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Successful sports officiating 2nd Edition American Sport
Education Program Digital Instant Download
Author(s): American Sport Education Program
ISBN(s): 9781450414807, 145041480X
Edition: 2
File Details: PDF, 18.70 MB
Year: 2011
Language: english
 Successful
SPORTS OFFICIATING
Second Edition

American Sport Education Program

Human Kinetics
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Successful sports officiating / American Sport Education Program. -- 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-9829-8 (soft cover)
ISBN-10: 0-7360-9829-1 (soft cover)
1. American Sport Education Program. 2. Sports officials.
GV735.S94 2011
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2011022660
ISBN-10: 0-7360-9829-1 (print)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-9829-8 (print)
Copyright © 2011, 1999 by Human Kinetics, Inc.
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 Successful
SPORTS OFFICIATING
Second Edition
Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

Part I Building Your Sports Officiating Career . . . . . 1

Chapter 1 Officiating: Past and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
–Jerry Grunska

Chapter 2 Officiating as a Lifetime Career . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

–Jerry Grunska

Part II Developing Your Officiating Skills . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapter 3 Officiating Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
–Jerry Grunska

Chapter 4 Goal Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

–Robert Weinberg

Chapter 5 Communication Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

–Kay Rooff-Steffen

Chapter 6 Decision-Making Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

–Jerry Grunska

Chapter 7 Mental Training Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

–Robert Weinberg

Chapter 8 Conflict Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

–Jon Bible

iv
Part III Getting Fit to Officiate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Chapter 9 Fitness Principles for Officials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
–Jon Poole and Kathleen Poole

Chapter 10 Officiating Personal Fitness Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

–Jon Poole and Kathleen Poole

Part IV Managing Professional Responsibilities . . . . 149

Chapter 11 Legal Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
–Paul Anderson

Chapter 12 Legal Rights and Business Responsibilities . . . . 161

–Paul Anderson

Chapter 13 Time Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

–Jerry Grunska

Appendix A Sports Officials Code of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Appendix B State High School Associations and California
Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Sections . . . . . . 181
Appendix C Other Governing Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Appendix D Answers to Problems and Review Questions . . . 187
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
About the Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

v
Foreword
The first edition of Successful Sports Officiating Technology now plays an integral role in offici-
was published in 1998. In the ensuing years ating. Sometimes, as in the professional level,
the landscape of officiating has changed. Today technology is used in recasting plays. In other
fresh skills and techniques are needed. This levels, technology is used in holding officials
second edition provides those for you. accountable for their performances. Suffice it
In the foreword for the first edition, I wrote to say that officials have joined the ranks of
about the demands that come with being a public persons, absorbing all the burdens that
sports official, and I wrote about the psychic come with such status.
income each of us receives every time we offi- To be an effective and well-accepted official
ciate a contest. Those words hold even more today, you need to understand the totality of
meaning today. the sport experience, to understand that sport
Sports officiating is rewarding. It is also is life with the volume turned up. That under-
challenging. The most common image people standing provides the basis for the develop-
have of officials involves a player, coach, or fan ment of your personal philosophy of officiating.
yelling at an official. Yes, that can and does You also need to study, absorb, and turn into
happen, but overall, the experiences you will action the training materials that give you a
have as an official will be exhilarating and proper base of knowledge.
positive. The skills you develop will serve you What does a sports official need to know?
well throughout your life. The easy answer is this: the rules and proper
To be a good official, you need a blend of positioning—the mechanics. Without doubt,
certain qualities: courage, self-confidence, those two bodies of knowledge are critical to
determination, and decisiveness, to name any official. Today, though, you need to know
just a few. In each game you work, you will more. For example, you need to have a basic
be faced with many situations. Collectively understanding of your legal rights and respon-
through these situations you will be asked to sibilities, proper nutrition and conditioning,
demonstrate the fairness of a judge, the skill time management, the techniques of game
of a diplomat, the authority of a police officer, management, and defining and maximizing
and the understanding of a parent. All in all, your personal officiating style.
much will be asked of you. Successful Sports Officiating is compre-
So, then, if you will have people yelling at hensive, authoritative, and practical in its
you and you will have to make quick decisions approach to officiating. It presents a blend of
and get sweaty doing it, why would you offici- techniques that speak to the commonality of
ate? That’s easy. You officiate to give back to the all officiating. I know within its pages you will
game and because you believe sport is a valu- find answers to the questions you most often
able component of the educational process. ask yourself about becoming and succeeding
You officiate because you want the challenge of as an official. The book is written and edited by
keeping order and fairness when chaos lurks at a team of experts who are practitioners of the
every turn of events. You officiate because you art and science of officiating. Their experiences
relish the opportunity to undertake a tough and knowledge will serve you well in your quest
assignment and win at it. When the game is to understand what’s involved in successful
over and you know you have done a proper officiating. You will be able to take from this
job, a fair job, you will have a special feeling book the principles, practices, and policies and
of accomplishment, even though there might apply them in each game you work. You will be
still be boos ringing in your ears. By the way, a better official, and a more successful official,
learning to love those boos is just one more through the knowledge presented in this book.
ingredient of becoming a good official!
Learning to be a good official has never been Barry Mano
easy. Today those who play, coach, and watch Founder and publisher of Referee magazine
the games have vastly different perspectives President of the National Association of
and expectations than they did five years ago. Sports Officials

vi
 Part I

Building
Your Sports
Officiating Career

1
This page intentionally left blank.
 Chapter
1
Officiating:
Past and Present
Jerry Grunska

The perfect game hasn’t been worked yet.

But that’s no reason to give up trying.
Jerry Markbreit, former NFL referee

genuinely American sport that Native Ameri-

This chapter addresses the following: cans played before colonists arrived, took place
without officials monitoring the rules. This
• A brief histor y of home-grow n chapter provides a look into the development of
American sports and how officials’ sports officiating and its progress through the
roles have changed over time American-born sports of basketball, football,
• The root of gender issues in sports and baseball.
and officiating, and legislation
designed to eliminate discrimination Basketball
• Officiating shortages and methods Basketball is a game that was invented on
of acquiring sufficient officials demand. The way it started is both amusing
and the source of rich lore.
In a sense, it is possible to attribute the
impetus for basketball’s birth to physical train-
ing clubs in Germany called turnvereins. These
The Evolution widely prevalent clubs relied on invigorating
of Officiating apparatus work and tumbling for bodybuild-
ing: tossing Indian clubs and medicine balls;
The progress of sports and their develop- swinging from rings; swiveling on the pummels
ment into today’s recognized games are easily of the bulky, leather-encased horse; squir-
traced. Although the evolution of officiating is reling through parallel bars—what would be
sketchy, it is known that from the beginning, called gymnastics today. Exercises included
competitions required rules monitoring. Sev- military drills and marching. The purpose of
eral uniquely American team sports started this training was to prepare youth for combat.
with a prominence in the East. As a result of In 1891, the six-year-old School for Chris-
modifications and adjustments that occurred tian Workers in Springfield, Massachusetts,
over the years, some of them look much differ- had essentially adopted the German system,
ent now than they did at the start. Lacrosse, a extending it to promote an ideal of strong

3
4 Successful Sports Officiating

minds in strong bodies with a nonsectarian goal for the faculty. Naismith, doubtless the
ethic of wholesomeness. This was the birth of referee, thought Stagg’s style was too rough.
the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The first female basketball game took place
When students at the Springfield institution, the same week. Stenographers and secretaries
later called a college, were forced indoors in took on the faculty wives. Because the ladies
November after a balmy autumn in 1891, they wore bloomers, no male spectators were admit-
balked at the shift to the old-school routine. ted. Inventor Naismith must have refereed the
Dr. Luther Gulick, dean of physical training, match, but history has not recorded the score.
dismissed one instructor who couldn’t cope One of the stenos was a lass named Maud E.
with the malcontents. He then tried to take Sherman, and she became Naismith’s wife.
over the program himself but gave up when he Thanks to a conscientious chronicler named
couldn’t get the students to cooperate either. Edward S. Steitz, we know that two officials
In exasperation, he called on a second-year oversaw the action from the start of the sport
graduate student to solve the problem. Gulick because the respective duties were defined
ordered the young man, James Naismith, to along with the original rules. The referee was
try something completely different. responsible for the ball going in the goal, for the
Naismith, a graduate of McGill University ball going out of bounds, and for player conduct
in Montreal, had coached football for six years in relation to the ball. The referee also timed
and had just finished work at a Presbyterian the game, although we don’t know the length
Theological Seminary. According to historian of quarters or halves. The umpire, evidently a
Edward Steitz (1976), Naismith “felt that teach- subordinate figure, was solely in charge of call-
ing young men through sport was a better way ing fouls. He probably was not allowed to have
than preaching—especially if one could work a whistle. Authorities were reluctant at the
through their love for athletics.” start—as they were in other sports as well—to
Naismith asked building superintendent give too much or even equal responsibility to
Alfred “Pops” Stebbins to locate a pair of boxes all judges on the floor or field. (In all sports,
and hang them from the gallery in the gym. historically, authorities feared giving so-called
Stebbins couldn’t find boxes, so he nailed “extra” officials too much authority. Therefore,
two half-bushel peach baskets 10 feet from a head referee was designated, and the likeli-
the floor. The revolutionary thing about the hood is that another official used hand signals
baskets was that they provided a horizontal to indicate decisions—not a whistle.)
overhead target. As a result, players had to Because referees were physical educators,
develop completely new skills for moving the they probably sported white duck trousers, the
ball on the floor (passing and dribbling), and prevailing uniform at the time. The umpire
they had to shoot at the baskets. The challenge doubtless wore the same, as well as a shirt
became an instant sensation. Because the and tie, perhaps even a black bow tie. (Early
class had 18 members, there were 9 players football referees sported white shirts and black
on a side at first. bow ties, plus a drab gray tam on their heads.)
The players ran into a problem almost at Like the players, they wore knickers.
once: People watching from the balcony could In 1904-1905, expectations for making all
bat away shots or guide errant tosses into the calls were divided equally between the two
basket. Also, at first, a helper had to lift the ball basketball officials, and scorekeepers and
out of the basket after a score. That problem timers on the side of the court became adjuncts
was solved when a cloth sleeve was attached to to games. We don’t know how floor markings
the baskets after holes had been sliced in the came about or when free throws were intro-
bottoms. Officials pulled a cord to help the ball duced, but we do know some things about
slip through (metal hoops replaced the baskets player freedoms and restrictions because they
in 1893). A year later, backboards were used were spelled out from the onset.
to thwart unruly onlookers. In some respects, basketball was derivative,
The first official basketball game began at adopting aspects of other sports. The original
5:15 p.m. on March 11, 1892, in the Springfield outline described how a player could move
gymnasium. It pitted the secretaries against by bouncing the ball (the term dribble was
the faculty, and the secretaries won, five bas- carried over from soccer). It was a goal game,
kets to one. Amos Alonzo Stagg, the future with goals at either end of a flat indoor surface.
Grand Old Man of football, put in the lone field Players who fouled were sent to the sideline,
 Officiating: Past and Present 5

A Little League Case Study

Side-by-side suburbs Deerfield and Highland Park, By contrast, Highland Park recreation directors
north of Chicago, started Little League baseball pro- adopted a no-parents policy, no uniforms either.
grams some time ago, but they went separate ways in Youngsters were their own coaches, and one man,
terms of style. Deerfield ordered complete uniforms, jovial and knowledgeable Chuck Shramm, stood behind
acquired all the equipment, signed up parents as the diminutive pitchers calling balls and strikes at every
coaches, and groomed the fields, but they forgot about game, advising fielders where to throw the ball and
securing umpires. Parents volunteered, and their per- helping runners tag up on fly balls. For the participants
formances were rather lame, even though a few coura- it was a very cheerful experience, devoid of tension.
geous chaps donned masks and held Styrofoam chest The results of these cases of makeshift and make-do
protectors for behind-the-plate duty. One positive result arrangements, measured later in the way baseball was
was that spectators held their tongues at missed calls, performed at the high school level, were pretty even.
offering friendly jibes instead of harsh catcalls. Before Highland Park did send one player, Jim Panther, to the
long, an enthusiastic man named Dick Cavanaugh took major leagues, and he pitched briefly for the Atlanta
an umpiring course and started a training program for Braves and the Chicago White Sox.
willing parents. Cavanaugh was so inspired that he
applied to work games for the Chicago Cubs when
Major League umpires went on strike.

temporarily disqualified, and their team had tated game play. Another was discarding the
to play short-handed until a goal was scored. requirement of a center jump after every goal.
This is similar to the penalty box in hockey. Very few officials—even today—have been able
The dribbler, allowed to dribble only once with to master the toss for a jump ball; invariably, it
two hands, could not be tripped or struck is hoisted either too high or not high enough.
legally, although he could bull his way on a The toss should rise to the maximum height
path anywhere on the court with impunity, of the players’ jump. The after-goal jump was
elbowing and shouldering opponents out of the abolished in 1937. Now, the team scored upon
way, as in rugby. The dribbler wasn’t originally inbounds the ball from under its own goal after
allowed to shoot for the basket, however. He an opponent’s score.
had to pass the ball to a teammate for that The National Federation of State High School
opportunity. Associations (NFHS) issued a formal basket-
Basketball players used soccer balls to begin ball rule guide in 1937, in conjunction with
with. A larger inflated sphere with leather the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). Previous
covering and stitches (like football laces) was to that, players used the guidelines created
introduced in the early 1900s. in 1915 by a rules committee formed by the
If a player was running when he received a YMCA and other interested groups, which
pass, he was allowed to take several steps to refined Naismith’s original stipulations. One
control momentum. The referee determined Naismith prescription that was abandoned
how many steps he could take. was the awarding of a goal to a team that did
The popularity of basketball spread so fast not commit a violation while its opponent piled
that it was being played in California by the up three transgressions.
end of 1892. Also, students from the Christian A six-foot-wide key in front of the basket
Workers’ school quickly took the game abroad, was introduced in 1932. This is a lane in front
where it was played in Turkey, India, Japan, of the basket that is topped by a semicircle,
France, Persia, and Greece. resembling a keyhole. This area was restricted;
Clearly, basketball took some time to be players could be in it for only three seconds
perfected. Elements were adjusted to give it the at a time. This kept extra-large players from
appearance it has today. Opening the bottom camping under the basket so they could score
of the goal was an early adjustment that facili- easily. The key was widened to 12 feet in 1975.
6 Successful Sports Officiating

Handling Official Scarcity

In the Chicago suburbs, football officials have tradition- level. Therefore, officiating associations have developed
ally been scarce at the high school underclass levels training programs for two-person officiating to cover the
because schools field so many teams. The varsity huge array of weekly contests.
and sophomore teams play doubleheaders on Friday A fascinating offshoot of such dedication is that a
nights and Saturday afternoons, but they also field JV few C-level players, not in full development at age 14,
squads for midweek games and freshman teams for become solid contributors to their high school teams
Saturday mornings. There are over 120 high schools later on. Here is one memorable example: A C-level
in the greater Chicago area. Many schools have A and player at Proviso East High School in Melrose Park,
B freshman teams, and some even have C-level play- Illinois, went on to be awarded Linebacker of the Mid-
ers. It is very easy to predict the cycle. When the NFL’s Century when he played for the Green Bay Packers. His
Chicago Bears have a good year, the following autumn name was Ray Nitschke.
will see a surge in football participation at the freshman

