How Smitty got the job

want to make it clear that Smitty was not assigned the championship. My protégé, Javi Cantu, had the plate in the third-place game and was scheduled for the bases in the final. He’d already had the bases for the consolation game at 10:00 that morning. In the bottom of the fifth of his second game, he switched to the scissors. That’s an immediate signal between us that something’s really wrong.

At the end of the half inning, I wandered over (I didn’t want to alarm the crowd) to see what was up. It turned out he was suffering from heat exhaustion. Now, he’s only 23, and he had been hydrating between every half inning. Not too much, you understand. Just enough.

"Hey, I’m 70, and the heat isn’t bothering me. Maybe you should have worn the long sleeve compression Under Armour." Since he'd become a professional umpire, he had given up that "amateur" habit. I couldn’t resist the little dig.

Continued...