sight of the runner’s foot on the bag, he quickly looked up to see whether the ball was secure or being bobbled.

Tag plays presented their own problems. Sometimes it was hard to be in the correct position to make the call. (In the majors, if there is a runner on first, the second base umpire moves from the outfield to the infield to best observe a likely tag play. That infield position leads to the possibility of umpire interference, which seldom happens, but is almost never understood by the fans when it does.) Even if I was in the correct position, it was sometimes difficult to tell whether the fielder swiped the runner with the ball. Even if that was clear, a similar problem could occur at first base. The tag was often on the rump or back or shoulder of the runner, and it could be difficult sometimes to tell whether the foot got to the base before or after the tag. I didn’t need to make a hard call often. For the under twelves, runners could not leave the base until the ball was pitched. There were few attempted steals unless the ball got away from the catcher, and then the call was usually obvious. Outfield throws were often wild or looping leading to an easy call, but the few close plays could be important to the game. I never learned how to deal effectively with making a bad call. Once when I umpired an all-star game, I stuck out my right hand for a strike on a pitch that was way too high. I knew my mistake instantly, but I had no guidance on what I should do and let the call stand. To this day I feel sort of bad about it.

There was another situation that I felt unsure about: when, if ever, to throw a kid out of the game. Thankfully, this seldom occurred. The ten-and-unders were mostly unformed in the personality department and almost never presented a problem. The eleven- and twelve-year-olds, however, were on their way to being human beings. Many were quick-witted or wiseasses, filled with jokes to throw at me, curious about the world (mostly that meant trying to find out what high school was like and whether it was true you might get attracted to girls). So there came a time when one young player swore at me. I asked him what he had said to give him a chance to back away or apologize for the expletive. He repeated it (whatever it was), and I tossed him from the game. That made me uncomfortable. Was I wrong?

On the other hand, I don’t remember ever getting the indicator wrong. This is a little plastic thingamabob placed in the left hand. Mine had three holes and three wheels. Turning the wheels made different numbers appear in the holes to indicate balls, strikes, and outs. (Fancier ones also had an innings opening.) With my indicator, I at least always had the count right.

I also learned that it paid to get to work early. There were four fields where I umpired, and gear—masks and chest protectors–for four umpires. I needed a mask that could accommodate my glasses, but the other guys, who could see unaided, were good about letting me have the one that worked for me. The chest protectors also were not all the same, and sometimes this mattered. The spectrum of physical development of twelve-year-old boys is broad. Some of them are close to adulthood, and these big guys often were the pitchers. These kids played on a softball diamond, and the ball hurled from forty-six feet arrived at the plate with remarkable rapidity. This was not just the batter’s problem; remember, I umpired standing behind home plate. Often the pitcher’s skill far outshone the catcher’s, and I could not be sure that the pitches would not hit me. If I knew it was going to be one of those days, I got to the park extra early to snatch up the only blowup chest protector, which best absorbed the thump of a thrown ball. Even so, I still could leave with a bruise or two.

I quickly learned that I hated umpiring nine- and ten-year-olds. This was in the old days, so this was not T-ball or a game in which an adult tossed underhanded to a batter. No. There was a pitcher and a batter, and the pitcher invariably could not pitch and the batter invariably could not hit. And if a ball miraculously got into play, the fielders could neither catch nor throw. These young ones could not play the game. Period. This was also the time before the mercy rule, which allowed a game to be called if one team got really far ahead. Thus, the games could be interminable. Every time I umpired one of these games, I felt as though the hourglass sand was endlessly replenished. On these days, I woke up hoping to hear a downpour that meant the game would be cancelled. You can gauge how much I hated this by the fact that I did not get paid if the game was not played. The loss of money was worth not having to umpire these endless games. When I did umpire the ten and unders, though, I did not cheat in my calls. Nevertheless, if the pitched ball could be a ball or strike, it was a strike. If the runner could have been safe or out, he was out. It seemed important to move this endless game towards a conclusion.

At the time I felt that there was a bigger life lesson here: If it’s close, it’s a strike. If it’s close, it’s an out. But now, almost seven decades later, I still don’t know what that lesson is.