In 1932, a rule was adopted to avoid close difficult sports to officiate. . . .The complex
guarding of offensive players. If a defender maneuvers, the rapid rate at which it is played,
guarded a player with the ball, either while the near hysteria that prevails, and the prox-
dribbling or stationary, for more than five imity of spectators to . . . the action are just a
seconds, a referee called a jump ball. Today, few of the factors” (Steitz, 1976, p. 36).
instead of having a jump ball, the ball is In essence, Dr. Steitz understated the
awarded to the other team for a throw-in. issues. The game has indeed changed radi-
In the 1950s, floor officials adopted the cally over the years, and officiating has been
diagonal system of f loor coverage. In this hard-pressed to keep up. Other major sports
system, the lead official moves under the have not changed as significantly, although
offensive basket, and the trail official hovers the officiating has undergone some critical
near the half-court time line on the opposite adjustments.
side of the court.
Colleges introduced three-person officiat-
ing crews in 1969, and the NBA adopted the
Football
practice in 1975. This is one case in which An outgrowth of the English sport of rugby,
colleges developed a policy before the profes- football was first played in the United States
sionals. Many other practices, in all sports, at the college level. Rutgers beat the College of
have been handed down from the highest level New Jersey (later, Princeton) 6 to 4 on Novem-
to the amateur ranks. ber 6, 1869, in the first recognized game.
In today’s game, a possession clock forces “The first game resembling present-day
teams to shoot within a certain time frame football was played in 1874, when a team from
(professional and college only). Also, goals McGill University in Montreal, Canada, visited
scored from a considerable distance from the Harvard University. The Canadians wanted
basket are awarded three points. These two to play . . . rugby . . . running and tackling”
elements alone have changed the way basket- (World Book Encyclopedia, 2010, p. 367). Har-
ball games are played, with skillful three-point vard wanted to play a new version that featured
shooters able to turn games around in a short mostly kicking, like soccer (they agreed on a
interval, from a half-circle arc beyond the top round ball). The schools played two games,
of the key. one McGill’s style and one Harvard’s. Run-
Officiating duties have increased in basket- ning with the ball and the customary rugby
ball, along with the pressure to make accurate scrum became more popular than trying to
calls. The observations of Professor Steitz are kick a ball over a crossbar, and the “most
as valid today as they were a generation ago: influential figure in modernizing football was
“The game of basketball is one of the most Walter Camp, who had played for Yale Univer-
 Officiating: Past and Present 7

sity from 1876 to 1882.” Camp was responsible to jeopardize their amateur standing. Profes-
for setting up such standard practices as the sional football (using three referees) became
scrimmage line; the center snap; the measur- a formal entity in 1920 when a group of busi-
ing chains; the four-downs-for-a-first-down nessmen calling themselves the American
system; and scoring designations for touch- Professional Football Association gathered
downs, conversions, field goals, and safeties. in an auto dealer’s garage in Canton, Ohio.
Like basketball, football spread quickly, and They renamed it the National Football League
soon high schools and town teams began to in 1922, and they planted teams in medium-
establish rivalries throughout the nation along sized towns such as Canton; and Pottstown,
with colleges. As far we know, just a pair of offi- Pennsylvania; Decatur, Illinois; and Racine
cials administered the games in the beginning. and Green Bay in Wisconsin.
The early football contests were extremely In the early days of football, professional and
violent. Many games were more like organized college teams used three officials in a game.
fights than athletic contests. Players wore Colleges had their officials line up down the
no pads and no helmets at first. A few wore middle of the field: a referee, an umpire, and
stocking caps, which offered little protection. a back judge. Covering the sidelines could
By 1900, many players had been severely not have been easy, and it’s possible that
injured, and a few had died, causing much they received help from the chain crew. In the
alarm across the nation. The situation grew 1930s, the professional game added a fourth
into a crisis, and President Theodore Roosevelt official, and the colleges followed suit, reluc-
gathered college presidents together in 1905 to tantly. This added person was obliged to kneel
address changes in the rules for player safety. on the sidelines while the ball was alive. In that
Safety issues have been primary in football isolated spot these officials likely did not make
ever since. many calls (maybe offsides on jumpy linemen).
First came stipulations about protective All officials before World War II had limited
gear, and next came restrictions on the types roles. Only the referee, for instance, could
of blocking players could use. Blocking below signal a touchdown or field goal. He could look
the waist was permitted, but upright blocking to the other officials for help, but the most they
required closed hands (fists) to the blocker’s could do was give a thumbs-up or thumbs-
chest (only shoulders with pads could deliver down, with a hand held near the belt buckle,
a blow), and contact had to be in front of as though sending a signal surreptitiously.
an opponent. Fists extending more than 45 Auxiliary officials had to signal a touchdown
degrees constituted an illegal use of the hands. by pointing the index finger and offering an
The flying wedge was also forbidden, a tactic almost imperceptible nod of the head.
whereby players locked arms and formed a In the 1930s and 1940s, substitutions were
human buttress to secure the advance of a limited at all levels. A player who left the game
ball carrier. In the beginning, blockers were could not return until the next quarter. Offi-
restricted in the use of hands, but about 35 cials had to keep track of players coming and
years ago NFL players began pushing moves going on a clipboard. Consequently, players
with open hands when executing pass block- had to play both offense and defense. Many
ing. The rules were then rewritten to allow
pushing, which is what is in place today. Today,
blocking is actually pushing—at all levels, high Officiating Transparency
schools and colleges included.
For a long time, professional football was Mike Pereira, former NFL vice president of officiat-
considered a renegade activity, frowned on ing, offered this view of the zoom-lens spotlight:
culturally and disparaged by sportswriters as “Officials have gotten to the point that they realize
impure because it violated accepted standards they are in a transparent business. They know
of amateurism—meaning that players were when they are right or wrong. . . . [They] have
being paid to play. Some sportswriters implied
gotten to . . . where they understand criticism and
that only outlaws or, at best, men of question-
able character were eager participants. College that the criticism can lead to a better understand-
players performed in professional leagues ing of the job” (Referee, September, 2010, p. 34)
under assumed names on Sundays so as not
8 Successful Sports Officiating

resisted the wide open free substitution in the each eligible receiver guarded by a particular
1950s, because it was a point of pride to be official, because rules stipulated restrictions
considered a 60-minute man. on how defenses could attack pass receivers
Free substitution, though, had the salutary running downfield. The turn of the 21st cen-
effect of turning players into specialists. Today, tury saw many teams open up the game by
highly skilled players make the game exciting deploying receivers all across the field, putting
with their superb talents of passing, catching, more pressure on officials.
and running. In the 1930s and 1940s, before the Super
Five-person officiating crews came about in Bowl era, one NFL referee worked all the big
the 1960s to help handle the increased empha- games and handled the final championship
sis on the forward pass. Early in the century, games for more than a dozen years in a row.
college teams eschewed the forward pass, even Ron Gibbs, a widely respected banking execu-
though Teddy Roosevelt’s commission codified tive from Springfield, Illinois, traveled to all his
the legitimacy of a back’s heaving the nearly games by train, just as the teams did.
round ball to either an end or another back. Such a string of lofty assignments would not
In a captivating scenario, Notre Dame quar- be possible today, given the practice of merit in
terback Gus Dorais threw passes to his end selecting play-off and Super Bowl officials. The
Knute Rockne in a 35-13 upset of a favored NFL has a referee’s organization (not exactly a
Army team in 1913. By the 1920s, passing union), which evaluates officials. Video tech-
attacks were common in football. But the idea nology allows for much more elaborate and
of putting more officials on the field to increase precise game assessments. In fact (and this is
the scope of coverage was slow to take hold. true for bowl game selections of major college
In the 1930s and 1940s, in addition to conferences as well), intense, comprehensive
having to operate under restricted movements, video analyses permit evaluators to grade
football officials were equipped with small officials on every play in each game.
handheld horns, which they blew when declar- One element of football that has remained
ing a foul. Radio announcers said, “There was the same for officials is the necessity to inspect
a horn on that play,” and then the penalty was player equipment before and during the game.
addressed. In the 1950s, small red and white Face masks are standard now, and knee and
flags about the size of handkerchiefs were hip pads (to protect the kidneys) are also man-
used to designate fouls. The color was changed dated. Some players try to lighten the load by
to solid gold in the 1960s with the advent of slipping pads out of the sleeves in the shells
television (gold was easier to spot on color TV). that cover their legs, which is illegal. By rule,
Beanbags were an added implement in the safety is a prime concern of officials.
1970s. Prior to that, officials marked spots on Health professionals and fans—plus profes-
the field by dropping their caps, such as when sional and college athletic administrators—
a member of the kicking team touched a kick recognize that playing football has wrecked
beyond the line of scrimmage. But caps were many performers’ lives. After their playing
dirtied in inclement weather, and beanbags days have ended, many experience ongoing
were substituted. debilitating leg and back injuries and, most
After they were introduced, beanbags posed seriously, head trauma as a result of battering.
unexpected problems. At first they were filled Officials can’t do much about the pile driv-
with real beans, which tended to sprout when ing that takes place in the modern game
the bags got wet. Next, the NFL tried buckshot other than guarding against action in which
in the bags, but these set off alarms when offi- deliberate blows are inflicted, called spearing.
cials tried to go through airport security. They The game is indeed violent, and the only way
finally settled for simply packing the small officials can serve as protectors is to apply the
bags with fabric and attaching a flap so that rules of contact as they are expressly defined.
the devices could be tucked in the belt and
plucked out swiftly when needed. Baseball
In the 1970s, the professional game became
too sophisticated for five officials to handle ade- Baseball had a trio of recorded beginnings,
quately, and it moved to seven people, which only two of which have been substantiated. The
colleges quickly copied. The idea was to have sport is clearly an offshoot of the British game
 Officiating: Past and Present 9

of rounders, played since the 1600s overseas to which supplements were added in 1848 and
and in the 1700s in the American colonies. Its 1854.
main feature was that runners were put out Some of Cartwright’s rules have since been
by soaking or plugging. That is, fielders threw changed. For instance, he decreed that the first
the ball at them (almost like dodgeball). When team to score 21 runs won the game; pitch-
the game changed (most likely in the 1830s or ers had to throw underhanded 45 feet from
1840s in New York City) to having runners put home plate; a batter was out if a fielder caught
out by being tagged or forced out by touching a lofted ball on the first bounce (changed in
a base, America’s pastime was born. 1864); and a strike was called only when a
The second version of baseball’s birth is that batter swung and missed. Early baseball did
it was invented in Cooperstown, New York, in not have walks, and called strikes were intro-
1839 by Abner Doubleday, who became a Civil duced in 1868.
War general and died in 1893. It is a myth, By 1900, both major leagues were formed,
however, that he originated the game. although since that time, many teams have
Someone reported that Doubleday laid out changed cities, and teams have been added.
a diamond and specified how the game was Most of the rules were the same at the turn of
to be performed, but research has proven this the 20th century as they are today.
claim to be specious. Doubleday is just an Compared to basketball, which has under-
amorphous figure in the origin of baseball. gone many significant changes since its
Alexander Cartwright was known as, “a New inception, and football, in which officiating
York City sportsman, and called the father of changes have been relatively modest, baseball
organized baseball because he started a club has remained a relatively staid sport. Rather
called the Knickerbockers in 1845 whose sole than evolving, baseball officiating (umpiring)
purpose was playing Base Ball” (World Book, has been adapting. Baseball was a “punch-
“B,” op. cit. p. 134). He wrote out a set of rules, and-slice” game in its early stages until Babe

Curtis Woodcock

Umpires have to learn to work heel-to-toe in the slot, a proper positioning that allows the viewing of an entire pitch.
10 Successful Sports Officiating

Ruth broke it open with a huge accumula- ball. This sport, after moving outdoors, has
tion of home runs (using lively, tightly wound also undergone numerous manifestations.
balls) in the 1920s. Today it is a combination First, the ball was a 12-inch round lump of
of long-ball and short-ball at the professional truly resilient stuffing, and then versions of
and collegiate levels, but power distances in the game employed 14- and 16-inch heavier
batting are not so prevalent at the teenage samples. The game was often played by men
levels (although metal bats at all levels make (sometimes without gloves) in small parks.
long hits possible). But fast-pitch softball caught on quickly, and
Major league games had just one umpire in by 1933, the American Softball Association
the 1880s and 1890s, and in the early part was formed to standardize playing conditions.
of the last century they moved to a two-man By 1952, the game was being played in 125
system. A third umpire was added in the countries.
1930s and 1940s, and four umpires per game Softball is mentioned here because at pres-
has been the standard for decades, with two ent 90 percent of the games throughout the
more along the foul lines beyond first and United States are seven-inning slow-pitch
third bases in all-star contests, end-of-season affairs, often played with an hour-and-a-half
play-offs, and the World Series. At other levels time limit. Hundreds of communities sup-
the number of umps on a given game varies. port men’s, women’s, and co-ed recreational
High schools usually use just two umpires, leagues. Fast-pitch softball (with balls that
one behind the plate and one on the bases. At have a hard inner core, as mentioned) is also
very low levels, in educational settings anyway, a popular women’s sport, sponsored by many
games are often handled by just one umpire schools and colleges. Few colleges presently
for economic reasons. administering athletic programs are without
Like the football referee, the baseball women’s softball teams. Consequently, many
umpire’s major role is to ensure the safety of umpires are needed, and they are largely
all players. Even though major injuries are trained by local organizations.
rare in this sport, current rules are spelled out Slow-pitch softball games are often worked
to lower the risk of injury. At all levels, down by a single umpire, without a mask, who is
to Little League, all personnel on the field are supposed to move out from behind the plate to
required to wear helmets. Because thrown or cover plays at the bases when the ball is alive.
batted balls can be lethal, pitchers are moni- One must know the rules, of course, but it is
tored closely for perceived viciousness. Even relatively easy to learn slow-pitch umpiring.
softball, the so-called diminutive version of
baseball, is not played with a ball that has give Other Sports
to it, which was once the case with 12-, 14-,
and 16-inch pillow-type spheres. Nowadays, Other sports that have risen rapidly in popu-
softballs are of solid kapok-cork-polyurethane larity and require expert officiating are soccer
composition and have a tight leather covering. and lacrosse. At times lacrosse can be very
In 1887 a Chicagoan named George W. rough because players are permitted to hit one
Hancock inaugurated an indoor game of soft- another below the waist with their sticks. The
women’s game, also played on a wide scale, has
rules against striking opponents. Both soccer
An Umpire’s Biography and lacrosse are very old.
A form of soccer was played in ancient China
Bill Klem was the longest-tenured umpire in the in 400 BC. In 1848, U.S. schools drew up rules
major leagues, working from 1905 until 1940. for both women’s and men’s versions. Because
He declared, “In my heart, I never missed a call,” of its international popularity, its rules have
but he would have been hard put to support this been standardized for some time, as has its
officiating practices. Countries throughout
contention if he worked under the pinpoint video
the world play the same game. The first World
screening of today’s games. Klem also umpired a Cup (men) was played in Montevideo, Uruguay,
record 18 World Series, which would be impossible in 1930. The first Women’s World Cup was
in the rotation system of modern times. played in China in 1991. In 2000, soccer was
the fastest-growing sport in U.S. high schools.
 Officiating: Past and Present 11

