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The Umpire |
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It was nearly midnight by the time I got back to the hotel, and I was ravenous. I washed my face, used the toilet, took the elevator down to the lobby, then hurried around the corner to the all-night restaurant. I had eaten about six, a sandwich in some forgettable coffee shop in some freeway suburb –- it was long ago, before fast-food clones took root in every suburban shopping center -- and I have forgotten which community, which eatery, even the name of the cheap downtown Los Angeles hotel where I shared a room with Jimmy. It was the summer of my 21st year, and I was just out of the Army. Jimmy was one of the guys whom I met in my first week working for PF Collier & Co.; if everything worked out, we were going to look for an apartment, maybe in Hollywood, after we got our first paychecks. A few years my senior and painfully skinny, Jimmy wore pinstriped suits and slicked his long, curly red hair with thick pomade. He was a likeable, street-wise guy who had peddled magazines, cosmetics, brushes, housewares, and now, like me, books. I peered past a tired, rumpled hostess holding a menu and saw Jimmy at a table with a heavy-set man, a balding guy of maybe 40 in a dark sports jacket over a bright polo shirt, carefully buttoned to the throat. I waved off the hostess and sat down next to Jimmy. The older man glared at me. I’d made a sale that night, one of my first, and I started to tell Jimmy about it. Abruptly he stood up. “Come over here a minute, I gotta talk to you,” he said. “I haven’t ordered, and I’m hungry,” I replied. “It’ll only take a minute,” said Jimmy, who seemed strangely nervous. He headed for the men’s room, and I followed. In the dark corridor outside it he paused, turned around, lowered his head. “You can’t just sit down at somebody’s table without being asked,” he said. “We’re roommates,” I said. “What’s the problem?” “It’s not a problem sitting down with me. But that man is a National League umpire,” he said, and mentioned a name that sounded vaguely familiar. “So what?” “So, he can’t be seen eating with people he doesn’t know,” Jimmy said, without rancor. He wasn’t angry, just emphatic. I was crushed. “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “I can’t eat with an umpire?” “He doesn’t know you.” “But he knows you?” “Yeah, he’s a friend of my family. You better find another table.” Smarting with rejection, I ordered a sandwich to go, then ate in the room. In the morning Jimmy rose early and left while I was in the shower. We were in different crews, and by the time I returned that night, Jimmy was asleep. The next day he quit or was fired, depending on who I asked. I never saw him again. It was many years before I began to comprehend what Jimmy had meant that night in the restaurant; I have Pete Rose to thank for opening that door for me. Rose was observed dining with men whose faces and occupations were known to those who keep an eye on gamblers. Rose, the best hitter in major league baseball history, is not in the Hall of Fame. Not until I began to learn the Talmud, however, did that odd incident from my youth finally come into sharp focus. Studying the courts and judges of Sanhedrin, we discussed the sort of people whom the sages permitted to decide justice. “The fair people of Jerusalem .. would not sit at table without knowing their fellow diners,” says a commentary. Suddenly it was clear: An umpire is a judge, deciding who is safe, who is out, who broke a rule, who observed it. Judges are allowed mistakes, but they may not be influenced to favor either side. The umpire whose table I joined did not know me; he could not know whom I knew, how I earned my living, what sort of reputation accompanied my name. Since every umpire’s livelihood is his character, allowing a stranger to dine at his table jeopardized this precious asset. If the sages never imagined baseball, they knew human nature, and the value of appearances. They knew that a judge who breaks bread in public with strangers lacks propriety, and will render decisions forever open to question. The Talmud is a deep and often murky lake, but the stream that feeds it is pure Torah. I enjoy baseball, and I am pleasantly surprised to find that the more I study Talmud, the better I understand the game. # # # Copyright © 2000 The Umpire Marvin J. Wolf |