The umpire strikes back

“I never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes”

— Leo Durocher

It’s heard more at baseball games than the national anthem: “Both ways, Blue.”

As a veteran Little League umpire, Phil Sapien of Corrales has heard that, and much worse, countless times while behind the plate as a volunteer umpire.

“You know, before they (the fans) want to criticize the coaches, the umpires, that they take a stab at it themselves. You go out there and volunteer to coach, volunteer to umpire,” Sapien said. “That way, I think you’d get a different perspective. … I think you get a different appreciation for the game.”

He’ll keep doing it, including on a jaunt to Easley, South Caroline, to umpire a Little League Senior Boys (ages 13-16) World Series July 27 to Aug. 3.

Sapien was helping his father, and he also did some coaching with his brother John, a former state senator and also a Little League umpire, who’s five years younger.

“Recruiting umpires has always been a difficult thing for Little League,” he says, “because it’s volunteer and nobody wants to do it. Who wants to put up with the fans for a hot dog or a cheeseburger?”

It was the year 2000 when he began umpiring, when his son was 5. He and John were called upon to represent CLL at the District 8A all-star tournament.

“That’s where we met just a great group of guys and we formed the Mid-Rio Grande Umpires Association,” he said. Sapien, 58, also was a high school umpire for a few seasons.

It’s not his first rodeo: He has also umpired Little League regionals and world series events in 2007 (in Grand Junction, Colorado), ’12 (Taylor, Michigan), ’16 (Livermore, California), ’18 (Waco, Texas) and ’22 (Houston).

Naturally, he’d love to be sent to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where the Little League World Series is played and televised — for the Majors Division (mostly 12-year-olds) — where his brother was sent in 2015.

“(Little League) feeds you, they put you up in a hotel while you’re there,” he said, so it’s not all on his dime.

“(Umpiring) keeps me close to the game and gives me a different perspective,” he said. “You know — you play, you coach. When you become an umpire, you see it different.

“I’ve always felt that baseball is similar to life; there’s a lot more failure in our lives. You have to persevere … baseball teaches you that. We know the best hitters in baseball only (get a hit) three times; otherwise you’re making an out.”

Staying close to the game

Sapien knows the thrills of being young and playing baseball, which he did in the inaugural season (1974) of Coronado Little League in Bernalillo.

“Just growing up, my dad (Bill Sapien, former Sandoval County commissioner) was always a Dodgers fan. The (Albuquerque) Dukes were associated with the Dodgers, so we grew up (following them). I liked the old guys: Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Steve Garvey and all those guys.”

Sapien was a middle infielder, but he also caught and pitched. He continued his career as an outfielder at Bernalillo High School, where he graduated in 1983. Sapien’s son Francisco, who just graduated from Albuquerque High School, was a catcher for the Bulldogs, earned second-team all-district laurels.

After graduating from the University of New Mexico with cum laude honors, Sapien went to law school at the University of Arizona. He has a private practice with his brother Joseph (Sapien Law, LLC) in Albuquerque.

Major League Baseball fans know the myriad changes in the game; Little League also has made some changes.

“It is all designed with the purpose of addressing many complaints about calls in general and specifically related to missed pitches behind the plate,” Sapien explained. “Consequently, Little League has revamped many of the mechanics long-time umpires like myself have utilized for the past 25 years.”

Those changes in mechanics will be implemented in the upcoming Little League regional and world series tournaments this summer, each designed to give umpires a better angle at the plate and on the bases to work to get the call right on the field.

“This is part of the response to instant replay and cutting down on overturned calls,” Sapien said. “Hopefully, all umpires won't be replaced by robots — at least, hopefully, not in my lifetime.”

And, just as players can have a bad day in the field or at the plate, umpires aren’t immune to having bad days.

“Sometimes, if you’re not comfortable behind the plate, you’re just not feeling (right), whether it’s your mechanics or you’re missing calls, it’s like, ‘Get me out of here.’ Umpires can have days — and they’re going to miss calls behind the plate; you’re seeing 150 pitches.”

There’s no timetable for Sapien working the bases or behind the plate: “I get to stay close to baseball and see baseball from a different perspective.”

The game has changed, not so much the way it’s played on the field but how the fans behave.

“Lile a lot of sports, it’s become a lot more antagonistic and it’s unfortunate. It used to be, Little League was used as a developmental league — the skills, the basics. … I remember coaching a Coronado Little Lague all-star team and they’d tell the coaches before, ‘You know, the odds of your kids making the majors is like 1 in 60,000.

“Little League has always tried to do a good job of emphasizing that, look, this is volunteer — the coaches, the umpires — and respect the people that have come out here.”

He can’t pinpoint his greatest game as an umpire, but he’s thoroughly enjoyed the “camaraderie — I still get to be part of a team” he said. “As an umpire, you want to go out there, do the best you can — call the game fairly, give both teams the best job you can, but you’ve got your own (umpiring) team out there; you gotta have each other’s back, too.”