At the upper levels, soccer is officiated by

a referee and two assistants; the assistants’
role is primarily to call offsides. At youngster
Breaking Barriers
levels, below high school ages, usually one Sarah Thomas of Walnut Grove, Mississippi, was a
person officiates. Teenagers often serve as line judge at the Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl at Ford
referees for very young children, from ages six Field, Detroit, on December 26, 2009. She was
or seven and up. selected out of Conference USA, where she worked
The movement of lacrosse, from the East
Coast and into the Midwest and beyond,
a full schedule as an on-field football official in the
is little short of a phenomenon. Many high 2009 season.
schools and colleges now sponsor teams. Like
soccer, lacrosse is a professional sport in the
United States, and qualified officials are in playing sports beyond puberty endangered
high demand. The sport can be claimed as girls’ future reproductive capabilities.
100 percent American because it originated Today, in addition to the burgeoning of wom-
with the Iroquois. en’s sports and the subsequent involvement
of thousands of women in officiating, some
women have even broken the barrier of officiat-
Gender Issues: ing men’s sports. A few women have umpired
You Go, Girl minor league baseball games, although none
have reached the major leagues. Each state
U.S. society boasts female firefighters and doubtless has a few females officiating high
police officers, as well as long haul truck school football, and in 2009, the first female
drivers and school bus drivers. Women serve referee worked a college bowl game. The NBA
as city mayors, state governors, college presi-
dents, members of Congress, Supreme Court
justices, and cabinet appointees.
But it wasn’t always this way.
True, “There has never been a time when
girls and women were wholly excluded from
sports” (Guttman, 1991), but until recently,
their engagement has been limited and mini-
mal. Dates and numbers tell a significant story.
Although women competed in the Olympics in
1900, they were limited to certain events in
track plus swimming races and tennis. At
that time, women were definitely considered
second-class citizens. Consider that, in 1869,
black men were allowed to vote, but women
weren’t, regardless of race. In 1848, a cluster of
300 women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York
for the first women’s rights convention. After
many speeches, demonstrations, and marches
on Washington, D.C., the 19th amendment to
the Constitution was passed in 1920 (amid
the protestations of numerous short-sighted
elected officials and societal naysayers) giving
women the right to vote. A few people went on
record asserting that the demise of Western
Civilization was sure to follow.
Many behaviorists from the first half of the
20th century claimed that the female constitu-
tion could not function under the pressure of Unlike past sporting events, female officials are an
competitive team sports. Others asserted that integral part of today’s athletics.
12 Successful Sports Officiating

has a single female referee, Violet Palmer of The way this all came about—“no shots were
California, who has been a widely admired fired, but a revolution followed” (Blumenthal,
performer for more than a half dozen seasons. 2005)—can be traced to a single legislative
When colleges first began forming women’s edict. President Lyndon Johnson signed the
basketball teams in the late 1970s, the refer- Civil Rights act in 1964, and President Richard
eeing was done mostly by men. Then, in the Nixon signed an extension of that act in 1972.
1980s, when national college championships The 1972 legislation included a clause with a
were instituted for women in basketball, cross Roman numeral, Title IX, which stipulated
country running, field hockey, gymnastics, that no one should be subjected to gender
swimming, tennis, track and field, and vol- discrimination under any educational program
leyball, the approximate ratio was two male that received federal financial assistance. In
officials for every female. Today that ratio is other words, if colleges received funds from
reversed: it is now two women to every man. the government, they had to equalize much of
their funding for many of the activities they
ordinarily supported. The huge disparities
Title IX’s Legacy had to cease. If there was a baseball team at
a school, for instance, and a women’s group
In 1971, John Erlander, a member of the U.S. petitioned for a school-backed softball team,
House of Representatives from Illinois, declared, with scholarships included, the school had
“[Title IX] will plant the seed of destruction for our to ante up a sum larger than 1 percent of
system of higher education (Guttman p. iv).” the baseball budget, which was the case at
No person in the United States shall, on the basis many institutions. Schools could not side-
step the issue by dropping a so-called minor
of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied (non-revenue-generating) sport in exchange
the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination for adding a women’s sport. A school couldn’t
under any educational program or activity receiving abandon men’s tennis to build a women’s field
Federal financial assistance. hockey squad, for example. It had to be tennis
for tennis and field hockey as an add-on.
The Title IX law The NCAA, a bastion of entrenched male
athletics, sued to stop the stipulations of Title
Every time a girl plays Little League, every time a
IX in 1976. It lost the case.
father assumes his daughter is as likely to go to A 17-year-old high school student named
college as his son, every time no one looks twice Donna DeVarona was on the cover of Sports
at a female cop or balks at a female surgeon, it’s Illustrated in 1964 because she had won two
a moment in history, radical and ordinary, both at Olympic gold medals and recorded an inter-
the same time. national record in the individual swimming
medley. Her career was over. There was nowhere
Columnist Anna Quindlen, 2002 for her to go for competition after high school.
In 1971, there were 20,000 boys’ basketball
Hoop Dreams, 1904. Ten Montana and Idaho teams in the United States and 5,000 girls’
Indian girls from the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding squads (usually playing a truncated version
School headed to St. Louis for the World’s Fair, of the real thing, with split court restrictions).
where they earned the moniker Champions of the Girls’ participation in sports tripled from 1971
World, beating the Missouri All-Stars in a best-of- to 1973, from 300,000 to 900,000. Today, three
million girls play organized sports.
three basketball series.
Here are some more impressive facts. In
Wild West Magazine, October 2010, p. 8. 1982, more women than men earned bachelor’s
degrees for the first time. Title IX used the term
At Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C., activities, not just sports. In 2004, Harvard
Natalie Randolph is making history—as one of the admitted more female undergraduates than
nation’s only female football coaches [head coach]. male undergraduates.
In 1970, Billie Jean King received $600 for
Parade, August 22, 2010, p. 6. winning the Italian tennis championship; the
male winner got $3,500. She boycotted the
 Officiating: Past and Present 13

next championship tourney. In 1973, the U.S. fact that the state has been adding about five
Open awarded $25,000 to both the male and schools a year. “Several seasons ago we had
female winners. 365 schools, and now we have 390.” The one
There is no question that Title IX ensured sport that is a little short of experienced offi-
the emancipation of women in U.S. society, cials is lacrosse, which is in its second year.
breaking the so-called glass ceilings in all “For a few years it was a club sport, and now the
walks of life, not just sports. In 2002, Patsy schools have taken it over. The problem is that
Mink, a member of the U.S. House of Represen- few adults have actually played the sport. For
tatives, said, “We must teach each generation us it is an embryonic program.” Colorado also
that there was a time when Title IX did not reported a slight shortage of lacrosse officials.
exist.” Representative Edith Green, Oregon, a The worry about widespread shortages of
crusader for women’s rights during her entire sports officials is more an anticipation than
several-decades-long political career, added, a reality. It’s been assumed in some quarters
“The trouble with every generation is that they that a down economy would stimulate unem-
haven’t read the minutes of the last meeting” ployed people to seek officiating opportunities
(“Women’s Sports,” p. 217). as a source of part-time income. For the most
part that has only happened in small degrees
Shortage of Officials and only in large cities. “What has happened,”
one state clerical person said, “Is that a few
A phone survey of eight states reveals a picture retired officials have decided to register once
that is both reassuring and somewhat trou- more.” But that could be a limited trend; it
bling. On the positive side, high school varsity certainly isn’t a flood of desperate individuals.
sports are comfortably covered with adequate “We always have enough varsity officials,”
to superior officiating. There are surprises said Colorado’s Robinson. “It’s at the underclass
here for several reasons, including the fact level that we’re hurting. We don’t have enough
that some states are experiencing a growth younger officials signing up for training.”
in the number of schools. In a five-year span, North Dakota’s Matt Fetsch was the lone
from 2005 to 2010, Colorado has gone from representative to admit having trouble finding
310 to 340 schools with the addition of char- sufficient numbers to cover games. Hockey has
ter schools and private schools, some church been an entrenched sport in this state immedi-
sponsored, which have added sports to their ately south of Canada, and the need to attract
programs. “Fresh officials are not really trying new officials in that sport is evident. “Every
hard to enter the field,” CHSAA Officials Liai- year the available pool of officials seems to go
son Tom Robinson said. “In many instances down,” he said. He also said that some schools
officials who do boys’ sports also work the are scheduling football games on Thursdays
girls,” he added. The crossovers include bas- instead of Friday nights, to make sure they
ketball, soccer, and lacrosse. In other words, can secure officials. “This despite the fact
instead of new officials entering the fields, that there is a strong movement toward school
veteran officials are taking on new sports. consolidation in our state. Districts with two
States sampled Officiating director schools—because of enrollment shrinkage—
are combining into one,” Fetsch added.
Colorado Tom Robinson Several states besides North Dakota reported
Georgia Dr. Ralph Swearngin huge gains in popularity as reasons for slight
North Carolina Mark Dreibelbis shortages in soccer. Schools that haven’t tradi-
North Dakota Matt Fetsch tionally fielded the sport are adding it in large
numbers in Georgia, Utah, Oregon, and Okla-
New Mexico Dana Sanchez homa. “We’re a little thin in volleyball too,” said
Oklahoma Mike Whaley Oklahoma’s Mike Whaley. “But the problem is
Oregon Jack Folliard most pronounced in rural areas.” In the West,
Utah Mike Petty distances are often stretched out between small
towns. Sometimes schools are obliged to use
Officials’ supervisor Mark Dreibelbis of locals (teachers or citizen volunteers who may
North Carolina reported that registration of not even be registered) to handle underclass
new officials has remained high despite the high school and middle school games.
14 Successful Sports Officiating

“It’s an economic factor,” said Mike Petty of passing out brochures. A lot of people seemed
Utah. “Soccer is a low cost investment. Just a intrigued, but of course there’s no way to
ball, a field, and a pair of goals are all schools assess the possible quality in passersby,” he
need for soccer, and the facilities are already concluded. “Then too we got 10 people signed
there. Kiddie programs have risen all over and up as prospects when they responded to our
that naturally has led to an increase in high Internet come-on, craigslist,” Folliard laughed.
school involvement.” Few adults have played Dana Sanchez of New Mexico said that she
soccer under the auspices of public schools too sent a recruiting DVD to recreation centers
(the same is true of lacrosse and wrestling), and colleges. The state has had a small explo-
which means that recruiting referees has to sion (13 percent) in registrations, but they are
be an active affair. The implication here is that still short of officials in the eastern part of the
former athletes may be the best candidates for state (where there are few large cities) in softball
continuing in their sports as officials. and baseball. “We’re also slender statewide in
“It helps to live in a college town,” said North wrestling officials,” she said. But Sanchez tried
Dakota’s Matt Fetsch. He has advertised for something special in Albuquerque. First, she
new officials on radio and television, but the executed what she called a media blitz through
best route has been to contact college physical television and newspapers, accompanied by an
education instructors and ask them to make offer of free training. “We doubled our numbers
persuasive announcements in their classes. in baseball and softball,” she said, very pleased.
He didn’t say it, but college students are also Dr. Ralph Swearngin of Georgia may have
candidates for working subvarsity contests had the best answer of all. “We’ve increased
in sports. “We work through high schools to our registrations dramatically,” he said. To
locate former athletes and extend invitations achieve this, he has been persistent in his
to officiate,” said Utah’s Petty. recruiting campaign. “After every Friday night
Jack Folliard of Oregon said that he has sports events, a 60-station television network
relied on the 100 local associations to bring in reports scores of all statewide games (football
and train new officials. “We have used a DVD and basketball). We have a DVD promo that
on the appeal of officiating and put it on our we supply the stations, featuring basket-
state website, plus sent it to TV outlets and ball sportscaster Dick Vitale. We also run it
newspapers. That has helped pull in fresh during commercial breaks on live coverage
faces,” he added. Folliard also reported that a during state championship games,” Swearngin
small cadre of Portland officials set up a kiosk explained. He believes that such an approach
in a shopping mall. “Fellows with uniforms has definitely offset a dreary economy.

Finding the Right Instructor

Dennis Markusson, an attorney in the Denver suburb ments on bulletin boards at recreational centers, local
of Evergreen, has taught a beginners football officiat- exercise facilities, and YMCAs. He also has placed his
ing class during a high school district’s evening school notices in sporting good stores and on supermarkets’
program for several years. He conducts eight sessions flea market and garage sale registers.
in July and August—one night a week—then holds an Markusson gets anywhere from a dozen candidates
on-field clinic when high school teams start autumn pre- to 40 prospective officials every year. Other instructors
season scrimmages. The district has six high schools, in metropolitan areas in many states have operated
and their night school bulletins promoting classes are similarly through community colleges, trying to obtain
sent to thousands of recipients. rookies in baseball, softball, and basketball. In many
Markusson also plants an announcement in a sports cases, success depends on the strength of the instruc-
column in The Denver Post daily paper. He has a well- tor’s reputation. But these techniques are probably
known sports radio talk show host, Irv Brown, recite limited to large cities. Small rural communities are not
several promos (his show is during the late afternoon likely to raise substantial numbers of potential officiating
commuter drive time). Dennis posts more announce- candidates.
 Officiating: Past and Present 15

Summary minimal. Because of legislation and changing

perspectives, women are becoming an integral
With the rise of modern sports, we’ve seen part of officiating. Their continued inclusion
the beginnings of sports officiating and its will only help the officiating world continue
progress. From the early years to the pres- its growth.
ent, officiating has seen tremendous changes Finally, a shortage of properly trained
in its evolution. Today’s officials look much officials is perhaps the most pressing issue
different from their predecessors—especially facing amateur officials. Most school districts
considering their responsibilities, mechanics, report always having enough varsity officials;
and appearance—but their development is far however, the problem lies in not having suf-
from over. From changing demands in games ficient numbers to cover underclass events.
to an increasing need for transparency, offi- In addition, the increasing popularity of some
cials will have to continue adapting their skills sports—such as soccer or lacrosse—has led to
and practices to be successful. some shortages at all levels. Regardless, it’s
An important change to officiating is occur- important that substantial efforts are made to
ring today with the inclusion of females to the actively recruit and train young people inter-
profession. Until recently, female engagement ested in officiating.
in sports officiating has been limited and
 Review Questions
1. Popular sports in the United States are 7. A principal duty of football officials is
largely to
a. violent in nature a. have only two captains from each
b. home grown team present at the coin toss
c. foreign imports b. identify the location of concession
outlets
d. sedentary activities
c. inspect the pads of players before
2. Shortages of officials are most pro-
the game
nounced in
d. be sure that passers throw the ball
a. poker
forward
b. basketball
8. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt
c. softball called college presidents together for
d. soccer the purpose of
3. The one major sport that has under- a. striking a balance between offense
gone the most modifications over the and defense in football
years is b. selecting officials to work games
a. gin rummy c. curtailing mayhem in football
b. wrestling d. agreeing on academic standards
c. basketball for college graduation
d. baseball 9. Authorities who govern football at this
4. The purpose of the key on a basketball time are very concerned about
court is to a. which bowl games should establish
a. help officials make calls on fast the number one team in the nation
breaks b. head injuries that result in postca-
b. enhance the flow of the game reer trauma for many players
c. give players a border for shooting c. how the public can be squeezed for
three-point goals more revenue
d. prevent tall players from gaining a d. which sections of the country pro-
special advantage duce the best players
5. To some extent, football at the begin- 10. Before Title IX was enforced, one myth
ning was based on some elements of that authorities embraced about wom-
en’s participation in competitive sports
a. karate
was that
b. field hockey
a. Soviet women’s gender had to be
c. polo verified clinically
d. rugby b. their marriageability would be
6. Before the 1950s, football officials had jeopardized
to c. black athletes were superior to
a. wear protective clothing white athletes
b. keep track of substitutions d. their reproductive organs would be
c. use blue beanbags harmed
d. announce all penalties on micro-
phones

