My Father The Traitor

     Sometimes words can hit you as hard as a fastball to the head. That was pretty much how I felt the day that my daddy hurled a high hard one right at my ear hole. His words came so fast and unexpected that I couldn’t get out of the way before they beaned me. It was like having your own pitcher and teammate intentionally throw at you during batting practice, both unexpected and unnecessary, and quite possibly unforgivable. One day, during the cold, gray, and wet months that make up a Tennessee winter, my father called me and said, “I’ve decided to umpire youth baseball this year.”

His words left me facedown in the dirt, dizzy and disillusioned. I tried to “walk it off” but those perplexing words kept ringing in my ears. Learning this shameful truth about my father was for me like a mixture of how the legendary little boy must have felt when he found out Chicago’s hero, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, had confessed to “throwing” the World Series” in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, “Say it ain’t so, Joe”, and how Luke Skywalker must have felt when he learned his father, his hero, was actually Darth Vader. I imagine this was how Marvel comics fans felt when it was revealed that Captain America was really a Nazi double agent all along. Thankfully the creators of those comics had the good sense to reverse this revelation within one issue. Unfortunately for my inner child this masquerade of my father is now in its fifth year.

The good ole boys from Sand Mountain who formed the band Alabama spoke the gospel truth when they sang, “Family ties run deep in this land”, and according to the good book the Lord said, “Love your enemies...do good to them that hate you”, so here I sit in the bleachers at Exchange Park watching my father umpire baseball. As many times as he sat and watched me play baseball over the course of thirteen years, I figured I owed it to him to at least come and watch him umpire one. 

It was like being trapped in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Seeing my father dressed in all blue was kind of like seeing Rocky swap his Stars and Stripes trunks for the Hammer and Sickle red trunks of Ivan Drago. To understand the gravity of the situation you need to understand that my daddy coached youth baseball for ten years and, although he was always respectful, “Blue” was the opposition as much as the team in the other dugout. Like the Bloods and Crips in Los Angeles, the turf war that was fought on the baseball diamond was delineated by colors, and no matter the color of my uniform, blue was always the color of the enemy. The phrase “Awwww, come on Blue!” is a natural part of my native tongue. Umpires were supposed to be neutral observers but we always knew they secretly had it in for us. The strike zone was always bigger when our guys were at the plate, but as small as an airplane window for our pitchers. All of that was ok because the only thing my daddy did better than coach ball was argue calls with the ump. Standing in the powdery dust near home plate he looked as comfortable, confident, and natural as Billy Graham behind a pulpit. Chest to chest with an umpire he could argue and plead his case with a style and grace that would have made Perry Mason or Ben Matlock weep with envy. Yet tragically, umpires being what they were (Communist sleeper cells working from within to overthrow America’s pastime and replace it with soccer), he seldom won his disputes over balls and strikes. Though his plight was destined to end like that of noble Atticus Finch tackling the impossible task of defending the innocent, yet hopeless, Tom Robinson before a jury of small minded small town racists, my daddy bravely stepped up to the plate time and time again to defend me against the bad calls of umpires who believed they were never wrong. 

A strange thing occurred tonight while watching this minor league baseball game. As the sun set and the breeze picked up, I began to feel the spirit of young Scout Finch. Like me she was conflicted about what she should do. She too idolized her daddy, and knew him to be a good man, and yet all the people of her hometown villainized him and called him names. Instinctively she defended him and wanted to be right by his side during the trial of Tom Robinson, but her daddy told her no. Due to the kindness of the Reverend Sykes she was able to witness firsthand the nobility and integrity of her daddy at work. Like Scout, I’m sitting silently in the bleachers tonight and watching my daddy at work, doing what he loves and what he believes is right, even in the face of vitriol and the occasional vulgarity, and I finally get it. My father isn’t a turncoat traitor, my daddy is a martyr. He obviously became an umpire in an effort to bring fairness and integrity and equality to the game he loves so much. Week after week he is willing to take a beating, literally from foul balls, and verbally from coaches and parents, in an effort to redeem the shameful vocation that is umpiring and make it noble and worthy of the great game it governs. Umpiring is his ministry, a way to remain connected to a game he can no longer play and has no opportunity to coach. Well, that, and the fact umpires get free concessions. Before you cast the first baseball in condemnation, ask anyone in town, Exchange Park is known to have the best hot dog you will ever eat. And I’ve heard, on occasion, the funnel cakes are so good, the umpire will stop the game in the middle of an inning just to eat one.