Umpire For Hire

You know you can get paid to referee for a game. For those that don’t know what a Umpire is, it’s just another name for referee, but for baseball and softball.

You won’t be umping for adults, they may require you to do a certification, or go to umpire school, but anyone can ump for youth games.

It’s a good way to get exercise in, and you can do this up until you’re 60 years old. I say 60 because at that point umpires become too old to perceive the projectory of the ball, and start making horrible judgment, and make bad calls. If you want to see bad umpiring, here’s a clip of the famed Angel Hernandez, also known as the blind idiot.

What’s It Like

It’s pretty chill apparently, you stand for a while, keep your eye on the ball and call the ball. You will be working alone, as youth games typically only has one umpire, since hiring the 4 would indicate it’s a important game.

It may get sweaty as you will be wearing khakis, and black shirt in summer. It may get dirty as kid’s are going to be kicking up dirt and playing in the rain if it happens.

People I know, that coach and ref for youth sports team usually like the experience. They always felt the games has it’s fond moments, and revitalizing.

I had a IT tutor that works 2 jobs, and his joy in life is to referee for soccer, and I hear the same thoughts for baseball as well.

How To Get Started

First you need to know the rules, you don’t want to be a bumbleclot, in a game. Although it may not seem important to the average person, people dedicate their youth to the sport, and when you screw a judgment call, you will be met with fire.

Close call are understandable, but if it’s a blatant call the was brutally botched, it’s hell.

Parents

This is the biggest problem, in any sports game you will encounter parents that believe their kid will be the Next Bryce Harper or Shohei Ohtani. That would be an honor to umpire for the next future best baseball player, however that’s not gonna happen.

Sometimes the kid just sucks at what they do, and you just have to follow the rules and call the strikes.

I’ve heard cases where the pestering get so rambunctious, it can distract umpires from doing their jobs properly and make actual bad calls.

Even Worst

The parents will harass the kids, and make demeaning remarks towards them, to hurt the team they’re rooting against. Usually they would target the ace player, it happens in the MLB when the star player is doing too good, they would trip them up with a solid 5oz ball flying at 100 mph at the best player’s head.

To give context about how deadly baseballs can be, a player was hit in the head with a baseball, and it broke his forehead. Very rare someone breaks their forehead on anything, it’s the thickest part of your skull, but it happened in baseball to Aroldis Chapman. That one lived, the one that died was Ray Chapman.

So When a player throws a baseball at a player you can say it’s attempted murder

But unlike adults, kids are still innocent, and has some honor left in them to not attempt murder. Yes you can call it a murder attempt, but since it’s baseball, “accidents happens”.

As the umpire when moderating the game, their is not much you can do about the harassment. However, it is the coach’s job to keep the parents in check, and if they can control the parents, you can throw the coach out the game to spite the parents.

Would I do it?

I would, but the competition is rough. Ideally they want a dad to take on the role of umpire. People just have more respect for older people to umpire, especially parents.

Also, if you’re a man with no children, they just assume you’re a perve. I’ve seen it where male teachers are not allowed to have any contact at all with children, even stopping a fight can result in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

So, for that reason I am out, again it’s good exercise to run around and umpire for youth, and get a little extra spare change.

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