When I watched Joe Carter make his leaping run around the base paths after his spectacular home run in that World Series game, my heart was in my mouth, put there by a clear vision of a long-held memory.

The main diamond at Carlisle on the centre road in Flamborough is now a fine, well-lighted facility with sufficient grandstands on each base-line and a refreshment booth and support room behind home plate.

Fifty years ago, Carlisle unlighted diamond was in a field behind a town church and was bordered on the first-base side by the Carlisle Creek and guarded on all sides by the biggest mosquitoes on the face of the earth.

There it was that I somehow survived the darndest foo-fa-rah I can remember as an umpire.

The identity of the visiting team that evening slips my mind but all other facets of that game are etched in my memory forever.

Rabid Carlisle fans, three and four deep, lined the foul lines on both sides of the diamond. In those days, part of the umpire’s duties was to announce the batteries of the rival teams prior to the start of the game.

When I announced the battery for the visiting team, I was greeted by loud boos. The battery announcement for Carlisle was met by equally loud cheers. The announcement of the umpiring crew of Pat Santucci (of Tiger-Cat fame) and Ted Wilcox was met without much enthusiasm.

It was a hard-fought game, with the spectators screaming at every play. The score is not important except that Carlisle was down one run in the last of the ninth with two out and a runner on second base.

The batter hit a ball between fielders; the man on second crossed third and started Joe Carter-like leaps toward home plate. His last leap carried over the home plate without touching it and into the arms of fanatic Carlisle fans who carried him shoulder-high in triumph!

Meanwhile, the ball had been thrown into the home plate area where the catcher was scrambling on his hands and knees between fan’s legs to retrieve the ball, leap up and touch the “chaired” hero on the back, yelling: “He never touched the plate!”

Pat Santucci can see that mule-headed Wilcox is going to call him out and is yelling: “No! Ted no!”

When I call the player out the silence is deafening. The chaos that followed seemed to put my life in jeopardy!

P.S. I survived!

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About that same year and in that same league, I umpired a game at Freelton with an umpire named Al.

I can’t remember Al’s last name but he was the weight room attendant at the YMCA for years and he was built like Arnold ‘The Italian Stallion’ (I won’t attempt to spell it!)

The field at Freelton in those days was in a hollow beside Highway 6. The mosquitoes there were just as big and plentiful as those at Carlisle except that these wore knap-sacks to carry away pieces of your flesh in.

This field sported a wire fence down each sideline with 2 by 4s laid along the top for spectators to lean on.

Al was doing the plate and I was on bases. The third baseman of the visiting team was a great one for ‘talking it up’ and he was a pretty good player too.

The trouble with this third baseman was that he wouldn’t listen! His pitcher, in his estimation, threw only strikes. Al called some of those pitches balls. When the third baseman moved in to comment on Al’s calls, Al told him that the next time he came in to argue he’d get “thrown out of the game!”

A few pitches later Al called a ball. This third baseman ran in to argue and Al took him under the arm-pits and threw him over the fence into the spectators who kindly stepped back (he was from the visiting team, remember), and let him drop to the ground!

This is the only time in all my years of umpiring that I’ve seen a player actually ‘thrown out of the game!’

I guess all the others were ‘ejected’ from the game.

We really miss you Al!