This article first appeared in the Minnesota Star Tribune and this excerpt is reprinted with permission. You can read the full story here. Photos courtesy of Courtney Perry
By Tony Jones
Guest contributor(s) to the Minnesota Star Tribune
I started umpiring baseball when I was 14. You might have seen me in 1982, riding my Schwinn Varsity bicycle through the streets of Edina with a catcher’s mask hanging from the handlebars and the old-style, outside-foam chest protector slung over my back.
Over the years I climbed the ranks of baseball officials, through Little League, then high school and American Legion, then college. In 2001 I worked a Gophers game, a bucket-list item for me. But I had two young children at home and, as much as I liked umping, I no longer had the time. So I hung up my shin guards and armored shoes and spent the next 19 years coaching my boys and watching baseball from the bleachers.
Then the pandemic happened. I’m a writer, which is a lonely profession, and COVID-19 restrictions only compounded my isolation. I reached out to my former umpire association and asked if they needed umps, and the response was immediate: “When can you start?”
