Ocean State Libraries

Millions of American baseball fans know, with absolute certainty, that umpires are simply overpaid galoots who are doing an easy job badly. Millions of American baseball fans are wrong. As They See 'Em is an insider's look at the largely unknown world of professional umpires, the small group of men (and the very occasional woman) who make sure America's favorite pastime is conducted in a manner that is clean, crisp, and true. Bruce Weber not only...

"Two things nobody wants to grow up to be are an umpire and broke. Thanks to my career in baseball, I got both." After calling balls, strikes, and outs for thirty-six baseball seasons and more than three thousand major-league games, umpire Ken Kaiser finally called it a career. From the first day he hit a minor-league catcher with a pool table to the fateful day baseball called him out on a strike, Kaiser was one of the game's most popular and colorful...

"The incredible memoir from the man voted one of the "Best Umpires of All Time" by the Society of American Baseball Research--filled with more than three decades of fascinating baseball stories"--

The perfect game is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. No hits, no walks, no men reaching base. In nearly four hundred thousand contests in more than 130 years of Major League Baseball, it has only happened twenty times. On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga threw baseball's twenty-first perfect game. Except that's not how it entered the record books. That's because Jim Joyce, a veteran umpire with more than twenty years of big league experience,...

"Umpire Solomon Johnson is squeezing the strike zone and throws out both the Pine City Porcupines starting pitcher and manager "Grumps" Humphrey for arguing the call. Ballboy Chad tries to make peace by giving Solomon a rarely issued "umpire card," but the ump blows his top"--