NW Democrat-Gazette

Being a MLB rookie umpire no easy assignment

MIKE DIGIOVANNA LOS ANGELES TIMES

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Malachi Moore’s first season as a full-time major league umpire will be stressful enough, what with the bigger stadiums, higher stakes, hostile crowds, enhanced sticky stuff checks, travel demands and the “Umpire Scorecards” website tracking every one of the 32-year-old’s missed calls.

Throw in the new pitch clock, which will require plate umps to keep a closer eye on the pitcher and batter pre-delivery, be mindful of the buzzer on their wrists, master a new set of hand signals, communicate with field timing coordinators in the press box through an earpiece and microphone — and, oh, you have to call balls and strikes — and the job seems downright daunting.

Not to Moore, the former Compton Dominguez High and Compton College infielder who has faced and conquered far greater challenges and absorbed more trauma than any irate manager, player or fan could ever inflict on a baseball field.

When Moore was 15, he made the decision with his mother, Neva, to remove his older brother, Nehemiah, from life support after Nehemiah was gunned down in a driveby shooting in Compton. Nehemiah died the next day.

“I’ll never forget that feeling,” Moore said before working a recent Cactus League game. “It was just a weird, eerie feeling. Like, you don’t even know what to think. You don’t know what to feel. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. It’s probably the most difficult experience I’ve ever had. That day literally changed my life forever.”

Moore, who grew up playing and working at the MLB Youth Academy in Compton, is the first product from any of MLB’s 11 youth academies in the U.S. to reach the major leagues as an umpire.

He always dreamed of the big leagues, but when it was clear he wouldn’t get there as a player, he thought he’d make it as a groundskeeper.

Moore worked at the academy during junior college, waking up at 5 a.m. each day to drag the infields, mow the grass and repair sprinkler heads before school and returning after classes and practice to tend to the fields and shut down the facility.

Moore’s career arc took a dramatic turn in November 2010 when he and several college teammates served as “guinea pigs” during a one-day umpiring camp at the academy, taking at-bats, making plays and running the bases so aspiring umps could make calls.

Moore caught the eye of then- MLB umpire Kerwin Danley, who was working the camp and asked Moore if he had ever tried umpiring.

“I told him, ‘Nope, I never thought of it, didn’t care for it,’ ” Moore said. “And he’s, like, ‘C’mon, let’s go to the cages, put some gear on and try it. I politely declined. Long story short, we went to the cages and he had me try out a strike-three mechanic.

“I was there with [former MLB umpire] Chuck Meriwether, God rest his soul, and [MLB umpire supervisor] Cris Jones. They saw me and said, ‘Hey man, you’re having fun with it. You’re kind of picking things up. Take it a little more seriously. You never know what can happen.’ ”

Moore was invited to a subsequent week-long umpire camp, at which he was offered — and accepted — a scholarship to the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Before leaving for Florida, Moore was asked to umpire an exhibition for a Japanese team at the youth academy. An aha moment ensued.

“It was a seven- inning game, it lasted an hour and a half, and they gave me $80 cash in an envelope,” Moore said. “I thought I was stealing somebody’s money, and I politely declined it. They said, ‘No, that’s yours, you earned it.’ I was like, ‘Oh wow, you can make money doing this?’ Then it kind of transformed me when I went to umpire school.”

The five-week stint in Daytona Beach did not yield a job offer for Moore, who was 20 at the time, but instructors told him he had potential and that there was no need to rush him into professional baseball.

Moore came home and began umpiring high school games in the South Bay in 2011. That summer, he worked the collegiate wood-bat Northwoods League in the Midwest, making $1,500 a month. He returned to the Harry Wendelstedt school that fall, and this time he graduated.

So began an 11-year umpiring journey that started in the Arizona rookie league and included stops in the short-season Class A Northwest League, the low-A Midwest and South Atlantic Leagues, the high-A California League, the Class AA Texas League and the Class AAA Pacific Coast League.

After working 156 major league games over the last three seasons, Moore was one of 10 umpires promoted to full-time roles in January, a job that comes with a $150,000 starting salary. He is the second-youngest of MLB’s 76 fulltime umps.

“You almost pinch yourself because you’re thinking, ‘Wow, this is like a dream,’ ” said Darrell Miller, the Compton youth academy director. “Malachi is a great human being, a hard worker, and he has a great story.”

Baseball

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2023-03-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.nwaonline.com/article/282797835626899

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