The Umpire Who Called His Son Out
He framed the low pitch the way I taught him in the backyard when he was eight.
But I called a ball on one of those framed pitches, because it was low, and he didn’t even flinch. He just threw it back to the mound and set up again.
Then, in the third inning, a Thunder dad yelled from the bleachers, “Nice call, Brandon,” after I rang up a Bloomington batter on a pitch that was right down the middle. And that was the end of my anonymity.
I heard it ripple through the bleachers on the third base side. A woman asked who Brandon was. Somebody answered.
I heard the words “catcher’s dad” plain as day, and then I heard a man say, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
The Bloomington parents got loud after that. Every close pitch, somebody let me know about it.
One man asked me if I wanted to go ahead and put on a Thunder jersey. I didn’t say a word to the bleachers. Dale’s rule.
I found out later what happened on the first base side during that inning.
A Thunder mom, Kim, who keeps the team’s snack schedule and knows everybody’s business, slid down the bleacher to sit next to Courtney.
“Court, is that Brandon? Why on earth is Brandon umpiring? I didn’t know he did that. Ed says he’s been doing rec ball all spring. Since when?”
Courtney told me afterward that she thought about saying something easy. That he liked it. That he was helping out. Kim would have believed any of it and moved on to the next mother.
Instead, she told the truth. She told Kim she had mailed Pam a bill for half of Jace’s travel ball fee, and that Brandon had started umpiring the week after so his mother wouldn’t have to pay it.
She said it took her about two sentences, and that saying it out loud on a bleacher in Gibson City was the worst she had felt since the day we signed the divorce papers.
Kim didn’t say much, Courtney told me. She just said, “Oh, honey,” and patted her knee, and looked over at my mother in her lawn chair behind the backstop with her hands folded.
The Thunder were down one to nothing going to the bottom of the fourth.
They were the home team on that field, so they batted second. With one out and nobody on, Jace came up to the plate.
He stepped into the box in his red uniform and his batting helmet. He looked out at the pitcher, not at me.
He took the first pitch for a ball, high. He swung through the second one, a fastball he was late on.
The third pitch was outside, and I called it a ball. The fourth one he fouled straight back into the screen, right over my mother’s head. She didn’t even duck. Two balls, two strikes.
The pitcher came set and threw a fastball on the outside corner. Not off the corner. On it.
The kind of pitch that, if a coach were watching film, he’d say the catcher had to protect against.
Jace took it. He thought it was outside. I could tell from the way his shoulders dropped that he thought it was ball three. He’d started to lean back toward the box.
It was a strike. I had seen it the whole way. It caught the black on the outside edge at the knees, and there was not one doubt in my mind about it.