Please Don't Kill The Umpire!

A Review

by Brent McLaren

Usually you see a book on umpiring every five to ten years but it has been banner years for books on my favorite subject. What makes this book unique is that it might be the first book in baseball history written by a veteran official at the amateur level - the level where 99% of games are played. John Massaro worked well over a thousand games in every amateur league - from the players in the youngest leagues to college to men drawn back to the sport.

Unable to play baseball at an advanced level, but wishing to stay in the game, John Massaro became an umpire at the age of nineteen. For 25 years he worked at every level, from Little League to semi-pro. Please Don't Kill the Umpire! was self-published in May 1999.

So, was my craving satisfied? John Massaro has really developed a collection of essays, opinions, thoughts and occasional rants about baseball as he sees it. Sometimes the words and opinions are funny, sometimes grating, sometimes enlightening, sometimes insulting. Ask my wife. She sat beside me trying to watch TV while I could barely contain the laughter about what I was reading. Massaro's stories are the way it was and is in the daily grind the amateur umpire experiences. These are the players, the coaches and managers, the fans, and yes, the other umpires we meet each time we pass the gate and enter the diamond.

It is the earthy realism that is the strength of this book but there is another side that is darker, and must be addressed. In a chapter entitled So You Want To Be An Umpire the author asks the most basic question an umpire has to answer, "Do You Love Baseball?" Like a jilted lover, there are sections when Massaro unleashes a venomous personal attack against other umpires. These pages jump out at the reader as a blind rage, seemingly inconsistent with the general tenure and tone of the book.

I have read the books written by both Dave Pallone and Pam Postema and personally would not recommend them, but John Massaro's words become graphic attacks on the authors themselves. Having worked with, and respected the work of many talented female officials I find little humor or truth in chapter 6 Why Women Shouldn't Be Umpires. His parting comments on Pallone, let me put it this way, as I prepare to pass this book on to my friends and son to read I am equally tempted to edit the book, not with a magic marker, but with an X-Acto knife removing the sections that I found an offensive "jar (to) the senses."

As I look at the book, sitting on my bed stand, I have mixed feelings. I find in the book great joy and celebration in the game we know and love, at the level most of us work games at. Massaro has captured a realism about the grand game at the not-so-grand dirt-diamond level. His reflections and memories are vivid and well worth getting the book for. I also find great sadness that the author could harbor such deep seated feelings and express them in a way which this reader, and I am certain many others, find inappropriate.

Perhaps that is what happens when the love affair dies.

- a three plate rating! (3/5)

.... December 30, 1999

The book is published by Springbok Press and their web site about the book is worth visiting.