Just Softball

[SC Ump]

I started ASA adult softball. A year of two later, I moved into FED softball and FED baseball. The baseball led to Legion and some over-40 mens league. I did both for perhaps 10 years. (Always FED softball, but different levels of baseball over the 10 years.)

I got into one FED association where the same association booked BB and SB. I got all the SB games I could handle and eventually just quit even registering for FED BB.

I joke with BB officials that it's the game time that I like, but that's not it. I like that I am at the level of officiating where I see the detailed differences in the way softball differs for BB. Not just in rules but in philosophy. And I like that. I like that it's faster paced and, IMHO, not as pretentious.

[bkbjones]

Several decades ago (1970) I did my first LL game at the ripe old age of 14. My mentor was a former minor league umpire who quit in order to have a marriage. (His choice was the bigs or his wife. He chose Curtain #2.)

I worked my way up the food chain pretty quickly. Among other things, found out I could make all my beer money in college through officiating. Went very high on the food chain in baseball until injured as referee of a football game in 1992. I then was pretty much retired for about 10 years. The only thing I did was slowpitch, because for a long time I couldn't move more than, say, about three feet (which is a helluva lot further than some slow pitch umpires).

Meanwhile, I umpired most of the few fastpitch games held in the Texas Panhandle. TX Tech and WTSU had club teams and often met pretty much halfway to play each other. Didn't do many -- but did some, including 3X with Eddie Feigner.

I went straight softball when I moved back to Seattle in 2003 (had lived here once before for about three years). My health had improved enough to get back out there doing something. I have fallen in love with FP. I have ventured out very few times to do a baseball game, but frankly I don't usually have three hours per game to kill.