Answers on page 187

16
 Chapter
2
Officiating
as a Lifetime Career
Jerry Grunska

and regional entities are mostly interested

This chapter addresses the following: in promoting rules and policies for various
sports at the high school level.
• How to get started as an official The purpose of sports officiating is custom-
• How study and experience can lead arily thought of as helping opponents play a
to expertise game, monitoring the action, and enforcing
the rules. Some sporting events are team
• Ways to acquire and improve offi-
sports, whereas others are individual events.
ciating skills
Individual sports include tennis, gymnastics,
• Ways to derive continued satisfaction wrestling, and golf, as well as many other
sporting activities that do not require officials.
Some individual sports such as swimming,
wrestling, golf, and track can be transformed
Starting as an Official into team competitions by comparing the col-
lective scores of performers; in such competi-
Starting out to officiate sports involves tions, judges may simply be volunteers offering
making connections with organizations that to help run the meets. Starters in track need
train and assign officials, and in the case of to have training, but track administrators who
scholastic sports, places that register officials use stopwatches and measure such things
and supply instructional materials. For high as distances or jumping heights require only
school officiating, that means contacting the basic instruction before a meet begins. Some-
state office that oversees officiating. Usually one who conducts the high jump in track, for
the first step is to pay a registration fee and instance, need only be aware of what a foot
then successfully pass a test after studying fault is or how many aborted approaches to
the rule book of the sport in which you wish the bar are permitted before disqualification.
to participate. School athletic administrators Judges of gymnastics events and aquatic
can provide the contact information of the diving, as well as figure skating, however, must
state office; YMCAs, local town headquarters, have sophisticated knowledge of the activity to
fitness centers, and workers in recreational make legitimate assessments.
facilities may also provide information about Soccer has risen to extreme popularity
spor ts teams a nd leagues. Ma ny youth among youth because fundamental skills can
leagues under high school age are sponsored be learned at an early age, and little equipment
by clubs or groups in charge of handling the is necessary for playing the game—just a ball,
sport. State organizations as well as local a playing surface, and goals. Other sports

17
18 Successful Sports Officiating

have also drawn much interest within one softball. Every community dot on the map
generation, including ice hockey, field hockey, has slow-pitch softball competitions: men’s,
volleyball, and lacrosse. women’s, and co-ed. Thousands of umpires
Volleyball and ice hockey have been around are needed across the nation.
a long time but have risen in popularity as With the exception of baseball and softball,
they have become more available. Ice hockey most widely popular sports are goal activities
requires a special rink to be played in a tem- in which two teams on a rectangular surface
perate climate, and many such facilities have (or in a pool, in the case of water polo) strive
sprung up all over the country. Volleyball to score by propelling an object into a goal or
had been a recreational sport in clubs, on across a line. All of these sports have large
beaches, and in YMCAs for some time. With followings of participants, spectators, and
the national impetus for girls’ sports, volley- faithful followers. Hence, they appeal to people
ball has enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity as who want to officiate.
a school-sponsored sport. An element that periodically comes into play
Sports that have increased in popularity and demands an official’s attention is conflict
have often migrated from the East Coast; between players. Except for baseball and soft-
field hockey, rugby, and lacrosse have pro- ball, each field sport, as well as basketball,
liferated to the point at which many schools features regular physical contact between
and colleges are now sponsoring them. The opponents. In fact, they are often referred to
three basic American sports, though—foot- as contact sports. Legendary football coach
ball, baseball, and basketball—still draw the Vince Lombardi purportedly said, “Football
most people to officiating, because television is not a contact sport. Dancing is a contact
brings them regularly and almost continually sport. Football is a collision sport!” When player
into our homes. These sports have millions of flare-ups occur, officials are obliged to deal
dedicated followers because their seasons are with them, sorting out which acts are punish-
lengthy and individual performers frequently able and which are merely incidental. Officials
become cultural headliners. And let’s not forget must also be alert for unseemly talk between

The official standing on the left watches on as players are locked in a scrum for the ball.
 Officiating as a Lifetime Career 19

opponents. These potential actions require that only shorts and a whistle, but they can also
officials exhibit a fine-tuned alertness. don specialized garb depending on the level
at which they are working. An eager teenager
Equipment doing a children’s soccer game, for example,
may need only a whistle. A swim judge may
The uniform you wear and the accessories you be expected to bring only a whistle, or may be
have are often determined by the level at which required to show up in white duck trousers
you work. For instance, if you’ll be handling with a stopwatch and a starter’s pistol.
junior high or pee-wee football games, you Officials who have to run will want footwear
may be free to limit yourself to a striped shirt to fit the court or field conditions: nonskid
and a whistle, with a red bandana tucked in soles, black shoes for basketball officials, black
a pocket serving as a flag. Footwear can be shoes with rubber cleats for field games. Many
ordinary gym shoes, and you can wear jeans field games require officials to wear striped
or shorts and a hat with a John Deere logo. No shirts (a style with a long tradition), and they
one expects you to have a standard uniform. may also have to carry items in addition to
On the other hand, if you intend to serve high whistles, such as yellow and red cards, note-
schools as an official, the organization that pads and pencils, and stopwatches in the case
trains and hires you will identify the proper of soccer referees.
apparel and tools. Rule books do not always Football officials probably have the most
specify the nature of officials’ uniforms: Base- specialized equipment of all—white knickers;
ball does, but football does not. Therefore, you unique striped socks; penalty flags; beanbags;
must learn the expectations and requirements a clip for the chains; whistles; and cards for
of those with whom and for whom you will be keeping score, for denoting which team kicks
working. off, for recording time-outs, and for identify-
In many instances, tradition is a governing ing special penalties such as player ejections.
factor, and when tradition changes, officials Football officials also usually carry a timing
are obliged to follow along and purchase up-to- device in case of scoreboard failure (or a lack
date supplies. In football, for example, striped of one). The total outlay for a football officiating
socks have varied over the years. Recently, a kit may be several hundred dollars or more.
new item has emerged: black trousers with a
white strip; these were introduced by the NFL
and have been widely adopted by high school
Advice for New Officials
officials. The people you work with will let you Perhaps the most important advice for new
know their apparel expectations. entrants into the officiating ranks, regarding
Of all sports, baseball and softball plate game action, is not to make decisions in haste.
umpires require the most equipment. Because “Hustle, but don’t hurry” is one of the favorite
of pitching speed, baseball and fast-pitch maxims. “See the whole play” is another. Often,
softball umpires need proper buffering gear, the action unfolds so quickly that you may
from footwear with reinforced toe plates to have trouble following the entire sequence.
shin guards, genital cups, firm chest protec- Sorting out sequences in your mind is one skill
tors, and full face masks with attached throat you must work on diligently to master your
shields, plus a jacket to wear in inclement role. Also, be sure to make calls with proper
weather. To be fully outfitted to call swift pitch- timing. Action should carry through before you
ing (even in Little League), you may have to make the call. Making calls too quickly will
spend several hundred dollars. (Some leagues result in errors. Being too close to the action
furnish this equipment to umpires.) is sometimes detrimental also, and securing
Slow-pitch softball umpires need only an a clear angle can be impossible if you are too
indicator—a handheld ball-and-strike device. close because of your over eagerness.
Thumbing the wheel on the indicator keeps The following suggestions are important if
track of balls, strikes, and outs. Most orga- you are just starting out as an official:
nized leagues, though, ask umpires to wear a
• Read the rules.
specific stylized shirt and trousers (or shorts),
and perhaps even a distinctive cap. • Keep the terms borderline and spirit of the
Officials who handle fast-moving team rules in mind when exercising judgment.
sports such as soccer and lacrosse may need • Watch other officials perform.
20 Successful Sports Officiating

• Seek out mentoring by asking questions

of fellow officials.
An Official’s Checklist
• Learn the game from the players’ stand-
point; discover how strategy operates. Following are actions every official should take
• Master the mechanics
before working a game:
• Ignore spectators. 1. Contact people in charge of the contest
• Listen to coaches’ questions and objec- before leaving home, preferably several days in
tions. advance. They want to know you’ll be there on
• Develop a soft, diplomatic system for deal- time, and this gesture can be considered common
ing with conflict. courtesy. Some organizations and leagues insist on
• Subdue any explosive or retaliatory ten- prior notice from officials because game sites and
dencies you may have in your personality. times may be switched for reasons such as field
• Carry yourself with dignity and assur- light malfunctions.
ance.
2. Be sure to secure directions to the school or
• Avoid arrogance and self-righteousness;
game site. Because sites may not be adjacent to
never be supercilious.
the school that furnished the contract, you should
• Always be willing to learn.
contact the organization you are working for to
Nearly every official who has risen in the confirm the location of the game site.
profession is grateful for someone who supplied 3. Once at the site, either indoors or a playing
help at a critical time. Some local associations
field, complete a site check to be sure that no
arrange to have veterans work with newcom-
ers in formal mentoring programs, though dangerous conditions exist, such as equipment
such programs may not be well organized from previous games littering the site. Occasion-
or operating when you need them. You can ally, a gym may have objects such as volleyball
benefit considerably by seeking the advice of standards carelessly positioned too close to the
experienced officials on an informal, personal floor. A field may actually be unplayable because
basis. Casual conversations with officials who of severe weather.
are widely respected may prove even more
beneficial than a formal program. Most highly If you are not in a formal program, consider an
regarded officials are flattered to be asked informal mentoring arrangement. You might ask
their opinions about tactics. They may also
an experienced official to observe and comment
furnish advice on how to move up the ladder
to prominent games and college opportunities. on a game that you work. If you are eager to pick
up new ideas, you can also benefit by observing a
Quest for Games veteran in action and discussing philosophy after-
ward. An ideal situation is to work a game or two
If you are just starting out as an official,
you may simply notify a school or recreation with a veteran so you can observe that person and
center that you want to work games under practice more sophisticated on-field or on-court
that organization’s auspices. If you are in a approaches. These opportunities often occur in
training program, the people administering it preseason scrimmages, when experienced officials
are likely to be in a position to assign games. are mixed with those who are learning.
If an outside administrator is in charge of
game assignments, which is the case in many
scholastic leagues, obtain that person’s contact
information and inquire about the opportunity. When you are ready to work, acquiring a
A short note describing your age and experi- full slate of games may not be possible because
ence, availability, contact information, and there are so many variables. One factor is
a resume may be all that is necessary to get need. Are schools or recreation organizations
started. Assigners are often the best contacts experiencing a shortage of officials? If so,
for additional information about training, too. opportunities may be plentiful. Another factor
 Officiating as a Lifetime Career 21

is time. Are you contacting people for game rate of yearly turnover). Directories of camps
assignments after they have already been are published regularly in Referee magazine
made? Your chances of landing assignments (P.O. Box 161, Franksville, Wisconsin 53126,
are best if you pursue them three to six months 262-632-8855, or at www.referee.com). Also,
before a season starts. A third factor is your state offices send out notices to officials about
location. Are there multiple schools and sports sport camps, either via mailed brochures or
clubs nearby that need a lot of officials? If so, Internet sites.
your chances of getting started with ample Officials for football, basketball, baseball,
game assignments are good. But if you live in softball, soccer, and volleyball are ordinar-
a small community with only a team or two ily served by overnight camps on college
engaged in your sport, opportunities will be campuses. These clinics, some of which are
limited. Therefore, you may have to enlarge a weeklong, often include the opportunity
your search. If you’re willing to travel 15 or to work games, because they are combined
20 miles to work games, make contacts in with athletic participation by high school
outlying locales. Even if you’re hired, however, students. If scrimmages and games are part
games may be scheduled sporadically, offering of the experience, videotaping of officials at
just a few openings per season. work is also usually offered, as are personal
evaluations by college officials and college
Clinic Opportunities commissioners.
Such camps have another value: an oppor-
Learning to become an official can best take
tunity to network with people who can advance
place in a training program, and the availabil-
your career. The college officiating directors
ity of such programs varies widely according
conduct some camps. They use camps to scout
to geographical location. If you live in a met-
prospective officials for their leagues. Often,
ropolitan area, chances are there will be one
officials from the college conference are the
or more associations dedicated to orienting
camp instructors, and they also evaluate pros-
newcomers and supporting veteran officials
pects if a college commissioner is not present.
in popular sports. But if you live in a rural or
This is a rich opportunity for learning a great
outlying area where communities are small
deal about how to officiate at a level higher
and connecting routes long, there may be no
than you may be working at present. Keep in
organization available for educating prospec-
tive officials. Consequently, you may have to mind that some of the best information may
gather start-up information from a book or come your way during off-hours, when officials
from conversing with someone who already gather in dormitories or at meals.
works the sport. Usually, officials obtain game Some state organizations sponsor overnight
assignments through officiating associations, camps, and most of them conduct their clinics
but games may also be obtained by contacting on weekends before the sport season begins.
schools directly. Again, these clinics offer the opportunities to
Even small towns, though, often have a few meet officials at a higher level because gener-
introductory classes to provide new officials ally the state associations rely on college offi-
for youth sports with basic information. They cials to impart their advice and philosophies to
may even have supervisors that watch officials aspiring officials. State or regional clinics may
perform and issue game assignments. invite professional officials to deliver presen-
Many seminars, camps, and clinics are tations, providing valuable information about
available for officials on a yearly basis; some how officiating takes place at the highest levels
are arranged by state associations, and some of sport. An important dimension of profes-
are set up by colleges, leagues, college com- sional officiating is dealing with pressure and
missioners, and private individuals. A few handling vast public exposure. Professional
certified camps are conducted each winter by officials also have advice to offer about how
Major League Baseball umpires before their to relate to players and coaches. Once more,
season starts. Certified means that organized these camps and clinics offer the opportunity
professional baseball leagues depend on these to learn from one another in an informal atmo-
camps to supply them with candidates for sphere. Sharing experiences may be the most
Minor League umpiring (which has a high noteworthy part of such gatherings.
22 Successful Sports Officiating

