Small-Town Baseball: MLB's Forgotten Cousin and America's Last Legal Crime

“Good Lord,” I mumble in shock. “This isn’t happening.”

I look behind first base at my buddy Dan and see his body go limp. He sees it, too. The right fielder for Madison is straddling the foul line.

Have you ever faced one of those times when you just know the next four hours of your life will be an experience nothing short of a maximum-security prison term spent in a cell with a jumpy 450 lb. ogre? This is one of those times. Dan and I are umpiring one of America’s last legal crimes: small-town baseball.

I started umpiring years ago. I love sports and sometimes you just have to find a way to be involved, especially when you suck. So, along with my brother and a few friends, I roamed the great northeast, bringing some law and order to the unholy ghost town ball fields of Nebraska. I’ll admit the money is decent. But ironically, it comes at a price. Let me walk you through a typical day in the life of this atrocity.

My partner and I roll into Battle Creek, Nebraska on May 26th at about 7:30 to do an 8:00 game between B.C. and Wisner, NE. Only, no one is at the field. You’d think we’d be nervous. Maybe we screwed up a date or time. No, sir. They’ll be here.

Sure enough, in a five-minute span starting at 7:41 both teams roll up. At 7:48, most of the players are dressed up in what they consider to be game attire. At 7:50, the Wisner coach, Father Time, who is obviously an escaped geriatric from an old folk’s home, yells at B.C.’s coach, Opie, who is no doubt still in junior high, “Hey! Let’s get this show on the road!”

And so it begins. Now there are several rules of small-town hardball etiquette that must, and will be followed during the course of the next few hours.

Plain and simple, no one is allowed to play catch before the game. Not even the pitcher. Sure he might pick up a ball, soiled black from decades of use, and ask Father Time if it’s a game ball. Without even looking Father Time will say, “Looks good to me.” Keep in mind that this kid is not a pitcher, he’s the pitcher, meaning he has pitched every inning of every game from May 27th, 1994 until now. His arm is held intact by a pregame meal consisting of 36 ibuprofen. Some other rules to be aware of:

• The only vegetation allowed on the infield is tobacco spit. The rest must be made up of dirt, mud, rocks, sharp things and an occasional McDonald's sack. The field must also have a tremendous slant to it. Usually upwards of 75-80 degrees. If you fall or slide, you will most likely just keep rolling into the parking lot…which is gravel and rocks, of course.
• The fence cannot, under any circumstance, enclose the field. There has to be a way for balls to simply exit the playing field and dogs and other wildlife to run on. I swear on the eyes of my unborn children I have seen a dog and a deer run onto a game field. When exiting the field, the deer timed its jump wrong as it headed towards a part of the field that actually did have a fence and landed before clearing the fence. It flopped around and kids screamed while I yawned. It wasn’t even the most catastrophic thing I’d witnessed that day.
• At least three players on each team will wear tennis shoes.
• Half the team (usually more) must have at least a three-inch separation between the bottom of their pant legs and the top of their socks.
• Each and every player will be sponsored by a different ghost town business. Those teams with button-up jerseys will only be allowed to button them to mid-stomach, allowing chest fur to spill out on some of the larger, more ape-like players. Note: One player must be wearing the advertisement of an enterprise named Bud’s. Whether it’s Bud’s Garage, Bud’s Liquor or Buds House-O-Whores, someone has to wear the Bud’s decal. 
• One of the players on each team, usually an outfielder, will take the field without his hat. He will see nothing wrong with this. The other players will be wearing hats that range from pink to green. One player will have on a Cleveland Indians hat. He’s without question the best player on the team.
• The dads will line their pickups along the outfield fence and do everything from honking their horns, to yelling key advice, to flashing their brights when the opposing team comes to bat. They are most likely drunk or getting there.
• The fat kid doesn’t always catch. Sometimes he plays second base.
• More people are playing horseshoes next to the field than are in the stands watching.
• At some point in the night, the town beauty will probably offer the umpires a hot dog, initiating a very uncomfortable scene where the ump will respectfully decline while trying to battle the cold sweats coming from staring back and forth between her missing front tooth and what appears to be chest hair coming out of the top of her shirt.
• The kids will hold moronic, six-inning-long, running conversations that have nothing to do with baseball. They will often times nearly come to blows. Players will stand within ear shot of each other, usually opening up gaping holes in the field wide enough to fit Rhode Island.
• Routine plays are far from routine and ESPN-type highlights are commonplace.

