Relief Pitch. 05/12/23

How much more is there to say about umpires? Plenty, in fact. As Al gets ready to join the fraternity of umpires and referees, I’m reminded of John and me going into the comic strip arena. Physical newspapers are dying out, those that are left have a shrinking “funny pages” section and there aren’t as many comics today as there used to be. Perfect! Let’s go for it!! “So how does that relate to umpiring,” I hear you ask? They too are on their way to becoming obsolete. Baseball, once “America’s National Pastime,” is becoming a fringe sport. It’s too slow, there’s not enough scoring, blah, blah, blah. John and I for one (actually I guess that’s two) still are big fans. But back to the umps. Did you know that in the top levels of the minor leagues, the home plate umpire, the guy or gal that calls balls and strikes, has a communication device in their ear. It says “ball” or “strike” in the umpire’s ear after every pitch. In fact Major League Baseball was actively recruiting for Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) techs in the biggest minor league cities. The ump has essentially been reduced to a robot. But I’ll bet robots make way fewer bad calls.

Poor umps. But not all of them. I’m reminded of a Robert DeNiro movie in the late ‘90’s called “The Fan.” In it, Wesley Snipes was a superstar player traded to the San Francisco Giants (note: if you’re still upset the former NY Giants baseball team ended up in San Francisco then you may actually be too old for this comic strip)! He was having a tough start to his season and DeNiro, a down on his luck, out of work salesman, took his angst out on Snipes, following and harassing him all over the city. Finally Snipes comes around and starts playing like the star he’s always been. In a chilling final scene, he comes barreling around third base and slides into home. The ump removes his mask and signals, “safe!” But when the ump pulls off his mask, we see it’s none other than Robert DeNiro. This time it wasn’t poor ump, it was poor batter. He wanted to kill Wesley Snipes.

This is all to say that Al doesn't really know what he’s getting into. If you’re reading this, you likely have already read the comics, and you know that far from becoming a knock-out umpire, Al becomes a knocked-out umpire. Don’t worry folks, he’ll survive. But maybe he’ll stick to Pizza. On a stick. On a personal note, I (Andy) am turning 70 on Monday. I am hoping this doesn't disqualify me from working on The New 60. And what happens when John turns 70 also (don’t worry fans, he’s still got a long way to go) do we change the title of the strip? No. As John points out, Charlie Brown and Lucy never aged so why should our peeps be any different?

That’s it for this week. Have a great week and we’ll be back next Friday with the conclusion of our umpire series and a whole new direction.

Andy and John