"KILL DA UMPS"?

When I was a kid in Pittsburgh attending the Pirates games I joined in the chorus of boos the fans shouted at the umpires. "Kill Da Ump' was a very popular accompanying epithet.

The other day my wife Phyl was kind enough to listen to her husband's long discourse on the Jim Joyce/Andrew Galarraga matter and the debate over further instant replay. As I paused to take a breath my wife asked what I felt was a brillant question: "Do you think they will ever be a day without umpires in baseball?"

Being typical Mr. know-it-all - and a male (inseparable descriptions) I eagerly jumped into the fray and replied: "While I believe it could happen with all the technical advances being made - I don't see it ever occurring in Baseball."

"Why is that?", she pursued with a patient love that only my wife possesses.

Still, I paused for a minute. "Do I owe her any money?", I wondered.

Then returning to my pontification - no doubt either "churching up" my fingers in a steeple arc or resting my hand on my chin with my thumb anchored on my throat, I explained:

"Baseball is a game of inches - and at one time truly was our National Pastime. But, then along came George Romero with "The Night Of The Living Dead' and we eagerly switched our male allegiance over to something a little more 'cavemanish': Football.

Baseball is a 'game' of tradition that employs a structure for providing daily morality lessons. It did so once again with Joyce/Galarraga."

I had a feeling Phyl was starting to lose her enthusiasm for one-way communication. Her eyes appeared to be in stage two of glazing . Still I stumbled on, "You see Baseball was never meant to be a fix for all the people who want instant gratification and total resolution of any and every controversy. That's also the reason God gave us politicians.

Early in the 50's we Sullivans obtained our first television set. It sat up against a wall blocking a side window thus allowing all 5 of us to spread out in our favorite living room positions in our new house.

We fixated on Liberace, Rocky King, Milton Berle, along with local shows such as Hank Stohl and Knish, and Kay Neumann's cooking shows. We also enjoyed watching the one hour dramas like Kraft Television Theater, Goodyear Television Playhouse, and Westinghouse's Studio One.

Mom was a huge movie fan and once worked in Wilmerding as a ticket cashier where, when the last show was well into it's first half-hour, she would join the movie attendees inside as no new patrons were expected. She thrived on repeatedly watching the many movies featuring Joan Crawford, Alexis Smith, Betty Davis, Barbara Stanwyck etc.

Later in life when she and Dad would become involved in an argument at home Mom would defend her position with her usual dramatic proficiency. This would immediately draw the response from Dad, "Aha, Sarah Bernhardt is back!"

I'm convinced that her love of movies and their usual perfect endings was a contributing factor in her insistance at Ladies Day games that we could not leave Forbes Field when they were losing 20 runs to two if there was even a slight possibility that Ralph Kiner might get a turn at bat in the 9th inning.

She loved the drama of baseball as well as her movies and I became the Odysseus to her Circe, acquiring her love for both movies and baseball.

It was Studio One that was her downfall. At the end of the hour when Westinghouse had Betty Furness frantically yanking on one more refrigerator door, the credits would start to roll. Mom would sit up and, looking straight at me in particular, ask in an anxious voice, "What happened? Did he go back to her? Did she regret her anger and pettiness. Did the rabbit live?"

It was a challenging moment for a skinny high school kid like me. I would patiently explain that we don't know the ending and that was playwright Stirling Sylliphant's purpose in ending his story as he chose. I told Mom, "He wants us to determine how the story should end."

"Well, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard of." replied my exasperated mother; the baseball and movie fanatic.

So, it is with today's generation of baseball fans. Many of them also want closure. Many of us oldtimers, with our purist bent, prefer the now comfortable uncertainty of the outcome of a play or a game.

We're willing to concede that a TV replay of an alleged home run may be acceptable but beg that Major League Baseball (MLB) does not turn our beloved Baseball into just one more outrageous video game.

Regardless of how I may feel about MLB Commisioner Bud Selig, I silently thanked him for refusing to "Kill Da Ump." Bud, who will soon be 76, probably loved Studio One, too.

Now, if I could just figure out at what point my wife left before I finished my explanation.