Discussions with other officials also are trying to score. Likewise, you must know the
helpful in solidifying the rules in your mind. requirements for a legal catch, and the rights
This is a major function of some officiating and prohibitions runners and fielders have
associations; many associations make it a point regarding interfering with each other. A study
to address every rule during the course of a of the rules will reveal the game’s complexities,
season. Rule books are accompanied by case which you must master before you can be con-
books, which are published by the National sidered an expert. Polish takes a lot of buffing,
Federation of State High School Associations. and working many games may be required to
These publications portray game situations in reach a high point of mental skill.
which rules have to be applied in special ways. Officiating is often a fun athletic endeavor.
These texts can help you master the intricacies But a lot of study and extended experience are
of a sport. When officials get together, they often required to be a superior performer.
pose game-situation problems to one another,
much as the case books do, to reinforce their Applying the Rules
grasp of fine points. Learning the rules and staying abreast of
changes are vital to your growth as an offi-
Studying the Rules cial. Some officials pride themselves on being
Each sport has comprehensive rules governing experts at rule interpretation, whereas others
player behavior and describing how games can coast along on perfunctory knowledge. Beyond
proceed. These rules vary somewhat in terms learning the rules, you must take the impor-
of limits and adjustments according to the
levels and skills of performers. Young athletes
at grade school levels are likely to have differ-
ent regulations for play than high school and
college athletes have, and they, in turn, have
rules that differ from those for professional
athletes.
In addition to rules, you will also need to
be familiar with the special vocabulary of the
sport you officiate. Definitive terms govern
each sport, and you are obliged to memorize
these to administer a contest fairly.
An exciting aspect of officiating is that you
can feel part of the action while policing it, as
long as you understand the rules and strate-
gies of the sport. It helps to have played the
game, but that is not a necessity. You can learn
a game’s framework by watching it, internal-
izing its movement, and absorbing the rules.
Consider the case of umpiring slow-pitch
softball. You may surmise at first that all you
need to know are the differences between a ball
and a strike, safe and out, and fair and foul.
Knowing the rules will help you differentiate
between a ball and a strike; there may even be
a mat behind home plate to indicate a strike
(i.e., a ball hitting it indicates that the pitch
was in the batter’s strike zone). However, there
are other intricacies to take into account. A
pitch can be too high, for instance, and an
illegal pitch could also have a trajectory that
is too low. Moreover, you will also have to know Auxiliary officials, such as a chain crew, can serve
whether a runner can bowl over a catcher in vital roles during sporting events.
 Officiating as a Lifetime Career 23

tant next step: applying the rules in a reason-

able way. Rules can be applied to the letter or
Self-Assessment
in a spirit that upholds the primary purposes In addition to seeking advice from respected
of the game. All officiating manuals urge that veterans, you can also engage in a deliberate
officials apply the spirit of the rules in making self-assessment after each contest. A danger
judgments. Experience and consultation with for many officials, as mentioned earlier, is to
other officials will help you understand how become self-satisfied, which means not ques-
to apply the rules in keeping with the spirit of tioning your own judgment and not evaluating
the game. This is the basis for a healthy sport the way you dealt with difficult situations. A
philosophy. reasonable way to start a self-assessment is to
Superior officials study the rules continu- identify which calls seemed to be controversial
ally. Many set aside a time of day to read a and how you reacted to objections. Write this in
segment of the rule book. It is almost impos- a journal. Another area for introspection is the
sible to pore over page after page of rules and way you deal with coaches and players. If your
retain what you have read; studying only a explanations were unsatisfactory, recall what
small section of the rule book at a time is a was said, and mentally develop an alternate
better use of your time. way of responding that is more appropriate.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Improving Skills
• Did I resolve conflicts satisfactorily?
As in many other fields, you can work toward
a certain goal in officiating (e.g., obtaining a • Did I anticipate team strategies accurately
satisfactory high school varsity schedule) and and in a timely way?
then take your skills for granted and not seek • Was my judgment on given plays emphatic
to improve. Many officials become self-satisfied and correct?
once they reach a certain level of expertise. • Did I overlook anything, either elements
They often don’t take constructive criticism of play or player behavior?
well, nor do they seek evaluation from experts.
• Was I influenced by crowd reaction or by
In fact, they may not acknowledge that anyone
verbal attacks from participants?
could critique their work fairly, and they close
their minds to the prospect of altering their • Did I hustle at appropriate times?
habits. Faulty habits sometimes hold offi- • Was my game coverage consistently
cials back at one level, preventing them from sharp?
improving and advancing. • Did I communicate effectively with my
The gratification of a full schedule is one partners?
factor that may stifle improvement, but other
factors operate as well. Once you reach a cer- Another form of review is asking for an
tain level, you will seldom get a critical review honest response from partners or crewmates.
from an objective person who can identify Ask those with whom you work whether any of
your strengths and weaknesses. Also, you will your habits seem to have negative outcomes—
seldom have opportunities to witness tech- for example: “Is my strike zone consistent? Am
niques that are more advanced than your own. I moving into position to make calls correctly?
You may be too busy working games to be on Have I been too loose in calls or too tight? Am I
the lookout for ways to get better. letting the players play the game? Am I intrud-
The first requisite for improvement is to ing too much on play? Am I calling undue
acknowledge that you are not a polished attention to myself?” These are all legitimate
expert, that some ingrained habits and per- issues that are correctable if you concentrate
sonal tendencies may be detrimental to your on improving.
officiating, and that you could benefit from Another way to observe yourself at work
advice for readjusting your techniques. Supe- is to ask coaches or game administrators for
rior officials know that there is always more videos of games you have officiated. Nowadays,
to be learned. The key ingredient to becoming teams record many of their games and some-
better is to admit your fallibility and seek ways times even their practice scrimmages. Officials
to expand your knowledge. often take blank DVDs along and ask game
24 Successful Sports Officiating

administrators to record the game and return To officiate at a higher level, you must first
the DVD, which most schools are willing to do. know the protocols for entering the collegiate
There is perhaps no better way to see how you ranks in your geographic region. These pro-
really look in a game than to view a video of tocols vary, but usually you must submit
yourself in action. a formal application to the commissioner
of officials in your sport. A resume of past
Advancing experience is usually required, as are recom-
mendations from prominent officials who have
to the Next Level either worked directly with you or seen you in
action. You may need recommendations from
If you want to rise in the profession, seek coaches, too.
opportunities for exposure beyond your normal A fact of life is that sometimes advancement
operating circles. For instance, if you aspire to depends more on who you know than what you
work at the college level, it is important to be know. Officials who work the conference or
seen working college scrimmages or off-season college coaches with whom you are acquainted
practice sessions. Working at various levels may aid your entry into collegiate ranks. Most
provides a broader perspective of how games college commissioners, however, rely on their
should be handled. Sometimes this chance own staff and current officials to recommend
to work at more advanced levels may occur those who are ready to make the step to a
at camps or clinics, as previously discussed, higher level.
but you generally must seek out these oppor- College officiating places extreme demands
tunities by inquiring when such practices on an official’s time. Officials are required to
take place and by asking to be involved. To attend off-season sessions for rules review,
rise above your current level, let it be known training in special tactics, testing, and fitness
that you are entertaining such ambitions. The checks. College games are likely to be far from
advanced leagues will not send someone to where you live, requiring you to set aside more
scout you unless you tell them that you are time than you would for a high school com-
interested. mitment. You may be required to be at a game
“The cream rises to the top” is a saying that site a day in advance, and long hours in an
can readily be applied to sports officials. If a car or a plane may be necessary to reach an
person shows exceptional promise, someone out-of-state destination.
above usually notices. However, just as it is Although college officials may enjoy a higher
rare for a teenage athlete to become a standout status than high school officials, they often
college performer, so do officials experience dif- report an added strain on their family lives and
ficulty advancing. The reasons for this are that marriages. Strong ambition may be a requisite
opportunities are few and the competition for for high-level officiating. High-level officials
them is keen. However, college officials retire, must be driven to excel, and such a drive
which often makes room for aspiring high sometimes poses problems in primary jobs and
school officials to advance. Attending camps, family relationships. Upper-level officials admit
as noted earlier, is one way to open the door that an increased paycheck means increased
to advancement. expectations for excellence and less tolerance
At advanced levels, games are played with for error. You can be sure of being evaluated
more intensity, the athletes move more swiftly, more critically in college than at the high
they are more skilled, and emotional levels school level. Stress may replace enjoyment for
frequently are higher. Therefore, you must those who do not relish added pressure.
gear your reactions to the increased speed and Following are some factors that can inhibit
skill of the athletes and adjust your personal advancement:
responses to deal effectively with college ath-
letes and coaches. A lot of experience is neces- • Overconfidence. Being overly self-satisfied
sary for acquiring the judgment skills required may hinder your progress. People who
to handle college sports. Some officials try to select upper-level officials prefer those
move too quickly, and their advancement is who are not know-it-alls.
stymied when their abilities don’t match their • Slow reactions. At higher levels, instant
desires. decisiveness is of utmost importance. A
 Officiating as a Lifetime Career 25

desultory or overly casual style of officiat- effective official in those sports, you must be
ing will work against your being consid- prepared to run hard (albeit intermittently) for
ered for high levels. a full game. This is true also with the vigorous
• Stubbornness. You must show a willing- indoor sport, basketball.
ness to learn and improve; you cannot be Volleyball officials simply stand on an ele-
defensive when critiqued. vated device (stepladder), blow a whistle, and
wave their arms. They don’t need to concern
• Antagonism. If you consider coaches as themselves with conditioning. The same goes
adversaries and treat them in a super- for judges in track, swimming, and gymnas-
cilious way, you are not likely to advance tics. Baseball and softball umpires must run
very far. In contrast, talent as a diplomat to cover territory and bases, but those bursts
is likely to earn you quicker advancement are sporadic. They need to run, but not very
than exceptional game techniques. The much. Umpires on the bases do a lot of stand-
same goes for how you treat crew mem- ing and taking in the scene.
bers. You have to be a team player to rise. On the other hand, football officials have to
• Not staying current. Currency has so many run more, but again, only in spurts, and bas-
dimensions. Referee magazine, a monthly ketball and soccer officials must run the most
publication, has regular articles on rules of all. It has been calculated that a basketball
interpretations, new rules, and special official may run as many as two or three
officiating techniques in major sports miles in a college game, with only intermittent
such as baseball and softball, football, stretches of stationary observation.
basketball, and soccer. It also has feature If the sport you are officiating requires that
articles and news stories about officiating you run, you should make an effort to be fit
issues and personnel. States themselves (i.e., be able to run on a sustained basis). If
conduct annual sessions about rule you are hobbled in some way, you will likely
updates and policies, and they provide come up short in serving effectively as a game
follow-up information about particular administrator in a fluid sport in which athletes
events and selected topics. Local and are exerting a lot of effort and expending much
regional associations are dedicated to energy. It is a good idea to have a thorough
the process of keeping officials apprised annual physical exam.
of new practices. Therefore, you can gain There is an irony about officiating basket-
knowledge from many sources. ball: Officials must have a lot of experience
to work at high school and college levels suc-
cessfully; yet they are expected to keep up
Staying Fit with young people who are at the peak of their
As indicated, field sports—and basketball, physical prowess, including being able to run
too—demand a lot of running, not continual, at top speed for a full game. This is a large
but urgently, in short bursts. You must know expectation for men who are over 30 years of
territorial responsibilities as well, so you can age. To learn more about staying in shape, refer
mesh with your fellow officials. Abrupt action to Part III, Getting Fit to Officiate.
on the field or court will stimulate you to Some officials use the preseason to train for
sprint: a pass interception or long kick return officiating in which running is required. They
in football, a breakaway surge in field hockey may run several miles a week (e.g., a mile a
or lacrosse, or a steal and fast break in bas- day, every other day, to allow for recuperating),
ketball. You must also sense when to cruise, whereas others rely on interval conditioning
moving intently at a controlled pace. Then a few times each week (e.g., running 75- or
there are critical times when merely shuffling 100-yard dashes and walking back to the
to secure a desired angle on play is preferable. starting point).
A solid mantra for success in officiating is to
continually strive to obtain an advantageous
angle.
Retaining the Enjoyment
Four of the most popular outdoor sports— The issue of enjoyment can be a delicate
football, soccer, field hockey, and lacrosse— matter. Officiating can offer a strong ego
require officials to run a great deal. To be an boost. When you walk on the field or court,
26 Successful Sports Officiating

you receive instant respect. People defer to

your point of view, because you are automati-
Summary
cally in charge. This appeals to many people Beginning as an official starts like many other
who take up officiating. You will also have a professions. Individuals must register, obtain
large measure of control in the game itself. instructional materials and equipment, train,
Ego satisfaction is a significant dimension and network to succeed. Before officials may
of the role. step out onto a field or court, they usually
Some officials look at every game as a must register with an organization and obtain
chance to exert their influence. Rather than a license that confirms their qualifications.
adopt this attitude, resolve to use your power This is particularly true at the prep level. It’s
fairly. People in attendance who are not play- important that officials have the proper equip-
ing the game are there to see their youngsters ment for the corresponding athletic events,
and friends in action and to enjoy the game. and this is usually determined by the level
Therefore, you should not feel that spectators worked. Studying the rules and learning to
have shown up to see you in action. apply them is a crucial skill for all officials.
If your primary motive is to administer Having an intimate knowledge of a sport’s
a game with absolute impartiality, you will rules and vocabulary is necessary to become
find that players frequently welcome you with an elite official.
friendly behavior, usually unstated but easily The quest for games is most likely the biggest
understood by their demeanor. They will offer struggle for young officials. Proper networking
you automatic acceptance. is a necessity for any official seeking games.
These elements contribute to the excitement It may be as simple as notifying a school or
of officiating. You can be part of a contest and recreation center that you are interested in
experience its drama. If you observe carefully, working games. Learning to become an official
you’ll notice that participants are often thrilled can best take place in a training program,
to take part. Observing this can add to your and the availability of such programs varies
own vicarious pleasure. You should always be widely according to geographical location.
aware that young people, no matter what their If an outside administrator is in charge of
age, have devoted long hours trying to be good game assignments, which is the case in many
at playing the game. A game is an opportunity scholastic leagues, it’s crucial to obtain that
to exhibit the skills they have acquired. This person’s contact information and inquire about
recognition of the players is another element an opportunity. Assigners are often the best
of the contest that you can savor. resource for training, too. Many times, they
Games can be uplifting for everyone pres- will have clinics where young officials can go
ent, including those who monitor the action. to learn and potentially work for assignments.
You can be enthusiastic and still administer It’s evident that officials must strive to keep
a game correctly. improving their skills on the field. Whether
Perhaps the only danger with officiating this means refusing to become self-satisfied,
is overdoing it. No doubt, officiating requires seeking constructive criticism, or attending
a substantial commitment, often in the eve- clinics, it’s critical that officials always try to
nings and on weekends. You will enter a new get better. Along those lines, it’s important to
world in which camaraderie is a satisfying self-evaluate performances at the end of every
ingredient, but you must also guard against contest. Striving to improve abilities is the only
excessive indulgence. Officiating can offer an way to insure that you keep moving forward
emotional high just like any other physical and and advance to the next level.
mental engagement. The secret is to space your Most importantly, it’s necessary that offi-
assignments so you can build a wholesome life cials retain their enjoyment of officiating and
in the times between games. continue having fun throughout their careers.
 Review Questions
1. An official’s primary role in admin- 6. Meshing well with fellow officials
istering contests is penalizing player requires a precise knowledge of territo-
transgressions. rial responsibilities.
___ True ___ True
___ False ___ False
2. Combinations of individual sports, 7. Umpires in baseball can start to offici-
such as high jump and dashes in track, ate with a minimum amount of equip-
can result in team scores when com- ment.
piled and compared. ___ True
___ True ___ False
___ False 8. Officiating associations in various
3. To officiate properly, an official must locales ordinarily handle game assign-
have participated in the sport. ments.
___ True ___ True
___ False ___ False
4. Sports rules for youngsters under high 9. In supervising live game action, being
school age usually have modifications too close to a play can be detrimental.
that fit their abilities. ___ True
___ True ___ False
___ False 10. People can enter the officiating avoca-
5. Becoming an expert official, such as tion at almost any age, from teenagers
an umpire in softball, requires only to retirees.
memorizing the rules. ___ True
___ True ___ False
___ False

