There’s nothing I love more about summer than baseball in Toronto. Baseball may have once been America’s favorite pastime, but nothing unites Canada quite like backing the Raptors in the winter and cheering for the Blue Jays in the summer.

I am one of the few women in the city who umpires baseball games. I started officiating house-league games when I was 14, and it was terrifying. Parents of 10- and 11-year-olds are often a little too invested in their kids’ journeys to the MLB. But I had a group of supportive, experienced older umpires to keep my spirits up through all the strike-zone complaints and angry little players. It helped that I worked at a league where just about as many moms took up coaching as dads.

Umpires have to apply a complex set of rules to hundreds of split-second decisions over the course of two or three hours. Not even the best of the best can make the right call on every single pitch. As a result, umpiring teaches you to move on from your mistakes after dealing with the people they’ve affected. I have no idea where I’d be in life if baseball hadn’t taught me to keep calm and carry on when people whisper snarky comments about me or yell outright insults in my face.

Even though I have a “real job” now, I intend to umpire for as many summers as I can. I still work at the park where I started out. It is one of the liveliest green spaces in Toronto. Teenagers and 20-somethings hold raves and massive picnics on the hills. Parents hold birthday parties for their children at the pool and the playground. Smaller film festivals and bands put on screenings and performances nearly every weekend. As much as I love the winter, the city just feels more alive in July. Summer at the baseball field lets me watch people seek joy through a thousand different activities. It’s comforting to be reminded that people can find so many ways to make their days brighter. Most of all, as we exit the pandemic, it’s nice to see people leaving the internet at home and enjoying the fresh grass.

Source: The Atlantic

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