“I'm not a sitter, I'm a doer.”

Kate Hart wanted to play baseball when she was a kid but wasn’t allowed to join boys’ teams. She played softball instead, and years later started coaching her son’s teams. Once she stopped coaching, she wanted to stay on the field and took to umpiring. She’s worked everywhere from Little League to high school, college to the Pioneer League, often four games a week during the busy seasons. She takes the time to answer some of your questions in this interview edited for clarity: the umpire bubble, hardest calls, managing personalities on the field, being a woman in baseball, and a lifelong love of the game.

What got you into umpiring?

I have always loved baseball. Since I was, you know, probably six, seven years old, and I wanted to play growing up, but they didn't allow girls at the time, and so I ended up playing softball in high school and college. And then when our son got to be old enough for a Little League, I coached several of his teams. He got to be about 12 years old or so, and it was just, it became a good time for him to transition to a male coach or just to not his mom! And I couldn't stand sitting on the sidelines. I'm not a sitter, I'm a doer. So somebody needed an umpire, and I tried it, and it was so much more fun than I ever expected. I thought that it would be a lot of standing around and getting yelled at, but it's actually quite athletic and also mentally challenging. I had no idea I would get hooked on it, but I did.

What are your favorite parts of the job? Least favorite?

Favorite parts of the job are my partners and working with them, and when we kind of know we've done something really great. So kind of a, you know, strange private celebration. And just the friendships that I have where those people are going through the ringer together. And the worst part is, frankly, the travel, because it takes a lot of time to get back and forth between games. It's fun once the game is going, but like yesterday, I spent five hours in a car, going back and forth for a game, and today, I'm spending about three hours going back and forth. It's just time consuming.

What are the hardest calls to make?

I would say plays into the plate or plays where there's a steal at second base, where there's a lot of moving parts and it's difficult to predict exactly how something's going to unfold. So I have to watch all the parts, and the timing can be so close on some of these things and, you know, we don't have replay. So you just do the best you can. I would say that tag plays at a base, where everything happens just within a split second, are the hardest ones for me to call.

Speaking of: what are your thoughts on replay and challenges?

I think they're interesting, but I would hate for a computer to call all balls and strikes. But, you know, I don't think it's that bad. The first time that I experienced it, the balance of systems in the Pioneer League [with Trackman ball/strike challenges], was last year. I worked a game and I was not the plate umpire, but I saw how it could affect my concentration and I think you have to approach it with the right mindset of, “hey, if they overturn a call, that's the way it goes, you know?” It's hard to be perfect in our judgment and also the system's not perfect. But I watch it in an MLB game, the plays that I was talking about, the close steal plays or whatever. You watch them over and over in slowest, slowest motion, and it helps you get the call right. And that's really what we want. I saw actually somewhere else in the minor league they have a check swing challenge system that they're trying. And that's another hard call. I would love to have that taken off my hands because it's very hard to see.

Back to the human side of things. What can you hear from fans during a game? Are you sort of in your own bubble, or what breaks through that bubble?

Mostly yes, just in a bubble, but at some fields the fans are really close to a plate umpire, and I can hear remarks that are condescending. And I just try to ignore it. And on rare occasion—this happens more in high school than anything else—I will have a private conversation with the coach between innings, where I’ll look at my lineup card while I'm talking to him, but I'm not talking to him about my lineup card at all. It's like, “hey, can you get somebody to shut this dad up?” And it's always the same kind of dad, you know? And it's even worse if it's a mom that's yelling at me, you know?

How do you manage personalities out on the field—players, coaches?

A lot of players are just quiet. I don't really have a conversation with them, but some of them are more social. Like last night I had a game where I talked a lot with the first baseman just because he was interesting and he was interested in having a conversation. So that was cool. And it helps build respect, I think. You know, they’re not used to having a woman on the field at all. Sometimes they're curious and sometimes they're quiet at the beginning of the game, but then when I just kind of do my thing just like everybody else does, then it becomes the icebreaker.

With difficult personalities or, you know, somebody yelling at me or something like that, it's just turning on my listening skills as best as I can. Last night I had a coach challenge a call that I had and he was already mad about some other stuff that had happened earlier in the game that were just dumb plays that his team made. I think you have to understand the complete context and not be a jerk back to them because it just throws fuel on the fire.

You’ve mentioned this in passing a couple of times. What is it like being a female umpire? Does it feel like breaking into a boys’ club? What has your experience been?

95% of the time, it's enthusiastic. I think maybe 10 years ago, when I was first starting college umpiring, I would have some quiet managers potentially rolling their eyes. But then, usually what would happen is, especially at the plate, if I was calling an inning or something like that and they saw that I knew what I was doing, then they shut up and they were fine with me.

Do you feel like a trailblazer? Is that something you think about, or you're just kind of doing your job out there?

I love it. Yeah, definitely. But I'm not out there to make a political statement or something like that. I'm out there because I love it. I'm working an all-girls baseball tournament up in Reno in about three weeks. And it's a national tournament and there's going to be nine pretty dang qualified female umpires. And I'm looking forward to the camaraderie there. We kind of support each other that way too. But I really don't feel like I'm discriminated against, and my biggest challenge is just age and staying fit and being fast enough for the higher levels. But it's not really a gender thing. It's more of a physical thing.

What’s something—or somethings—you wish the average fan knew about umpiring?

That's a good question. I would say this is just a really general thing, but there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. That's true probably of almost anything in life. I would say as a plate umpire, there is a lot of stuff that can happen instantly. And it's hard to see it all, including the ball moving, the batter moving, you know—potential hit by pitch, a foul ball, where did it hit? What did it hit first? What's his stance? How does that relate to the strike zone? There's a lot more to it than just seeing where the catcher catches the ball. That would be one thing.

And it takes a lot of work to work a game just in terms of—we already talked about travel—we didn't talk about training and we didn't talk about equipment and uniforms and meetings, so there's a lot that we need to do just to even get on the field. I guess I just wish that they had more respect in general, and I'd love to have them go out there and call five pitches and see what it's like.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I would love to work more Ballers’ games! That would be fun…I hope that the Ballers are a huge success. I'm a big cheerleader of that effort, that organization. I hope that it really takes hold.

Ask an Umpire: Kate Hart

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