Credit for the Assist

[pitchcoach]

Before plate umpires had chest armor they had a thing called a Balloon. It was like a stuffed sofa pillow that they held in front of them to protect them from passed balls, foul tips and other stuff. During one game, a runner on third was stealing home on the pitch and it caught the batter totally by surprise. So, instead of backing out of the box he stepped forward, and quickly. That in turn caught out catcher totally by surprise as it did the plate umpire who were still in their position waiting for the pitch to arrive. The pitch did arrive but the runner had to go around his teammate at bat, which took him off the mark to the plate and right into the our catcher with the ball. Our catcher went back into the plate umpire’s balloon – bounced forward and landed on top of the runner stealing home. “Your out!” – came the call form the plate ump. After the call, the plate ump had some conversation with our catcher that concerned our skipper and myself. When our guy got back into the dugout he went over to our dugout scorekeeper and said “ the ump wants credit for the assist and that play!:”