Strike One and You're Out!

For those cultured people out there that are familiar with NBC's genius series, The Office, Dwight Schrute is a person who craves authority. His insatiable appetite for power that he can unjustly wield over others is extremely hilarious-- when on TV. However, when people do this in the real world, it is far from funny. When those power hungry, self-deluded cretins think that they have to exercise their feeble and insignificant power in a way that surpasses their authority, they are epitomizing Pure Failure.

I am what you would call a connoisseur of sports. I enjoy playing, as well as spectating, athletic competitions. While enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and jovial attitude that enveloped my brothers' (two of them) city league softball game, I encountered one of the worst kinds of those power hungry cretins...in the form of the umpire.

Now I know that sports officials have been getting blasted for ages for making bad calls and betting on their own games, but sometimes they actually deserve the mud that is slung their way. If you think about it, sports officials have a very high percentage of correctness. If you compare their high percentage of correct calls (the SEC wants its basketball referees to be correct 94% of the time) compared to the percentage of other sports then they are way ahead of the competition. In baseball if you can hit over 30 percent of the time, then you are doing really well. In basketball shooting in the 60% range is considered good. 60% is a D. But I digress... while referees are not as horrible as many people make them out to be, there are times when they just suck. They make bad calls and stand by those calls because they don't want to look any worse, right? Wrong...especially in professional and college athletics where instant replay is almost a requirement. The bad calls live on and their level of incompetence rises.

Anyway, back to the warm spring night at the ball game. My brothers were playing softball against another team...coincidentally, it was the other team from their company. The game was really good and although it was noticeable the umpire was good for little less than crouching behind the catcher, occasionally rubbing his groin into his gluteus maximus, I was able to refrain from audibly belittling him. I was loud and proud, rooting for my brothers' team. It was an overall fun time. However, it was inevitable that the umpire would make a blatant, reprobate call. The call came towards the end of the game. It was a close contest and I was avidly cheering for the success of my hermanos. Then it came: a hit into center field. The center fielder (my brother) caught the ball of the bounce and gunned it into home plate to the pitcher who was cover the plate (my other brother). The runner was easily beaten by the ball and was tagged out at home, or was he? After a dramatic pause, the jacka-- I mean umpire called him safe. Immediately the crowd was in an uproar. Even the other team was visibly astonished at the complete trash that was that call.

Being a very loud and outspoken person, I was quick to let my thoughts known. I started to heckle the ref for being so obviously handicapped. I was quite inventive in the way that I delivered these "zingers". Soon, the umpire was having a hard time calling strikes and balls while I was incessantly vociferating at his inability to slay the dragon known as stupidity. Flustered and not knowing what to do, he stopped the game and yelled for his boss (his name was Paul). Then he notified the pitcher (who was my brother) that if I were to yell again then the game would be forfeited and I wold be escorted from the game. I had to take a moment to process the information that had just entered my brain. They were threating to kick me out...of a city league softball game. My laughter could not be refrained. Amusedly I guffawed at the threat of being escorted out of a softball game by Paul. So, I decided that I would respect their pathetic wishes and I remained silent. However, being a complete bastard, I grabbed my video camera which I had previously been using to record the game, and walked behind the backstop and stood behind the umpire and next to Paul. Silently, I filmed the two of them, from a very uncomfortable and close distance. Angrily, they tried to force me to put my camera away, but I silently pretended that I didn't hear them.

Finally the game ended. My brothers' team ended up losing. With the game no longer forfeitable, I started to discuss the ridiculous nature of their threat to kick me out the game. It was amusing to call them juvenile and immature and to see their reactions. Obviously, because they suffered from the all to common ailment known as stupidity, I had to leave them be with a chuckle. But still it remains a fact that I was almost forcibly removed from a softball game for heckling a horrible umpire over one call. It lasted all of two minutes. Unfortunately, two men with illusions of grandeur and a penchant for abusing their pathetic amount of authority granted to them by the city recreational department, had to ruin the tranquil softball atmosphere. It is because of simpletons like the unnamed umpire and Paul, that we have to put up with people that are so self important that they don't realize the triviality of their current position. They fail to see that anybody who can read at a 3rd grade level could perform their jobs better than they can.

And now ends my ranting and I hereby award these two men, and all other abusers of unimportant power, the award of achieving Pure Failure.