Characters

We’ve got some crazy and interesting folks in attendance here at Umpire School. There’s CJ, a 6.5 foot scarecrow-shaped gentleman with a deep Atlanta Braves accent whose flapping arms and baseball enthusiasm have caused a sensation; Katrina, whose two late-teenaged daughters are not attending, but whose husband will be part of next year’s class; and then there’s Dan. I don’t write fiction because I couldn’t in 10^12 seconds make up a character like Dan.

Dan is in my group of 20 or so students for drills. He seems to the Nachoman’s untrained eye to be one of the more competent class members. At study group tonight, it was Dan who helped me remember and understand the base umpire’s footwork on ground balls with a man on first base. I could tell that Dan knew how to learn, and how to study – he is one of the few who don’t seem out of place at a “study group.”

I got the 10 minute version of Dan’s backstory. His accent communicated instantly to me that Dan grew up in Canada – sure enough, he’s from Toronto.[1] At age 17, Dan wrote and produced his first play. He never went to college, because (for a while) he found regular writing gigs. He ended up producing three of his own full-length plays, was head writer for a major theater company in Toronto, and did some television work as well.

Problem was, after a time he tired of the feast-or-famine financial life of a freelance writer. He decided to escape the city, hopefully to make a bit of money and have a bit of an adventure. So he moved to the arctic to manage a base there.[2] And I do mean the arctic – in Nunavut territory at a latitude well above 70 degrees, pretty much as north as you can get without venturing out onto the ocean. Dan demonstrated for us a few words of the Inuit dialect that he has mastered.

I’m going to learn more about Dan’s job in Nunavut eventually. But he sure does sound happy in Florida while back “home” there’s not even any sunlight. He says that umpiring is “the only thing that would possibly bring him to the States right now.” He’s hoping for a minor league job, but he wonders how he would feel about the minor league lifestyle. The pay certainly is nothing exciting, but Dan sees the possibilities inherent in a job that requires only 4 or so hours of actual physical work each day – more time to write, right?

[1] He rides to our practice fields in a car with a Texan, which has made for some priceless conversations.
[2] What kind of base, I haven’t found out. Presumably not second.