The Outfield Line Umpire Might Be The Best Job in Sports

I've had the privilege of working a few outfield lines for the 11U State Championships in my day. There could not possibly be less of a need for it in youth travel baseball. But the owner of the baseball complex in Bowling Green, Ohio took pride in putting on a great state tournament, and liked to pull out all the stops for the championship. That included occasionally rolling out 6-man umpire crews for no reason at all other than flexing that he could. It was pretty cool really. Unlike the assholes at the Little League World Series, he actually paid us for it too. And at the end of the tournament when he'd hand us our envelopes full of cash, he would give every umpire the opportunity to flip a coin for double or nothing on our pay. Never saw anyone take him up on it. We were all way too broke to risk a full weekend's worth of work. In hindsight, I really wish I would have gone for it at least once.

But umpiring an outfield line is fantastic. You have next to zero responsibilities. It's next to impossible to mess it up. You're just hanging out outside watching a baseball game. It's also hilarious. I umped a left field line on a 200' foot fence one time. There's nothing like giving an EMPHATIC out call on a routine fly ball to left field and trying not to crack up afterwards. The biggest danger is that something actually happens, and you end up booting the one call you have to make because you were so unprepared for the possibility of actually being needed. But 99.99% of the time, it's the easiest money you'll ever make.

Now you'd probably think, "Well there's a little more at stake in the MLB"

Not really. There used to be. Since 1947, MLB has been turning to 6-man umpire crews for the postseason. Which made enough sense. Might as well have a couple additional umpires down the outfield lines to get up close and personal for any tight fair/foul calls, or maybe a diving play where ball might have hit the ground. It's rare those umpires matter at all. But at the same time... it was an outfield umpire who was responsible for one of the most infamous blown calls in the history of Major League Baseball.

It's the easiest job in the world, but if you fuck it up, your mistake is (or was) magnified by 100x. That right field umpire in the 1996 ALCS probably had nothing to do all game long, but the ONE time he was needed, he booted the call so bad that he went down in history.

But nowadays, I'd contest that working an outfield line in the MLB Playoffs is the easiest, most stress free job in sports. Now they have replay to help them out. Today, the Jeffrey Maier play is reviewed and overturned. Whether or not a ball hits the ground before the outfielder caught it is reviewable. Fair/foul balls (that land past the base, which would be the only calls the outfield umpire is making) are reviewable. The only way I can see an outfield umpire potentially blowing a game is if he calls a foul ball and kills the play when the ball was actually fair. Even in that situation, the call can be overturned, but the hitting team might end up having their batter held at first, when in reality he would have made it to second. 

But that entire situation can be avoided if the outfield umpire just makes sure to call any questionable ball fair, so the players play it out, and they can go back afterwards to decide if the batter needs to get back in the box. If you just call everything fair, and if you don't go rogue and insert yourself with any infield fly calls…

Truly all you have to do is NOTHING, and nothing can really go wrong. These umpires who are being assigned to the outfield for playoff games have the best seat in the house for the biggest most important baseball games in the world. They get paid to be there. And I'm not sure they could fuck it up if they tried. We could borderline stick Make-A-Wish children out there. They should honestly let this kid do it.

That kid is creating WAY more problems blocking people's views from the stands than he's capable of creating by working an outfield line. And for that kid's sake, we have to get him calling a Major League game in some capacity as soon as possible. Because he's about to spend his whole childhood preparing for a career that by the time he's 18 will be replaced by robots. He's going to look back on his life and realize he completely threw away his youth. That's an origin story worthy of a super villain. For the sake of humanity, Rob Manfred should call him up immediately and let him work right field for Mariners-Tigers Game 1. Just so his youth-long devotion to the craft of umpiring doesn't turn out to be a complete waste.

I'm trying to think of any other officiating positions in sports that are just as easy. More and more of them are gradually being made obsolete by replay. The goal line judge in the NHL was killed in 2019. Even non-plate umpires jobs are close to foolproof nowadays. There's not too many mistakes they can make that aren't correctable by replay review. 

"Thankfully", basketball refs still have ALL the bandwidth in the world to ruin a game as much as they please. Same with football refs when it comes to calling penalties. But if there's one officiating job that's next to go, outfield umpires for postseason baseball games have to be on their way out. Because these guys are just stealing money at this point.