Typical Day
Emmet Pyre wakes up to a country song he's never heard before blaring on the radio. Emmet's confused for a second. Where is he again? He checks the time on the unfamiliar clock. 7:15AM.
With a groan, Emmet rolls out of bed. Ah, yes. He remembers where he is now: a motel room in Kodak, Tennessee, for work.
Hold up. A Major League baseball team in Tennessee?
Hah, that's cute. Major League.
The Tennessee Smokies, the pride of Kodak, are a Double-A minor league affiliate of the Chicago Cubs team, two rungs down from the more illustrious Major Leagues. Emmet only found out about them a couple months ago, when he got his schedule for the year.
That was around the same time that he learned about the Portland Sea Dogs, the team that he umpired for last week. The trip to Maine was nice, but Emmet's still shaking his head. Who's ever heard of the Portland Sea Dogs, besides the players—and, now, Emmet?
Emmet heads down to a complimentary continental breakfast before meeting up with the other umpires. The other boys on his crew are a group of four. Like the Fantastic Four, except in this case one of them shouts game on instead of flame on. They don't always eat together, but they don't always end up in a motel in Kodak, Tennessee, either.
After breakfast, they pump a little iron at the gym, do some stretching, and go for a quick jog. Emmet's not planning on trying out for the Smokies; all he cares about is keeping in decent shape, just in case he ever needs to sprint all the way out to left field.
Back at the motel by 11:30AM, Emmet takes his usual mid-day nap; after all, there's nothing better after an intense amount of walking than a sweet catnap. The umpire life is stressful, but not because it's crazy busy.
The crew reconvenes for a hearty lunch at 1:00PM. They talk about pretty much everything but tonight's game; they've officiated hundreds or even thousands of games, so one more isn't that exciting. They're more interested in chowing down on fries and planning to play juvenile pranks on the rookie umpires.
By 2:00PM, they arrive at the ballpark, a few-thousand-person stadium outside the town center. Heading to the umpire locker room (which in this case means the unoccupied men's room—this is the minor leagues, after all), they change out of their street clothes. Emmet gets changed in a stall and then goes out to check that he looks okay.
Looking at his clean cotton blue polo and his pressed pants, he decides that he looks better than okay. He looks great. He looks like the kind of guy who'll never miss a play or dole out a bad call. Ninety percent of being an umpire is 'tude, and with his uniform on, Emmet's got his signature authoritative look on lock. This is why he got into this biz.
After dressing, Emmet does what any good umpire would do in this situation: get an early dinner. At 4:00PM, he heads down to the park cafeteria, a poorly-lit hole near the left field concession stand. As he sits with the crew, the topic of discussion turns to the game itself.
"Emmet, you have the plate today, right?" asks Gordon "Grumpy" Johnson. Grumpy has been in the minor leagues for six years now, with few signs of moving on to AAA any time soon. Emmet, who has been moving at a relatively fast pace through the minor leagues, suspects Grumpy resents him for this.
"Uh-huh," Emmet says. Umpires aren't really known for their vocab. When you spend so much of your life saying, "Strrrrr," and, "Baaaaa," you learn to use words sparingly.
The players lumber into the dugout, and fans begin to trickle into the stands. Finally, it's game time. At precisely 6:05PM, the national anthem rings out from the ballpark's second-hand PA system. At 6:10PM, Emmet is set behind the plate, ready to see every little detail. At 6:15PM, the first pitch of the night is thrown.
At 9:40PM, three hours and forty minutes later, Emmet can finally blink again. His eyes are drier than the Sahara, so he blinks for several minutes. Aaah, sweet relief.
The game is finally over. Emmet breathes a sigh of relief that all calls were made without a hitch. The Smokies won by a comfortable margin, and while that makes Emmet a more popular man in Kodak, it doesn't really matter to him. He's not here to play favorites; he just wants to keep everybody in line. All in all, this was a good game for him. He just hopes the league reps noticed.