I Was a Kickball Umpire

Kickball is a fascinating sport, and has become ever more so within my generation's lifetime. It has gone from the sport you feared in gym class if you were a scrawny, unathletic kid... because you had no chance of being any good at it... to a sport that adults play for fun in twilight leagues, and also a good reason to raise money for good causes.

My first adult exposure to kickball came 3 years ago, when the radio station for which I worked at the time helped out with the annual Bill Leaf Kickball Tournament at Onondaga Lake Park, outside of Syracuse. I knew Bill as an intern during a previous tenure at this radio station, and a few years later, he was a sports reporter on radio and television, when he was killed by a drunk driver going the wrong way on I-81. One of Bill's signature pieces was about the adult kickball league at Onondaga Lake Park, and his sister thought it appropriate to put together an annual charity kickball tournament in his memory. I helped the organizers set up, then joined the radio station's team in the actual competition. I don't think my kickball ability had improved much from age 7 to age 29.

Charity kickball and I once again crossed paths recently, when I became involved with Philly Kick for the Cure. I wanted to field a team of my fellow grad schoolers for this tournament, but I learned that trying to get grad students together for anything in the summer is much like trying to herd cats. At least during the school year, you're all in the same place, just too busy to spare the time. During the summer, you're very likely to pick the weekend that many of them are out of town. Lacking the players for a team, I asked if there was anything else I could do to help the cause, and I was told they needed umpires. I have never umpired or refereed anything in my life, unless you count games of baseball I played with friends when I was a kid, and you worked on the honor system in those days. Even then, I made calls that were quite unpopular. However, this was for a good cause, so I jumped at the opportunity.

First, I was sent a list of rules that rivaled the phonebook. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but there are a lot of little kickball-only rules you have to keep track of in order to ensure fair play. The players have to stay behind home plate when kicking the ball, the ball cannot bounce more than a foot off the ground on its way to the plate, batters (or should I say, kickers) get one foul ball with two strikes and they strike out if they kick the next pitch foul. And so on and so forth. Luckily, I'm already trying to get myself back on academic footing with the new semester approaching, so I was able to go into study mode pretty easily.

I started out working as part of a two-man crew with a "veteran" ref who had worked last year's tournament. I covered home plate, he made the calls out in the field, then we switched for the next game. Unsure of how I would interpret and enforce the rules, I decided in the first few games to CALL EVERYTHING. That probably didn't go over too well, and I quickly started to give some benefit of the doubt and wiggle room. After all, this was for fun.

After three games, I was off to work on my own... and in my first inning, I promptly lost track of how many outs there were. It's tough being the only umpire in a game because there's so much you have to remember! With every pitch, I have to remember the count, how many outs, did the kicker cross the plate to kick it, did the ball bounce too high, what's happening in the field, no leading or stealing, how many runs have scored this inning... I eventually had to keep track by counting the number of runs with my left hand and the number of outs with my right hand, hoping I didn't slip and flex or relax my hands, thus forgetting how many of each there were. I still managed to forget the number of outs a couple more times.

Despite the fact that this was a tournament for charity, it was competition, and competition tends to bring out... well, the overcompetitive. I was warned that people would be competitive and maybe take things too seriously, and indeed there were some times where I made a call and immediately was besieged by angry kickballers who could not understand why I would make the call that I did. Occasional incidences of that aside, it was a pretty smooth tournament. The final, fittingly, was played in a steady drizzle... after all, that heightens the drama. The winning team played a far different kind of kickball than everyone else... as in they were a real competitive kickball team, one that apparently enters tournaments like this all the time, and you could tell, because they knew every angle to play when kicking the ball, and in the field they hurled that thing like Peyton Manning trying to hit Reggie Wayne on a 25-yard post pattern. It was quite impressive.

At the afterparty, all was forgiven with the players who had taken umbrage at my enforcement of the rules. It is definitely true when I refer to alcohol as the great equalizer. Sure, it may get you more riled up than you ought to be, but eventually you reach a point where you love everybody... even the guy whose call got you riled up in the first place. Which returns us to the original point of kickball, whether you're a kid or a beer leaguer or a bunch of friends playing together for charity, it's all about having a good time. However, I have determined that even with my total lack of athleticism, I would likely have even more of a good time next year playing the game rather than reffing it. After all, by next year, I'm pretty sure that rulebook's going to get even bigger...