By Dylan Butler
Kenneth Durham has the same dreams and aspirations as Martin Malpica, Rich Thompson or any of the other Queens Kings – he wants to make it to the major leagues.
He too wants to be in front of 55,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park or Camden Yards. But not as a player. The 23-year-old is hoping one day to be behind the plate as an umpire.
“I'd imagine that anyone in professional baseball has aspirations of making it to the major leagues,” he said. “Whether it's a grounds crew guy, a manager or an umpire, our goal is probably the same.”
Durham is in his first year as a professional baseball umpire, working in the New York-Penn League. Umpiring is something he has been doing for six years and something he loved from the first minute.
“It's not like playing, but you still are competing, against yourself,” Durham said. “Making sure every time you see a pitch you get it right or a call, you get it right. You try and improve on the last performance. Competing to do it the best it can be done is something I just love to do.”
Becoming a professional umpire was not the reason Durham started the job. Rather it was a means to make some extra cash.
“My dad told me I needed to get a job to pay for my car insurance when I was a junior in high school,” he said. “In the school bulletin during lunch they said that the Little League needed umpires and they were paying $20 a game. So I said, 'Hey, I can work a couple of games a week and I'll pay for my car insurance and have a little spending money.'”
From Little League Durham, through a family friend, started umpiring Division II and junior college games when he was just a freshman at the University of California at Davis. That's where he faced some challenges from the head coaches of several of the teams.
“In college and high school ball, [coaches] tend to think that because you're younger you have to really prove yourself and they come after you a little more,” he said. “Most expect that by the time you get [to the minors], you can do your job. They know what you've had to go through. ”
And what he had to go through was a rigorous training regimen. First Durham attended the Jim Evans Academy of Professional Umpiring in Kissimmee, Fla., which along with The Harry Wendlestedt School for Umpires in Ormond Beach, Fla., is one of the country's two umpiring schools.
At the Jim Evans Academy, which costs nearly $4,000 for tuition, room and food, Durham went through a six-week training session for 10 hours a day, six days a week. The curriculum consists of 270 hours of classroom and field training. The students take 14 tests during the six weeks on official baseball rules and National Association interpretations.
Durham said the field training at the Jim Evans school prepares potential umpires for the worst case scenarios.
“If you can umpire a camp game at Jim's school, you can umpire any baseball game because you'll have 10 plays and nine of them will never happen, but they all happened in a row,” he said.
Each person at the school is rated and the Professional Baseball Umpiring Corporation takes 40 from about 350 in the two camps combined for the 10-day PBUC Evaluation Course in Coco Beach, Fla. From there PBUC selects about 17 umpires and gives them their minor league assignments. Like the first-year players, most of the umpires right out of school are also placed in the lower level minor league system, like the New York-Penn League.
Durham said he was unsure of his chances of becoming a professional umpire, but he learned a valuable lesson at the school.
“A lot of us were very confident at first, but one of the things the umpire school teaches you is that you have to remain confident, but you also have to be humble and just understand that all you can do is all you can do,” he said.
While Durham said every one of the 220 or so umpires in the 16 different leagues in the minor league system hope to one day make the leap to the majors, they don't look at it as competition against each other.
“It's not a cut-throat competition – we're all brothers,” he said. “From time to time when I was in extended spring training, a AAA or a AA umpire would give me a call, asking if I needed any help. In a year or two it will be my job to return that favor.”
Life as a minor league umpire is not easy. Each umpire is paired with another umpire and the duo drives to each of the 13 New York-Penn League cities to work games. Unlike the majors, only two umpires work minor league games.
First-year umpires in the New York-Penn League are paid $1,800 a month and get $20 a day for meals. And with only three days off during the entire three-month season, Durham said they get used to hotels and establishing a friendship with his fellow umpire is a necessity.
“When you're on the road, living with the same guy in hotels, driving every day, spending six hours in a car every third or fourth day, you better like the person because it can get old,” said Durham, who works as a substitute teacher and a football coach in the off-season at a high school in Holden, Mass.
During one of his rare days off two weeks ago, Durham and his umpiring partner James Day attended a Yankees game on comp tickets from the game's umpires. But Durham had a different view of the game than most of the other 55,000 or so at the House that Ruth Built.
“We went to watch the umpires,” he said. “Sure we got to see [Jose] Canseco hit a 700-foot bomb, but I went to watch the umpires. You learn things, you see stuff and learn mechanics.”
Durham said because of the rigors of traveling, most umpires are not married, with Durham being in the minority.
“My wife understands,” he said of his spouse Katie. “She realizes that this is what I want to do and she's supportive, but not a lot of guys are married because it's tough to find the woman who will support you through this.”
And it won't get any easier for Durham or others in the New York-Penn League. He said that while he was at the Jim Evans Academy, Scott Higgins, an instructor at the school who works in AAA and fills in for vacationing major league umpires, said he was home just 35 days last year.
But the paltry pay and the long hours of traveling are a small price to pay for minor league umpires, especially if they become one of the lucky 68 to make it to the big leagues.
“None of us want to be career minor league umpires. It's to do the unthinkable,” he said. “The odds of getting there are so huge.”
