Years ago, before society was discontinued, I made a tragically brief run at becoming a Major League umpire.

In fact, my umpire school class appears to have made history. At the beginning of the school, the Major League umpires who worked as instructors got us all hootin’ and clappin’ when they’d tell us somewhere in that hotel ballroom was a future Major League umpire.

Turns out, in that case, the Major League umpires were all sitting in front. We were the first class not to get anyone promoted to the Major League level. The first class.

We came close, though. My path to the Majors could be measured in weeks. A friend went all the way to AAA. He even worked a spring training game at Globe Life Park way back when, so he at least got to work a game in a Major League ballpark. Also, I was inducted as an umpire into the American Youth Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. They gave me a ring and everything.

So, I’m an authority on this issue. Never mind that I haven’t called a game since I lived in Houston ten years ago. That’s not important. It gets very hot in Texas, you see.

But as an authority, allow me to feel ways about this article detailing how many pitches umpires are missing.

“Botched calls and high error rates are rampant,” the article states in an unbiased manner. Umpires missed an average of 14 pitches per game.

This isn’t, technically, true. As an authority, I can tell you how many pitches the umpires get right: all of them.

“It’s a strike because I called it a strike,” Harry Wendelstedt once explained to me. His reasoning was if you start second guessing yourself, you will start making mistakes. And umpires don’t need to be dealing with a bunch of bold, italic thoughts running through their head during the game.

Umpires may not follow the book in every case. Pitchers, catchers and managers want you to use some discretion. Many times, a manager will start hollerin’ because it was thrown right where the catcher set up

In the scout league where I last umpired, the manager would deduce, quite reasonably, there were scouts in the stands. He would then argue his pitcher needed that call on the corner. The good managers wouldn’t argue just because they’re angry. They’d argue to help their players.

Also, if umpires were outfitted with earpieces and had to wait for a ball-strike order from a guy triangulatin’ lasers at Oxford, the games would turn into a Naked Gun situation where you’d have to wait for the umpire to decide.

But I may be wrong. Paul Nauert was our lead instructor, and that Boston University study had him in the top ten worst umpires.

Or maybe he just had the discretion to know when to ring a guy up.

Or maybe he didn’t. I have no idea. I wonder if that might be why I washed out so quickly.