So the saga begins. Battle Creek’s pitcher throws only three warmup pitches. He tells the catcher so audibly that his arm hurts and that he only plans to throw curveballs the rest of the game that parents in the stands can be heard agreeing that, yeah, that’s probably a good idea. He shouldn’t throw hard if his arm hurts.

He proceeds to throw four innings of no-hit ball. Even though every Wisner player knows he hasn’t thrown a fastball since the first pitch of the game, they are baffled with every swing. They return to the dugout professionally telling each other to “Watch for the spinny one.”

In the meantime, Battle Creek has staked an early 36-0 lead courtesy of nearly three dozen errors. The Wisner players are turning on each other:

CF (wearing the Indians hat): “Nice defense, you A-holes.”

(He has made only three errors and is obviously the stronghold of the Wisner D.)

SS: “Well, if fat kid could bend over we could’ve rolled a pair on that last grounder.

2B: “Me?!! That thing was a laser. Your mom likes the way I do things anyway.”

1B: “Hey! Fat kid! Your mom called me a Clydesdale.”

(Honk)

(All the while Wisner is still pitching and Battle Creek is spraying hits all over the field. In an explosion of frustration, Wisner’s pitcher sees the right fielder straddling the right field foul line.)

P: “What in the ****!”

RF: “Cause I’m not gonna give up any triples!”

(Just initiating a conversation with the pitcher 270 feet away, and the crowd barely notices—as if players nearly coming to blows is commonplace. They know what they’re doing.)

(Honk)

CF: “Are you standing on the warning track?! You’re getting us killed!”

(Just pinning the entire fiasco on the right fielder.)

RF: “Hey! You play center field; I’ll play right field. I haven’t given up a triple yet this year and I don’t aim to start now.”

(Like triples are the scourge of the baseball world.)

Suddenly, the B.C. cleanup hitter drills a screamer to left. The left fielder loses it in the sun (cause he isn’t wearing a hat) and it deflects violently off his face, dropping him like a bag of dirt. The ball ricochets to the third baseman, who is standing only a few feet away since they were just discussing NASCAR. He catches the ball and wings it to second base where the runner left the base thinking it wouldn’t be caught.

Boy was he wrong.

Only, the hefty kid playing second hasn’t gotten to the base yet to catch the ball. Luckily, the baserunner gets crushed as the throw careens directly off the base of his skull and rolls to the perfectly positioned right fielder, who continues to straddle the foul line on the warning track. He guns the ball, in no particular direction, and it four-hops and rolls to the center fielder, who has the moxie to pick it up, walk over and tag the runner who is laying unconscious on the ground between second and third. Thus, you have your typical 7-5-9-8 double play.

I mean you’d think it’s pretty rare to see teams pull of the elusive double play that involves all three outfielders. A lazy golf clap comes from the stands. Just like they’ve seen it a hundred times and are considering asking for their money back.

Forty-five minutes later, I’ve been belted with about 46 pitches due to the fact that the catcher can’t see the ball cause the pitcher’s dad is parked behind the center-field fence flashing his brights on every pitch.

Suddenly, B.C. pops up to the shortstop. In the six seconds that follow the ball meeting the bat, someone’s rabid dog runs onto the field barking and foaming at the mouth while the second baseman makes 13 "mom" references to the shortstop as he spins 16 circles under the ball (Honk), slips on one of his sneakers and face-plants into a crevice obviously dug by an animal sometime during the game...while the ball lands in his glove. The stadium erupts.

The coaches announce a verbal agreement to “call it a night,” thus ending another glorious night in the mystique of small-town baseball.

Now, before any of you small-towners get all riled up over this column, ask yourself, “Did this description remind me of pretty much every game I have ever played in?” If you have to think about it…(Honk)