For many years, my summer job was working for the Saginaw Township Recreation Department. I hired all the umpires for the slow-pitch softball games and the Mickey Mantle, Connie Mack, and Stan Musial age group baseball games.

Finding enough umpires was always a challenge, and I often recruited some of my high school students and some players from area high school teams to umpire.

One of my recruits from way back then, Laura, is still umpiring softball today. I also just received a note from another of my youth umpires who read this column that I share on Facebook to a site of the school where I taught. He told me that I got him started in officiating and he went on to referee high school basketball and hockey.

Since these youngsters had never umpired before, each year I ran a series of clinics. We covered positioning, how to make calls, and just about everything.

Of course, working with youth, you get some funny happenings.

One of my young umpires came to me and said he really got yelled at for one of his calls. I asked him to explain.

He said, “There was a play at third base. The throw came to the third baseman as the runner was sliding into third in a cloud of dust. Just like you told us, I asked the third baseman to show me the ball. He did. Then I called the runner safe and the yelling began.”

I had to laugh.

I said, “Kelly, you only need to have the fielder show you the ball to make sure he didn’t drop it before you call the runner out. If you were going to call the runner safe it didn’t matter if the third baseman dropped the ball. When you said show me the ball, and he did, the defensive team thought you were going to call the runner out.”

I guess I forgot to tell them that.

Adult players often tried to take advantage of my young umpires.

Jim, a very good young umpire and son of one of my teaching colleagues, said one of the teams on the field where he and his partner umpired was causing the young guys problems. I decided to check it out and scheduled myself to umpire the bases for a game with the problem team.

One of their players got a hit and tried to stretch it into a double. The throw came in from the outfield and the shortstop laid the tag on the sliding runner. I made the out call and immediately I got hit with a handful of dirt thrown at me by the runner I had called out.

I looked the runner in the eyes waiting to see if I got an “oops, I’m sorry” look, or a verbal apology. Instead, I got an angry glare. That was enough, I ejected the player. With the ejection he also had to miss the next game.

I got apologies, begging, statements about “what a good guy he was” and etc. He still was ejected and missed the next game.

Jim (who later had a career in the USAF) and his partner had no more issues with that team.

I really liked running the summer program, but it was a challenge. I used to call 5:30 p.m. the panic hour. The games started at 6 p.m.

Between baseball and softball, I had about 24 umpires hired each weeknight. I could count on a phone call at about 5:30 from one of my youth umps telling me they were unable to ump that night. Then I had to scramble to find a replacement.

Les Miller, of Hubbard Lake, has retired after 53 years officiating multiple sports around Michigan. He can be reached at theoldref@yahoo.com.