A book about umpires and umpiring on the Best Seller list? Yup.

And worth your reading too.

Maybe even more so than Torre’s Yankee Years***** (see millerstime.net review here).

Bruce Weber, a NY Times reporter, somehow convinced his editors to let him spend an extended amount of time (almost three years) expanding on several articles he had written on umpires. Good on them for allowing it.

Despite redundancies and more about feuds amongst the umps and their union strike disaster than we need to know, Weber takes you on a ride that will change your view of umpires and make you see the game a bit differently than you ever have before.

Although I’ve attend games for almost 60 years now, I never gave much thought to the umps, other than occasionally to yell at them for being so blind (which usually meant they made a call against the Sox).

No more.

As part of his ‘research,’ Weber

went to umpiring school (there are two of them, and you can’t be a major league ump without attending one), worked as an umpire (the highest he got was a major league spring training game, three innings behind the plate), interviewed many present and retired umps (they weren’t very forthcoming), and hung around the majors and minors for much of 2006 and 2007 seasons (sounds good to me).

Weber takes you along with him, and there is much to learn. While he drives certain points into the ground (lowly life of the umps until they finally, tho rarely, make it to the majors), you will come away from his book, dare I say it, with an appreciation for the job they do, particularly how honest they are.

And along the way, you will learn more about baseball than you knew before you picked up the book.

If you’ve ever wondered why some one would want a low paying job ($1,900 per month for six months until you make it to the top) where you get no thanks and only recognition when you make a mistake, you’ll find that out.

Plus, not only are you disliked by the fans, the management of baseball has no use for you either. As for the players, just make one mistake and see what they do. These are the guys who at best make outs 7 of every 10 times at bat or where Hall of Fame pitchers rarely win more than 65% of their games.

And since there are only 68 major-league umpiring jobs (and once an ump gets there, he hangs on like a Supreme Court justice), you have a better chance of getting a job in baseball as a player, manager, coach, in the front office, or even as an usher or a beer man than you do getting a job as a major-league ump.

Still, lots of them ‘chase the dream.’

For me, Weber’s book (As They See ‘Em) was good because he added to my knowledge of the game with numerous gems and insights and most of all because he taught me to look at an aspect of the game I had not even considered.

(My good New England cousin who also follows the Sox had a different view of the book and felt it was redundant and possibly not worth finishing. But then I think he’s a Republican. George Will, on the other hand, loved the book and said it was “a terrific introduction to, among much else, the rule book’s Talmudic subtleties...”.  Jim Bouton’s review in the NY Times is the best review I found.)

PS - I reserve the right to yell at the umps when the Sox come to Baltimore and/or DC if they continue to make some of their occasionally ridiculous calls.

Update 5/3: Attending a Nats vs St. Louis game yesterday afternoon (Nats won for only the 6th time out of 23 games this season), I tried to focus on the umpires. Not easy. I kept getting distracted by the action on the field. See if you can go a whole inning only watching the umpires. It’s tough.

Also, I was informed in no uncertain terms (and in a slightly lawyerly way) that my ‘good New England cousin’ (referred to above) was not a registered Republican, nothing of the sort. Apparently he votes for whomever he feels is the best candidate, irrespective of party affiliation. He added a few other comments about my mistaken assumptions, intolerances, and legal liabilities, all of which could be put right if I were to ‘house’ him on a future trip here and spring for Sox tickets.  All because I said, “I think he’s a Republican.” My bad.