Yesterday, throughout the day, I kept having these waves of desire to quit umpire school. Not because I'm having a bad time or because anyone was mean to me or because I'm bad at it(1) but because of the sheer amount of energy it takes to fail regularly and repeatedly, which is what I'm going …
On the first day of umpire school(1), they recommend that you dress business casual as, for most of the people here, this is a job interview. It's not for me, but I spend most of my life in business casual so it was no skin off my nose to comply, and it was pretty entertaining …
My friend M, who is seriously one of the best gift givers I've ever met, got me the autobiography of Pam Postema as a Going to Umpire School present.(1) Postema, for those of you who are unfamiliar with her, is the female umpire who has gotten the closest to becoming a major league umpire. She …
We have message boards for umpire school, and we've been encouraged to go on the message boards and introduce ourselves. This is what I've learned so far(1): 1. Several of them are ex-military. This makes sense, I suppose. One of my close friends is a retired Marine, and I can see how she would choose …
Continue reading Adventures in Umpire School, Part 4: Fellow Students.
If you're a consumer, you've seen a warning label on a product that made you laugh out loud. Like "CAUTION: COFFEE IS HOT"(1) or "DO NOT EAT IPOD SHUFFLE." But, as any lawyer can tell you, the reason a warning label is on a product is because someone, somewhere, did it or tried to do …
If you know me in Real Life, you know that I have A Thing for shoes. I love shoes, and I have a lot of them. Usually, my shoes tend toward the higher end of the heel range. I mean, I have flats and tennis shoes, of course, because sometimes you have to prioritize mobility …
Continue reading Adventures in Umpire School, part 3: The shoes.
Umpire school is a little like sleepaway camp, in that we all stay in the same place.(1) It's a pretty intense schedule, so it makes sense that the school arranges for accommodations for students, especially because most of us are traveling to attend. But it's also another way that women are penalized for attending in …
Continue reading Adventures in Umpire School, part 2: Lodgings.
When I became a fan of baseball, I ran into a small problem: almost no one I know likes baseball as much as I do. Most of my friends like it enough to have a favorite team and come to a game or two with me, but eight games in ten days? Every game of …
When my interest in baseball first blossomed, several of my friends were very excited. "When are you going to watch football?" "Are you going to watch football now?" "You should start watching football!" But I'm not going to start watching football. I've tried. My friends have taken me to games. I've paid slightly more than …
When I first started watching baseball, I very quickly understood on an intuitive level what a "ground rule double" was. But it's rule 5.05(a)(5)-(9) that actually explains what a ground rule double is, to wit: 5.05(a)(5) ...A fair fly ball that passes out of the playing field at a point less than 250 feet from …
Baseball Julia 