“The Umpire is a Most Unhappy Man”?

May 19, 2014

Not if you’re former Major League arbiter-turned-author Al Clark.

It was nice meeting Clark and his co-author Dan Schlossberg yesterday at the Yogi Berra Museum. There weren’t a lot of people there. That’s was too bad for the book-signing aspects, but good for me because it gave us more opportunity for casual chatting. Clark shared some of his insight that didn’t make it into his new book Called Out but Safe: A Baseball Umpire’s Journey and was quite open with some opinions on the current state of the game.

KaplanClark

One of the questions I asked was whether umpire school is like a military situation in that they want uniformity in how their students comport themselves. Clark said when he attended, they encouraged their charges to show a bit of individual personality, unlike current administrations.

Ah, ya should been there, is all I can say.

Here’s a conversation I had with Clark recently for the Bookshelf.

By the way, the title of this entry refers to a 1906 song.

 

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Tagged as: Al Clark, Dan Schlossberg, Yogi Berra Museum

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