I have officiated high school and small college basketball for 40 years. This coming baseball season will be my 40th season working H.S. baseball and my 27th season umpiring college baseball. I also graduated from umpire school and umpired professional baseball in the minor leagues, but for only three years before deciding that I wasn't going to make it to the major leagues, or as it's called "The Show" and wanted to get on with my life. I enjoy both sports equally, although I believe that basketball requires the athletes to be in better physical condition, but baseball requires the players, especially the pitchers, to be more skilled. It doesn't take a lot of skill to slam dunk a basketball, unless you are under 6 feet tall. I am 6'4" and used to be able to dunk, but now at my age, I can barely jump high enough to just touch the rim. The top on the rim is 10 feet from the ground up to the top.
With my work schedule for my real job, I was only available to officiate and umpire mostly on weekends. I only had to work one weekend a month, so during that week, I had two days off in the middle of the week. Now that I am retired, I am still an active official and umpire and work more now than I did when I worked at my real job. I keep myself in pretty good physical condition. I umpire very few H.S. baseball games due to my college schedule being fairly full.