Answers on page 187

27
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 Part II

Developing Your
Officiating Skills

29
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 Chapter
3
Officiating Style
Jerry Grunska

that are shaped by your attitude, performance

This chapter addresses the following: principles, and the 10 commandments of style.
This chapter should help you react positively
• The four styles of officiating, with to game situations.
reasons for their application
• How game context affects officiat- Four Styles
ing style
• How style communicates your pur-
of Officiating
poses to participants The officiating styles discussed in this section
• The personal characteristics and are somewhat arbitrary, in that no official
performance principles that lead operates entirely in one mode all the time. In
to success fact, the key to successful officiating is flex-
ibility in adapting your style to the situation.
• The importance of image
Officiating is very much governed by con-
text, which means that you must adapt your
approach to the type of game being played.
In sports officiating, there are preferred ways Styles can change, even during a single game.
of operating that tend to lead to success, By knowing how to change your style, you can
although there are no guarantees. The ways adapt to fit the circumstances.
you choose to operate are revealed in the style
you adopt. The four styles described in this Rule Book Style
chapter are not mutually exclusive, though. Some officials say, “You can always hide
You may find yourself justifiably adopting a behind the rule.” If a player’s action is border-
particular style to fit the occasion. A good line, you have the option of applying the most
official adapts to the age of participants, their stringent interpretation of a rule and thereby
skill level, their maturity, their grasp of the have a bona fide excuse for ruling against the
game’s protocols, the complexity of their strat- player. A stringent interpretation of the rules,
egy, and the overall context of game situations. however, may not always be the fairest way to
A preteen, early-season contest may feature judge the action.
participants who are just learning the rudi- Consider the slide in baseball or softball.
ments of the sport. On the other hand, a late- The rule states that a runner must slide into
season game between skilled competitors and home plate if a fielder is in position to make
a substantial (and partisan) audience poses a play there. The runner is not permitted to
another set of challenges. Your style should come in standing up, because the catcher is
fit the circumstances of the competition. This in a stationary, vulnerable position and a col-
chapter also contains suggestions for benefi- lision may result. Therefore, the runner can
cial personal behavior—ways of responding be called out for failing to slide. Let’s say that

31
32 Successful Sports Officiating

a runner is trying to score on a hit to the out- as the game’s guardian. But the rules of any
field, but the throw toward home plate forces sport are subject to wide interpretation simply
the catcher to move up the third-base line. because there are so many variations in game
The ball and the runner arrive in the vicin- circumstances.
ity of the catcher—who is several feet up the Rules governing blocking in football also
line—at nearly the same time. To avoid the allow considerable latitude in interpretation.
catcher, the runner deftly pirouettes around Blocking used to be done with the shoulder
the fielder and steps on the plate without being pads. Players kept using their hands to push,
tagged. The umpire could call the runner out however, and finally the rule makers made
for not sliding. However, if the runner slides pushing legal. But the shoving had to be done
and causes the catcher to topple over, then a within the frame of the body of the player being
player could be hurt. In effect, the runner is blocked. What is within the frame? An official
in a no-win situation. who wants to apply the definition precisely
A dozen scenarios about collisions or near can call “illegal use of hands” a lot, even if
collisions on plays at home plate could be the contact has no bearing on the result of a
described. The rules cannot cover all these play. In other words, a rule-book-style official
situations succinctly. They can only describe could interrupt play almost at will, and some
parameters. If you take those parameters and officials do just that, believing themselves to
apply them to the letter, you, in effect, penal- be conscientious. Players, coaches, and fans
ize players unfairly. Applied in an overly rigid often find their overly strict judgment annoy-
manner, rules of play can actually be used to ing, even counterproductive.
sabotage their intent. Some rules, however, do not permit any
Some officials operate in this stringent deviance. The clearest examples are the rules
way. They believe that by applying rules in a regarding the boundary lines that confine a
punitive manner, they are fulfilling their role sport and define its critical areas. When a ball

A starter in track must undergo specific training because protocols require precise timing between steps of
instructions to participants.
 Officiating Style 33

Bending the Rules

1. Rules say that only captains may be present at the saying that it was dangerous. The league commissioner
coin toss in football. But in one Vermont community, the eventually had to remove her from games, declaring that
Pumpkin Queen, an honorary Miss Cinderella, tradition- her stance was “unreasonably belligerent.”
ally bursts from a papier-mâché replica of a pumpkin 3. During an injury time-out in a high school football
on Halloween weekend to conduct the coin toss. game, referee Wilbur Pralle of West Salem, Oregon,
Because this has been a tradition for many years with stopped a coach from talking to his team. “You’re here
no detrimental effect on the game, officials invariably to attend to the injured player only,” Pralle said. “But
permit this ceremony. The rule was designed to curtail I have to give the substitute directions,” the coach
excesses (e.g., having all the seniors march out to call protested. “The rules don’t permit it,” Pralle reiterated,
the coin toss), which could be considered an effort to ignoring common sense.
intimidate opponents.
4. A pair of Pentecostal pastors, who happened to be
2. Softball umpire Cheryl Perry of Springer, New hockey officials from Blanding, Utah, were assigned to a
Mexico, found herself at odds with coaches and admin- tournament in Moab about 50 miles away. Before going
istrators when she threatened a coach with ejection for to the match, they called the school athletic director and
standing in the dugout opening to direct fielders. The said they’d be especially watchful for the players taking
dugout itself was restricted because of thick industrial- the Lord’s name in vain. When the home coach heard
strength wire, like a cage, and in addition, the mesh this warning, he said, “How can I deal with that? I’ve
was so close to the bench that players were squeezed been trying to stop my kids from using obscenities.”
into stand-up positions to view play. Tradition in the The officials were given another assignment and told
league held that coaches occupy the dugout opening, not to call teams with advance warnings of any kind.
but Perry was adamant about refusing that privilege,

possessed by a runner crosses the plane of the with both teams. In games that flow rapidly,
goal line in football, it is a touchdown, with no such as soccer, hockey, and basketball, an offi-
room for equivocation. When a batted ball hits cial who calls a tight game can hamper teams
a base in softball or baseball, it is a fair ball. that play aggressive defense. Consequently, an
When a basketball bounces on a sideline, it is official who administers hard justice will find
out of bounds. Accurate judgement (which is a favorable reception in some quarters, par-
not always easy) is the determining factor in ticularly with teams having difficulty dealing
these cases. with a tough defense.
Another area in which you must follow the
letter of rules consistently is in the matter of Preventive Style
safety. Certain acts in contact sports can maim It is almost always acceptable to talk to play-
an opponent. A body slam in the back, below ers during games. For example, compliment-
the waist, in football (clipping) is one example. ing an athlete on good play can be a positive
Furthermore, special protective padding under way to interact, and such a compliment will be
players’ uniforms is stipulated, with exact even stronger if the player’s act was a sport-
definitions for some sports (field hockey, ice ing gesture. Often, the best time to speak
hockey, wrestling, football), and officials are to a player may be during a break in the
obliged to carry out a careful inspection to action, such as between innings in softball
determine compliance before contests. or baseball.
Although a strict official may be short on Sometimes, too, players do not know when
discriminating judgment, some coaches like a behavior might be close to a foul or violation.
officials who operate by the book, as long as The rules forbid a softball pitcher from jump-
they are evenhanded and equally stringent ing off the rubber while delivering a pitch for
34 Successful Sports Officiating

example. An umpire will usually remind the welfare of players, or making a halfhearted
pitcher of that if she is lifting her push-off foot decision when a crisp one is called for. Feeble
slightly, Also, in football, a quarterback under decision making can be the undoing of an
center and about to receive a snap must keep official.
his head quite still, because a quick jerk of The reasons officials operate this way are
the head can easily draw an opponent into the perhaps just as important as the results. One
neutral zone. The quarterback is permitted reason is that the official may not know very
to bob his head slightly, because it is almost much about the game. The rundown in base-
impossible to keep a frozen head when barking ball or softball serves to illustrate this. If a
signals. Judgments in these types of situations runner is caught between bases with fielders
demand refined thinking on the part of offi- trying to make a tag, the runner may throw
cials. Warning players about negative results of up her arms and try to hit the ball while it is
their actions is usually a sensible path to take. being tossed between fielders. This is interfer-
Preventive officiating takes two forms. One ence, and the runner should be called out. But
is helping players avoid technical violations. A a clever runner may know that if she can run
basketball official, for instance, will withhold into a fielder who does not have the ball, the
the ball from a player on a throw-in if that fielder should be called for obstruction and the
player’s foot is on the boundary line. A baseball runner awarded safe passage to a base. An
or softball umpire may notify a pitcher who is umpire who does not know these restrictions
close to delivering an illegal pitch—say, with may offer no call at all, and hence the essence
improper footwork on the rubber. A football of the rule has been ignored. Lack of rule
wing official will often put one foot out in an knowledge, particularly of rules that seldom
effort to guide a split end, showing the limit of need to be applied, is a prominent shortcom-
the so-called neutral zone. ing of many officials. It is one reason for what
The second preventive technique is notifying some call lackadaisical officiating.
a player not to commit a foul. Sometimes fouls Considerable emphasis in recent years has
are the result of inadvertent player behavior. been placed on dead ball officiating—that
Charging into the snapper on punts is one is, attending with a keen eye to participants
such action in football. Rules protect the snap- after a play has been completed. Some quick
per, who is in a vulnerable position after he examples can illustrate. In baseball and soft-
has put the ball in play. Sometimes a fielder ball, if a sliding runner has been declared
will absentmindedly stand in a base runner’s out—or even if the runner is safe—an umpire
path in softball or baseball, and an umpire who signals the call may turn away from the
can advise against it. A basketball player can play and miss a physical altercation between
be told to avoid excessive hand guarding or aggrieved opponents. A hard tag or a hard slide
to avoid elbowing on rebounds. In this way, can initiate antagonism.
officials act to prevent player-to-player contact In basketball, after a foul on a shooter, when
that could result in fouls. the official turns to report the foul, players
Any warnings to players about potential may bristle and bump chests, and a careless
violations should be issued during dead ball official may miss an opportunity to squelch
intervals, although it is sometimes possible to further animosities.
call to players during live action, as when tell- In football, a prime opportunity for dead ball
ing football players to stay off a runner whose confrontations can occur anytime a runner is
progress has already been determined. driven backward and dumped on the surface
or when two players jostle one another while
Laissez-Faire Style attempting to catch a forward pass. When
Some officials prefer to let players just play, these situations arise, an official may abandon
without interfering very much. This is not an focus on the individuals while retrieving the
undesirable style as long as games move along ball. Officials can miss critical opportunities
smoothly. The difficulty comes when games to regulate the game by being overly casual.
become heated or when complicated judgments Sometimes overly casual officials simply fall
are necessary. The live-and-let-live official may into lazy patterns of inattentiveness.
get into trouble by not making calls when they In underclass or subvarsity levels of the
are essential, not attending carefully to the preceding sports, as well as in hockey, field
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
were caused by the existence of renal calculus—the “gravel of the
kidneys” of his day. He knew of it when he wrote the letter to Hartlib
(a fellow sufferer) in which he gratefully thanks good Mrs. Hartlib for
a “receipt” or “sanative remedy,” which she had sent him in one of
her husband’s letters, against a disease that Robyn calls “so cruel in
its tortures and so fatal in its catastrophe.”[148]
Stalbridge, with this fact realised, was no longer the home of glad
possibilities it may at first have promised to be; which the old Earl, in
leaving it to his Benjamin, had certainly intended it to be. But Robert
Boyle was making the best of it. “As for me,” he wrote to Hartlib
—“during my confinement to this melancholy solitude, I often divert
myself at leisure moments in trying such experiments as the
unfurnishedness of the place and the present distractedness of my
mind will permit me.” Friends and neighbours came about him; these
were certain “young knights” and young Churchmen and “travellers
out of France,” who appear under fancy names in his Reflections:
Eusebius, “a Dr. of Divinity,” Eugenius and Genorio, “Travellers and
fine Gentlemen,” and Lindamor, “a learned youth, both well born and
well bred.” If they were not actually his guests at Stalbridge, Robyn
“took pleasure to imagine” them to “be present with me at the
occasion”; and poetic licence has suggested that Lindamor may
have been Robyn himself, in some of his moods, though he still
figures in some of them as Philaretus and speaks in others of them
of “Mr. Boyle”—even while he is using also the first personal
pronoun. The Earl of Bristol’s family at Sherborne Castle were
pleasant neighbours, and the family of Sir Thomas Mallet, at
Poynington—Sir Thomas and his Lady, and Mr. John Mallet their
son, and the young lady whom John Mallet was to marry—“the fair
young lady you are happy in,” as Robert Boyle called her.
Robyn’s own family—scattered and busy as they were—came to
see him sometimes. He says himself that his sister, Lady Ranelagh,
was “almost always with him during his sickness”;[149] and his
brother Frank seems to have been a welcome and cheerful guest at
Stalbridge; while Robyn himself rode over now and then to Marston
Bigot, when “dear Broghill” and Lady Pegg were there. But his
laboratory and his “standish” and books, and especially his
correspondence with Hartlib in London, were a great resource. It was
at this time that he was writing the little essays he spoke of to
Marcombes. Among them was his Free Discourse against
Customary Swearing, which in manuscript pleased his relations, and
was dedicated to his sister Kildare.[150] And it was then also that he
was writing his Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, which
so delighted Lady Ranelagh.[151] They afford many glimpses into
Robert Boyle’s life during the years spent at Stalbridge. He is to be
seen in them as the young Squire of gentle, studious tastes and
simple habits, sitting, book in hand, over the slow-burning wood fire
in the parlour with the carved stone chimney-piece “fair and graceful
in all respects”; or riding his horse along the up-and-down-hill Dorset
lanes; angling by the side of a stream, or walking in his own
meadows, with his spaniel at his heels: philosophising as he goes;
observing all things always; dreaming, perhaps, a little too—within
bounds. The very titles of his Reflections are an epitome of the life of
those Stalbridge days. The spaniel is a constant companion, in weal
and woe:—
Upon my Spaniel’s carefulness not to lose me in a Strange place,
and Upon his manner of giving Meat to his Dogg, are two of these
Reflections.[152]
There is nothing very original in Robert Boyle’s method of feeding
a dog, except that it carries with it his inevitable moral conclusions;
but the youthful essay hands down the picture of master and dog to
posterity:—
“For but observe this Dogg. I hold him out meat, and my inviting
Voice loudly encourages and invites him to take it. ’Tis held indeed
higher than he can leap, and yet, if he leap not at it, I do not give it
him; but if he do, I let it fall half-way into his mouth.”
Spaniels have fetched their masters’ gloves from time immemorial;
but none quite so graphically as Robert Boyle’s:—[153]
“How importunate is he to be imployed about bringing me this
glove! And with what Clamours and how many fawnings does he
court me to fling it him! I never saw him so eager for a piece of Meat
as I find him for a Glove. And yet he knows it is no Food for him, nor
is it Hunger that creates his Longings for it; for now I have cast it
him, he does nothing else with it but (with a kind of Pride to be sent
for it, and a satisfaction which his glad gestures make appear so
great, that the very use of Speech would not enable him to express it
better) brings it me back again....”
In the mere names of these Reflections may be traced the manner
in which he spent his days: Upon distilling the Spirit of Roses in a
Limbick: Upon two very miserable Beggars begging together by the
Highway: Upon the Sight of a Windmill standing still: Upon his
Coaches being stopt in a narrow Lane: Upon the Sight of a fair
Milkmaid Singing to her Cow:[154] Upon Talking to an Echo: Upon a
Child that Cri’d for the Stars;—in which last are quoted Waller’s lines
—

“Thus in a starry night fond children cry

For the rich spangles which adorn the sky.”

