The Front Row with Mark Nelke May 12, 2013

I'm sure most of us have wanted to give an earful to a referee at one time or another.

Certainly an official - a football ref, a basketball official, a baseball or softball umpire, a soccer ref - has made a call that went against your team, or at least the team you root for.

They can't help it - with most calls, one side is going to be happy, the other side isn't. It's just part of the game. If they called a charging foul in basketball, how dare they? Didn't they see the defender was still moving? Or if it was a block, oh my gosh, how could that be? The defender was there all day.

And on and on.

But to be so incensed by a call, to haul off and sucker-punch that ref in the side of the head ... well, I can't see myself being that upset.

That's what was troubling about reading about the soccer referee who died last weekend from injuries sustained after he was punched in the head by a teenage player during a game in suburban Salt Lake City.

DOING WHAT we do in this business, we get to know a lot of the officials in the various sports.

They certainly don't referee for the money - in fact, in basketball, some of them accepted less money so a third referee could work the game, so the game could be called better, for the good of the players.

If you ask most of them, they don't pay attention to the score, have no idea who is supposed to win and who is not. All they know is, either it is a foul or it isn't, it is a penalty or it isn't, the ball is in bounds or it is out of bounds.

But there is one thing that they have in common.

They just want to get the call right.

YEARS AGO, for some reason, I was asked to be the left-field line umpire at a state Babe Ruth baseball championship game in Sandpoint. I'm not sure why they asked me to ump (or, looking back, why they thought they needed a left-field line umpire).

Perhaps they wanted it to look like the World Series, with six umpires instead of four. More likely, since the game was at 10 a.m. on a Monday, most of the guys who usually umped were working.

Anyway, I said OK, since I was going to be there anyway, covering the game.

I'd never watched a game from the left-field line before, and frankly, I was kinda bored. I had a fairly close-up look at the left fielder making a few plays, but other than that, there are much better places to sit and watch a game.

Anyway, I was minding my own business until, late in the game, when somebody hit a ground ball down the third-base line. It was one of those where bat meets ball in fair territory so the ball starts out bouncing fair, then somewhere around the bag it angled into foul territory.

The third-base ump, if I recall correctly, jumped out of the way of the ground ball, and instead of making the ball - since he was right there - he looked out at me.

Whaddya looking at me for, I thought?

So I made the call - fair ball. In that split second of watching the ball go from fair territory to foul territory - and trying not to be distracted by the third-base ump's Flying Wallenda act - I ruled the ball crossed over the bag before going foul.

Runs scored, and momentum changed.

The coach of the team on defense came out of the dugout to question the call. I don't remember him going all Earl Weaver on anybody. We explained what we saw and what we called, and that was that. He went back to the dugout.

One team went on to win and the other didn't - I don't even remember if the team that thought it was wronged by the call won or lost. And I doubt if anyone who was there remembers that call.

Except, of course, me.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at [email protected].