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The Little League World Series was big-time for Kettering umpire

He shook the vice president’s hand, danced a little disco, made good calls and met great kids.

Alicia Fidler Little league umpire Jeff Stokoe of West Carrollton

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By Kyle Nagel, Staff Writer Updated 11:03 PM Saturday, September 5, 2009

Jeff Stokoe arrived in Williamsport, Pa., on a Wednesday, two days before the Little League World Series began. Following some meetings, the longtime umpire from Kettering and some of his colleagues walked over to the stadium where they would soon carry out the umpire’s dream of working the LLWS.

“It was dark at this point, and the only real lights were in the camera wells. It was kind of eerie,” Stokoe said. “Then the lights turned on, and the field was illuminated. Umpires are supposed to have bad attitudes and be tough, but we had tears.”

It was both an emotional and a successful week for Stokoe, chief operating officer for the Alcoholism Council of Cincinnati whose home league is the Moraine-West Carrollton Little League. He worked 13 of the tournament’s 32 games in 10 days that culminated with a left-field line position in the world championship on Aug. 30.

Stokoe’s experience surpassed simply calling outs, balls and strikes. In his single opportunity to participate — by rules, umpires are only invited once — Stokoe experienced dancing disco with a chipmunk mascot, a 6-foot-2 12-year-old, bowing in the batter’s box and questions about his calls from his mentor.

In his words

“When you worked second base, you had to dance with the mascot, Dugout. It’s a goofy-looking chipmunk. We did some disco, ‘Grease,’ ‘YMCA.’ She would come out, and as she got closer to you she would say, ‘Just follow me.’ Then you would make a fool of yourself.

“I got 10-to-20 calls or texts after the games I worked. Most of them were umpire colleagues. One day my umpire mentor called and said, ‘I think you missed one of those strike calls. Otherwise it was good.’

“One of my favorite teams was the team from Japan. There was a complete language barrier, they could only say, ‘Umpire,’ when they wanted time. It was extremely strange to see them come into the batter’s box and bow. They were probably the most polite team.

“They did a piece on Luke Ramirez, who was 6 feet tall and taller than I am, and another kid who was 6-2 holding up this 4-11 player from Japan to their head level so his feet would dangle. I think that shows you how different the players were.

“There were two stadiums, and there was a hill you had to walk from one to the other. We would have kids come up to us and ask us for our umpire pins, and I told them to come back after the game, and they did. I told people I’ve often had people follow me to my car, but not to ask for my pin.

“There was this one player from Asia Pacific, a little catcher, and he was all over the place. He turned at one point and he said, in broken English, ‘No hit. No hit.’ He meant he wasn’t going to let me get hit, and he didn’t. He had a couple passed balls toward the end of the tournament, and he took it personally.

“I worked the left-field line in the world championship (an assignment based on performance through the tournament). They were enshrining two members into Hall of Excellence, and one was Vice President Biden. He took everyone’s hand, asked us where we were from. Then the ballgame was a good game. I thought the West was gonna lose when it went down 3-0 pretty quick, but it came back and won 6-3. At one point I was just standing there and looking at the crowd, 34,000 people, thinking, ‘I’m umpiring in front of more people than the Reds play in front of.’ ”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel@DaytonDailyNews.com

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