Column -- guest or staff

Umpire has a 'Senior Moment'

Jan. 1, 2001 – Special to the News

By Douglas P. Wright

It was a beautiful sunny day in beautiful sunny Arizona and the Sun City Men's Softball League, consisting of 24 teams, was in full swing.

Some 350 men, ranging in age from 55 to 87 years do battle two days a week in this league. In order to accommodate the 24 teams, six games are played on each of those days on two different fields ˆ for a total of 12 games played each day.

One of the requirements for playing in the league is that every player must volunteer to serve periodically as either an umpire or a scorekeeper.

Usually the volunteer performs the task in the game immediately before or after the game in which he plays.

On this day, I was the lead-off batter for our team. The umpire called, "Play Ball!!" and I approached home plate to begin the game. However, when I reached my destination there appeared to be some delay in starting the game. We waited for a few minutes and then the reason for the delay became apparent.

The person who volunteered to keep score had no idea how to run the electronic scoreboard and even less knowledge of how to maintain the score sheets.

Finally a call came down from the scorekeeper's booth to the umpire at home plate. The umpire was asked if he would be willing to trade places with the volunteer scorekeeper.

Whereupon the umpire responded: "Oh, I can't do that. I left my glasses at home and I can't see."

-- Douglas P. Wright is president of the Sun City Softball Club, has played in the league for 11 years and is a retired Presbyterian minister.