One of the Reflections, Upon the Eating of Oysters, possesses a

secondary interest: it is supposed to have suggested to Swift his
Gulliver’s Travels. Like others of the Reflections, it is written in the
form of conversation between Eugenius and Lindamor.[155]
“Eug.—You put me in mind of a fancy of your Friend Mr. Boyle,
who was saying, that he had thoughts of making a short Romantick
story, where the Scene should be laid in some Island of the Southern
Ocean, govern’d by some such rational Laws and Customs as those
of Utopia or the New Atlantis, and in the Country he would introduce
an Observing Native, that upon his return home from his Travels
made in Europe should give an account of our Countries and
manners under feign’d Names, and frequently intimate in his
Relations (or in his Answers to Questions that should be made him)
the reasons of his wondring to find our Customs so extravagant, and
differing from those of his Country....”
The Reflections show Robert Boyle as he lived and thought and
felt; as he rose early on a “fair morning,” and looked up at the
“variously coloured clouds,” and listened to the lark’s song overhead;
as he picked up a horse-shoe, watched boys at their games, or tried
a prismatical or triangular glass; as he fished with a “counterfeit fly”
along the river-banks, or let the fish run away with the more homely
bait; as he looked at his own shadow cast in the face of a pool, or his
own face in a looking-glass with a rich frame. What an opportunity
was the magnetical needle of a sundial, or the use of a burning-
glass, or the drinking of water out of the brims of one’s own hat!
What food for reflection was a syrup made of violets, or a glow-worm
included in a crystal viol! What thoughts fluttered about the tail of a
paper kite flown on a windy day, or about a lanthorn and candle
carried by on a dark and windy night! And Robert Boyle did once
shoot something, as may be seen from the title of one particular
Reflection:
“Killing a Crow (out of a window) in a Hog’s trough, and
immediately tracing the ensuing Reflection with a Pen made of one
of his Quills....”
Very early in his life there was, alas! the least touch of the
valetudinary about the “deare Squire.” It was not all fair mornings
and larks and roses. One section of his little book of essays is
devoted to “the accidents of an ague,” and deals with the invasion,
the hot and cold fits, the letting of blood, the taking of physick, the
syrups and other sweet things sent by the doctor, the want of sleep,
the telling of the strokes of an ill-going clock in the night, the thief in
the candle, the danger of death, the fear of relapse; and at the end,
when Robyn is his own man again—the “reviewing and tacking
together the several bills filed up in the Apothecary’s Shop.”
In the summer of 1647, Robert Boyle had been ill; but in the
autumn he paid some visits among his relations, and early in 1648
he went to Holland, “partly to visit the country,” and partly to help his
brother Frank conduct his brilliant wife home from The Hague—a
mission that must have required all Frank’s sweetness of spirit and
all Robyn’s philosophy. In the summer of 1648, Robert Boyle was
again in London;—this time, Lady Ranelagh had taken rooms for him
in St. James’s.
 CHAPTER X
A KIND OF ELYSIUM
“This blessed plot, this Earth, this Realme, this England,
This Nurse, this teeming wombe of Royall Kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous for their birth,
Renowned for their deeds, as farre from home,
For Christian seruice, and true Chiualrie,
As is the sepulcher in stubborne Iury
Of the World’s ransome, blessed Marie’s Sonne.
This Land of such deere soules, this deere-deere Land,
Deere for her reputation through the world....”

Shakespeare’s Richard the Second (First Folio, 1623).

Shakespeare was a little out of date in the summer of 1648, when

Robert Boyle came to town from Stalbridge to the lodging in St.
James’s taken for him by his sister Ranelagh. “This England” was
then still in the throes of civil war; was, in fact, at the moment
plunged in what is known as the Second Civil War.[156] When Robert
Boyle arrived in town, everybody was talking of the risings in the
English counties (Dorsetshire itself among them), and the revolt of
the fleet off the Kentish coast. The King was in the Isle of Wight:
since Robert Boyle had written his letter to Marcombes in October
1646, the King had been bandied about from the Scots to the
English, from the Parliament to the Army, from Holmby House to
Hampton Court; and now, having escaped into the Isle of Wight only
to find himself virtually a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, he was yet
in secret negotiation with Ormonde in France, and with Hamilton and
the Royalists in Scotland. Just at this time, “in spite of Argyle and the
Scottish Clergy”, a Royalist army was marching into England. The
Queen and Prince and the Royalist Court at St. Germains were on
tip-toe of expectation; while the young Duke of York had escaped
from London abroad, disguised in girl’s clothes.[157] Ormonde was
with the Court in France, and Inchiquin in Ireland had declared
himself a Royalist. There had been also successive Royalist risings
in Wales and in the English counties. Of the Parliamentary Party,
Lambert was in the north, Cromwell in Wales; and Fairfax and Ireton
—the Kentish rising crushed—were now besieging Colchester.
And what was Robert Boyle doing during this London visit? After
all, London was in the circumstances the most civilised place to be
in. Robert Boyle was listening to the Earl of Warwick’s very full
account “from his own mouth” of his recent negotiations with the
rebellious fleet;—the Earl of Warwick, who was Mary Boyle’s father-
in-law. And then, when the Earl of Warwick himself was hurrying off
to Portsmouth to deal with the “disobedient ships” there, Robert
Boyle was supping quietly with the ladies of the Warwick family at
Warwick House in Holborn, and hearing from them all the latest
gossip about the Essex rising, and the behaviour of his brother-in-
law Charles Rich. By their account, Charles Rich had been the
“grand agitator in this Essex business.” And the young Squire was
much amused to hear also that the newly chosen Admiral of the
revolting ships was none other than one Kemb, a minister,—“a mad,
witty fellow,” Robert Boyle calls him, “whom I have often been very
merry with, his wife being sister to the honest red-nosed blade that
waits now on me.”[158]
Times had changed, indeed, since England was the royal throne
of Kings, another Eden, and a demi-paradise. No doubt the Invisibles
met as usual in Wood Street, and Robert Boyle was often in
congenial company with Hartlib and the others there or at Gresham
College. Young Lord Barrymore was no longer with Milton in the
Barbican. Milton had given up his school, and he and his wife and
their one little girl were living in High Holborn—very near to Warwick
House—and Milton was now leading a literary life, but keenly
watching the doings of Parliament and Army; it was some months
before he was made Secretary of Foreign Tongues to the Council of
State. The young philosopher in St. James’s, who had his own
ideals, was watching them too, as keenly; though exactly how Robert
Boyle felt about the trend of events it is very difficult to guess. His
“exact evenness of carriage” never deserted him: to use his own
words, “The point of a mariner’s needle shows its inclination to the
Pole both by its wavering and rest.” Royalists, Parliament-men,
Army-men, Churchmen, Presbyterians, and Independents,—he was
in the midst of them all, bound to many of them by ties of friendship
and kinship, but steadfastly going his own way. If he was in the
company of Mary’s father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, he was also in
Archbishop Usher’s study, listening to a very different kind of
exposition, and he was writing affectionately to “dear Broghill” in his
difficult position in Munster. If he spoke of “Our Masters” at
Westminster, he spoke also of “Our Brethren” across the Borders.
On the whole, like Milton in Holborn, but from quite another
standpoint, Robert Boyle seems to have fixed, if not his faith, his
expectations, upon the New Model. “Victory,” he wrote, “is as
obedient as the very Parliament to the Army.”[159]
And meantime Lady Ranelagh was doing her best to push her
young brother’s literary interests, and make his London visit a
pleasant one. She had been showing one of his manuscripts to her
friend the Countess of Monmouth. The Countess was the daughter
of an old acquaintance of the Earl of Cork, Lionel Cranfield, the
clever merchant-adventurer, Lord Mayor of London, High Treasurer,
and first, Earl of Middlesex. It may be remembered that Marcombes
had been tutor in the Middlesex family before he took Kynalmeaky
and Broghill abroad. The Countess had read and liked the
manuscript, and had sent the young Squire a flattering message and
invitation in a note to his sister Ranelagh. And it was with more than
ordinary pleasure that Robert Boyle sat down to indite his little letter
of reply, a model of seventeenth-century epistolary homage, to the
Countess of Monmouth at Moore Park—
“Madam,” so runs the letter: “in your ladyship’s (imparted to me by
my sister Ranelagh) I find myself so confounded with civilities, that if
she that blessed me with the sight of your letter had not (for her own
discharge) exacted of me this acknowledgment of my having seen it,
I must confess I should scarce have ventured to return a verbal
answer, deterred by the impossibility of writing without wronging a
resentment[160] which I can express as little as I deserved the
praises and the favours that have produced it.”
 And so on. The Countess had suggested the publication of his
pamphlet. But she did more: she had invited the young Squire to pay
a visit to Moore Park, and to bring his manuscript in his pocket—
“As for my pamphlet, Madam, had it expected the glory of
entertaining you, it should certainly have appeared in a less careless
dress ... yet my just sense of the smallness of the accession the
Press can be to the honour of your ladyship’s perusal makes me
decline its publication. And as that paper cannot have either a higher
applause or nobler end than the being liked and practised at Moore
Park, so if it have either anyway diverted your ladyship, or had the
least influence upon my lord, I have reached my desires and gone
beyond my hopes. However, Madam, I am richly rewarded for writing
such a book by being enjoyned to fetch it where you are. So
welcome a command is very unlikely to be disobeyed; but my
obedience, Madam, must be paid to the order, not the motive. The
fetching of my book may be one effect of my remove, but not the
errand of it; for sure, Madam, your modesty cannot be so injurious,
both to yourself and me, as to persuade you that any inferior (that is,
other) motive can be looked upon by me as an invitation to a journey
which will bless me with so great a happiness as that of your
ladyship’s conversation, and give me the opportunity of assuring
you, better than my present haste and my disorder will now permit
me, in how transcendent a degree I am, Madam, your Ladyship’s
humble and obliged servant, Robert Boyle.”
It was a particularly cold, wet July[161]; the confusions of the
country seemed to have infected the very air; and those people who
were “wont to make fires, not against winter but against cold,” had
“generally displac’d the florid and the verdant Ornaments in their
chimneys,” where “Vulcan” was more proper than “Flora.”[162]
But it must be taken for granted that the sun shone out one day,
not long after the folding and dispatching of this letter to the
Countess; and that Robert Boyle and his horse did find their way by
the old coach-road from London into Hertfordshire. And when they
came to the little town of Rickmansworth, lying sleepily in the valley,
clustered about the huge Church in its midst, horse and rider must
have turned upwards to the left, under spreading oak-trees. The
“common way” still runs upwards through the Park.
For Moore Park, that once belonged to Shakespeare’s Earl of
Pembroke, “stands on the side of a hill; but not very steep.” Sir
William Temple has described it, as it was in that day, when the
Monmouth family owned it, “the sweetest place, I think, that I have
ever seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad.” The
length of the house lay upon the breadth of the garden. The great
parlour, where the Countess would receive her guest, opened on the
middle of a terraced gravel-walk, set with standard laurels, which
looked like orange-trees out of bloom. There were fountains and
statues and summer-houses in that garden—“the perfectest figure of
a garden”—and shady cloisters, upon arches of stone, clustered
over with vines. And beyond lay a wilderness, which was always in
the shade. Robert Boyle must have been a happy man that day, as
he alighted before those portals with his manuscript in his pocket.
Henry Cary, second Earl of Monmouth, was a Royalist peer: his
younger brother, Thomas Cary, was the faithful groom of the
bedchamber to Charles I. They were sons of the old Robert—the
man who, the moment Queen Elizabeth was dead, had started on
his record ride from London to Edinburgh to be the first to tell James
VI that he was King of England. The first Earl and his Countess—a
Trevanion—lay buried in Rickmansworth Church; and the second
Earl and his Countess were, at the time of Robert Boyle’s visit, living
quietly at Moore Park, the Earl having of late withdrawn into
retirement among his books and manuscripts.[163] For he was a
scholar, skilled in modern languages, and a writer—though not one
of his manuscripts remains. And he and the Countess were still
passionately mourning the death of Lionel, their elder son and heir,
who had fallen in the battle of Marston Moor. The second son was
married, in London[164]; and the family at Moore Park must have
consisted entirely of daughters, though the eldest daughter had been
married for some years to Mary Boyle’s rejected suitor, Mr. James
Hamilton.[165] Mr. Hamilton had married the Lady Anne Cary a few
weeks after the Lady Mary Boyle’s runaway marriage with Charles
Rich. But not any of the other daughters at Moore Park—and there
was a bevy of them—were married, or to be married, for many years
to come; which, in those days of early marriages, is a matter for
some wonder, especially as it is known, on Evelyn’s authority, that
one at least of these daughters was “beautifull and ingenious.”[166]
However pleasant the visit to Moore Park may have been, it was
soon over. Early in August Robert Boyle was staying with his sister
Mary at the Earl of Warwick’s house of Leeze, in Essex, and there
finishing his treatise on “Seraphick Love.” It purported to be written
“by one young gentleman to another”—to that Lindamor, in fact, the
“learned youth both well-born and well-bred,” who makes the fourth
of the little quartet in the Reflections. The manuscript was handed,
“almost sheet by sheet,” as it was written, to the enthusiastic Mary;
and then, having been, after the fashion of the day, circulated among
a favoured few, it was laid carefully by, among the young Squire’s
other papers. And in September he was back again at Stalbridge.
The last months of that fateful year must have been, in many a
quiet English manor, the most dismal and depressing ever lived
through. In his seclusion, with pen and ink, limbecks and recipients,
Robert Boyle was to employ the months as best he could. To his
Manor, set among its autumn orchards, reached by its stone-paved
way between rows of elm-trees, there must have come from week to
week, by friend or messenger or weekly news-sheet, the straggling
tidings of those events that one after the other were hurrying the
Sovereign to his doom. The second civil war had been trampled out;
Cromwell’s great battle of Preston had been fought and Hamilton
taken prisoner, while Robert Boyle was still at “delicious Leeze,”
perfecting his treatise on “Seraphick Love.” And before he left Leeze
there had come the news of the surrender of Colchester to Fairfax,
and the shooting of the two Royalist leaders. In September the
Parliamentary Commissioners were in the Isle of Wight; and through
the shortening days of October and November even Dorsetshire and
its “bye-paths of intelligence” must have been stirred by the doings of
Parliament, the “high and fierce” debate that followed the Army
Remonstrance, and the coup d’état of the King’s abduction from the
Isle of Wight to the melancholy Hurst Castle on the Hampshire
mainland. And then—Fairfax was at Whitehall; the Army was in
possession of London.
December came, and with it the last grim struggle of Parliament
and Army for the disposition of the person of the Sovereign. The
King was brought to Windsor; and, Christmas over, Lords and
Commons were in the last hand-grips. The King’s trial had begun:
the trial of “Charles Stuart, King of England,” in Westminster Hall,
where Strafford had been tried and sentenced seven years before.
How soon did the news of the King’s sentence reach the Manor of
Stalbridge? “This Court doth adjudge that the said Charles Stuart, as
a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer and Public Enemy, shall be put to death
by the severing of his head from his body.”
How soon did Robert Boyle hear the details of those last weeks
and days and hours, with all the little traits, so kingly and so human,
as the unhappy royal delinquent blindly approached his doom? How
soon did some pale-faced horseman bring the news to Stalbridge of
that last scene of all?—the King walking in procession through the
Park, from St. James’s to Whitehall; his stepping out of that
Whitehall window on to the scaffold hung with black; the block and
axe, and men in black masks; the companies of horse and foot
below in the street; and from Charing Cross on the one side to
Westminster Abbey on the other, the close-packed crowds of the
populace, waiting....
“The axe descended, severing the head from the body at one
blow. There was a vast shudder through the mob, and then a
universal groan.”[167]

