Tim Ellsworth

The one-eyed umpire

July 29th, 2007

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From “More Tales from the Dugout: More of the Greatest True Baseball Stories of All Time,” by Mike Shannon:

Besides offering its fans a good brand of baseball at very affordable ticket prices, the Frontier League has always been peopled by its share of characters, none more interesting than Max McLeary, who umpires in the league despite having lost an eye in an accident. A one-eyed umpire sounds like a joke, and McLeary has certainly heard them all (and then some) about him and his brethren in blue having bad eyesight, like “Hey, ump, you’re blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other one!” Yet McLeary tries to use his handicap to his advantage by outworking, outpreparing, and outhustling everybody else, and he is actually regarded as one of the very best arbiters in the league. He also has a great sense of humor and loves to tell stories about his glass eye that show he doesn’t take himself and his unique predicament too seriously. His best story is the one called “The Mask Story.”

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