Lord Broghill had given up his post in Munster under the

Parliament; and he and Lady Broghill and their young children were
living quietly at Marston Bigot. There Broghill amused himself by
writing his Parthenissa; and there, in the spring of 1649, Robert
Boyle paid a visit to his brother and Lady Pegg. He, too, was busy
with his manuscripts, and in pleasant enough correspondence with
the Invisibles in London. But in August he was at Bath. A letter to
Lady Ranelagh, dated from Bath, August 2, “late at night,” was
written in by no means a light-hearted vein. His “native disposition”
had made him shy, he said, of disclosing his afflictions where he
could not expect their redress. He was “too proud to seek a relief in
the being thought to need it.” Moreover, he had been ill again, of “a
quotidian ague.” His manuscript on “Public Spiritedness” had been
laid aside, and his “vulcanian feats” abandoned.
“The melancholy which some have been pleased to misrepresent
to you as the cause of my distempers is certainly much more the
effect of them.” He had only just arrived at Bath, having been carried
there on a litter; and there he was intending to stay till he could leave
it on horseback. The physicians had led him to hope he might be
able to crawl to London before very long.
But the end of August found him back in his laboratory among the
orchards—not very pleasantly occupied in “drawing,” for his own
use, “a quintessence of wormwood.” He had been too much
occupied of late even to write to his sister Ranelagh. There is in his
letter the least little suggestion that the events of this last year—
personal, it may be, as well as political—had kept even this brother
and sister apart; but it was for the time only.
“For Vulcan,” he wrote, “has so transported and bewitched me,
that, as the delights I taste in it make me fancy my laboratory a kind
of Elysium, so as if the threshold of it possessed the quality the
poets ascribed to that Lethe their fictions made men taste of before
their entrance into those seats of bliss, I there forget my standish
and my books, and almost all things, but the unchangeable
resolution I have made of continuing till death, Sister, your
“R. B.”[168]
 CHAPTER XI
HERMETIC THOUGHTS
“A Monarch may command my Life or Fortune but not my opinion: I cannot
command this myself; it arises only from the Nature of the Thing I judge of.”—
Robert Boyle.

“... A general chemical council, not far from Charing Cross, sits often, and hath
so behaved itself hitherto, that things seem now to hasten towards some
settlement.... They are about an universal laboratory, to be erected after such a
manner as may redound, not only to the good of this island, but also to the health
and wealth of all mankind.”—Samuel Hartlib to Robert Boyle, May 1654.

Lord Broghill had laid aside his Parthenissa. The story goes that in
the autumn of 1649 he was meditating, under cover of a course of
treatment for the gout, a visit to Spa, which would take him into the
neighbourhood of the “royal orphan”; and one account, at least, of
how Cromwell intercepted Broghill in London is too picturesque to be
discarded.
Nobody—so runs the story—was in the secret of Broghill’s little
plan except his wife, Lady Pegg, and perhaps his sister Ranelagh, at
whose house, in the Old Mall, Broghill arrived on a certain day in the
dusk, with only four servants in attendance, to take leave of her
before setting out on his journey to Spa.
“My Lord came, and was no sooner housed but heard a voice ask
for my Lord Broghill: he thereupon charged his faithful sister with
treachery; but her protestation of being innocent tempered him.” The
messenger proved to be a “sightly Lieutenant,” sent by the Lord
General to know when and where he might interview Broghill; and,
after a good deal of parleying, a meeting was arranged for early next
morning in St. James’s Garden. Cromwell was there first, with a
group of his officers about him, and Broghill soon learnt that his
correspondence with the “royal orphan” was discovered, and that he
must make his choice. “The dilemma is short,” Cromwell is reported
to have said; “if you go with me in this expedition to reduce the Irish
rebels, you may live, otherwise you certainly die.”[169]
Whatever the details, the fact remains that Broghill accepted
Cromwell’s offer, and returned to Ireland with some sort of
understanding that, while he would serve Cromwell and the cause of
Protestantism under the Parliament, he was not to be required to
fight against any but the Irish.[170] Accordingly, in December 1649,
“dear Broghill” was in Ireland again, and Robert Boyle was writing to
congratulate him on a brilliant series of successes at Kinsale, Cork,
Bandon and Youghal. “And truly that which most endears your
acquisitions to me is that they have cost you so little blood.”[171]
Cromwell had known his man; a veritable son of the old soldier-
statesman, whose name was alive yet in Munster. There could have
been no Rebellion in Ireland, said Cromwell, if every county had
contained an Earl of Cork.
Other members of the Boyle family were back in Ireland. The
eldest brother, Dungarvan, now Earl of Cork, the good-natured head
of the family, and his no less good-natured Countess were living at
Lismore or in Dublin. Frank and “black Betty,” as Robert Boyle had
dubbed the little sister-in-law, were living near Castle Lyons; and
there also was Lady Barrymore, whose “wild boy,” so lately Milton’s
pupil in the Barbican, was now a very young married man. To his
mother’s discomfiture, and sorely against her wishes, young
Barrymore had married another of the fascinating Killigrews; and the
same batch of Irish letters that carried Robert Boyle’s
congratulations to Broghill took also a very wise letter, written from
London, to his eldest sister, Lady Barrymore.[172] He had known
nothing about the marriage till it was over.
“Without pretending to excuse or extenuate what is past, having
minded you that there is a difference betwixt seasonable and just, I
shall venture only to represent to you that the question is not now
whether or no the marriage be a thing fit to be done, but how it is to
be suffered; and that as the best gamesters have not the privilege of
choosing their own cards, but their skill consists in well playing the
game that is dealt them, so the discreetest persons are not allowed
the choice of conditions and events, but their wisdom consists in
making the best of those accidents that Providence is pleased to
dispense them.” And he reminds his sister that, as she has declared
openly for the Royalist party, the mediation of a “crowned
intercessor” in this matter is not to be disregarded. Moreover, some
of her nearest friends, “though they think the match very unhappy,
think it unfit the married pair should be so.”[173]
The letter heralds Robert Boyle’s own arrival in Ireland on a visit to
his sister at Castle Lyons, and to the various family homes in
Munster. His Irish estates were certainly calling for his attention; but
the visit was to be postponed. Broghill’s diplomatic victories were but
the beginning of bloody warfare. Broghill was to serve Cromwell
through the whole of the war with Ireland, in a series of brilliant
engagements. “A’ Broghill! A’ Broghill!” was the battle-cry that led on
his men; and he narrowly escaped with his life in the last
engagement of all—his victory at Knockbrack. Broghill was the man
aimed at. “Kill the fellow in the gold-laced coat!” the Irish soldiers
shouted to each other. But Broghill was not killed, though “my
boldest horse,” he wrote, “being twice wounded, became so fearful
that he was turned to the coach.”[174]
In the summer of 1650 Robert Boyle was still at Stalbridge, writing
on May Day to thank Hartlib for his gossip about Utopia and Breda:
[175] “my inclinations as much concerning me in Republicâ Literariâ
as my fortune can do in Republicâ Anglicanâ. Nor am I idle, though
my thoughts only are not at present useless to the advancement of
learning; for I can sometimes make shift to snatch from the
importunity of my affairs leisure to trace such plans and frame such
models, etc., as, if my Irish fortune will afford me quarries and woods
to draw competent materials from to construct after them, will fit me
to build a pretty house in Athens, where I may live to philosophy and
Mr. Hartlib.”
At this time, Ireland and Athens were equally remote. Was there
an attraction, other than the Invisibles, that still kept Robert Boyle
within reach of London? Many years afterwards—after Robert Boyle
was dead—his old friend John Evelyn, writing about him to Dr.
Wotton said: “Tho’ amongst all his experiments he never made that
of the maried life, yet I have been told he courted a beautifull and
ingenious daughter of Carew,[176] Earl of Monmouth, to which is
owing the birth of his Seraphick Love.”
Was this, indeed, the love-story of Robert Boyle’s life? If so, it was
lived through between the years 1648 and 1650. As early as the cold
January of 1648, at Stalbridge, on the very day he came of age, in
some moment of depression or decision, the boy had made a little
sacrifice to Vulcan: he had resolutely burned most of the verses,
“amorous, merry and devout” that he had written in idle moments,
and laid away “uncommunicated.”[177] Then, when spring came, and
the Stalbridge orchards were white with blossom, he had set off on
his visit to London, and taken up his abode in those rooms in St.
James’s that had been engaged for him by his sister Ranelagh. Early
in June, he was writing to his friend Mrs. Hussey—presumably a
Dorsetshire friend and neighbour—a letter full of political gossip,
written the very day after he had supped with the ladies at Warwick
House. But how does the letter end?
“But, Madam, since I began to write this letter, I had unexpectedly
the happiness of a long conversation with the fair lady, that people
are pleased to think my mistress; and truly, Madam, though I am as
far from being in love as most that are so are from being wise, yet
my haste makes me gladly embrace the old excuse of

‘Then to speak sense

Were an offence’

to extenuate my having hitherto written so dully, and my concluding

so abruptly; for whilst this amorous rapture does possess, I neither
could write sense without being injurious to my passion, nor can any
longer continue to write nonsense, without some violation of that
profound respect which is due to you from, and vowed you by,
Madam, your ladyship’s most faithful and most humble servant.”
 If the fair lady who talked so delightfully, were indeed a “beautifull
and ingenious daughter” of the Earl of Monmouth, Robert Boyle’s
love-story goes into a nutshell. For just a month later came the
Countess of Monmouth’s letter to Lady Ranelagh, which so
confounded the young squire with its civilities, and contained the
invitation to Moore Park. The two young people had already met,
and been attracted to one another: the lady’s name had been
already spoken of among their mutual friends as that of a possible
bride for the young Squire; Lady Ranelagh, at whose house, it is
probable, they had first met, and who was certainly anxious to see
Robyn with a wife of his own at Stalbridge, had been in private
conclave with Lady Monmouth; and the Countess herself, the mother
of a bevy of daughters, was disposed to look kindly on the young
Squire, in spite of his Geneva-bred philosophy, and his not very
robust health. For he was the youngest son of a very great family;
cultured, amiable, virtuous—and likely to be a moderately rich man,
when once his Irish affairs could be put in order. But there was the
Earl of Monmouth to deal with; a Churchman, and passionately
Royalist. There is a sentence in Robyn’s letter to the Countess which
carries with it a suggestion that she, rather than the Earl, was
interested in the young suitor: “If,” he says, of his precious
manuscript, which she had asked him to bring to Moore Park, “it
have either any way diverted your Ladyship, or had the least
influence upon my Lord, I have reached my desires and gone
beyond my hopes.” Did the Earl of Monmouth look unfavourably
upon the young Puritan, or desire to extract from him promises—a
statement about his religious and political convictions—which Robert
Boyle was unwilling to make? And the fair lady herself—what
amount of say had she in the matter? If Robyn had joined the King’s
Army would he have won his Hermione?[178] In his Seraphick Love,
he speaks of Hermione’s “cold usage.” It is quite possible that this
beautiful and ingenious daughter of the Monmouth family may have
merely looked shyly on Robert Boyle, his manuscript treatises and
his little valetudinary ways; but it is also possible that, young as she
was—she can scarcely have been more than seventeen—she was a
girl not only of strong hereditary feelings, brought up a strict
Churchwoman and Royalist, but of spirit and conviction—a character
as firm as Robert Boyle’s itself. The Martyrdom of Theodora and of
Didymus, Robert Boyle’s quaint and powerful prose romance—of
which only the second part was ever published, and that not until
1687—was written in his early youth, and even more than his
Seraphick Love seems as if it may hold the internal evidence of his
own love-story. If Seraphick Love speaks of a woman’s “cold usage”
the story of Theodora and Didymus explains it. The character of
Theodora is worth studying, if this is indeed Robert Boyle’s ideal of
womanhood. It is the character of a woman young and beautiful, who
is not only an uncommonly good talker, but “declares her aversion
for marriage.” Her reasons are given to her friend Irene, who has
“solicited favour for Didymus.”
“Marriage,” says Theodora, “is one of the most important Things of
Life; and though I esteem it a mean Notion of Happiness to think that
one Person can make either of them the Portion of another, yet
Discretion, as well as Sincerity and Chastity, oblige a woman to have
a great deal of Care of that which concerns the Term of her Life; and
a Woman that designs to behave herself like a Wife, ought to take
care in a Choice she can make but once, and not carelessly to enter
on a Voyage where Shipwracks are so frequent, though she be
offered a fine ship to make it in. But since my dear Irene takes this
opportunity to know more of my Thoughts than I should disclose to
any other Person, I must tell her that were I at my own disposal, and
should be willing to make such a Change as I have always been
averse to, Didymus’s Virtues and Services would influence me more
than the Advantages of Titles, Riches or Dignities of his Rivals could.
But dear Irene, the times are such, and my Circumstances too, that it
would be very extravagant for me to engage myself further in the
World. For a Christian cannot think to be happy, whilst the Church is
miserable, and perplexed with outward Calamities.... When I think,”
proceeds Theodora, “of the Church’s Desolation, and that I should
not only be content to be a Spectator, but an Actor in the Tragedy, I
cannot relish the Complements of a Lover, nor hope for
Contentment, except from a Place above the reach of Persecution.
And these Sentiments,” says she, “are warranted by the Apostle,
who Discouraged Women that were free, in much less troublesome
times, from entering into a Marriage State....”
 And which of the bevy of Monmouth daughters was it that would
not marry Robert Boyle?—“a beautifull and ingenious daughter,”
says Evelyn; that is all that is known of her. Anne, the eldest, had in
1648 been some years married to James Hamilton, Earl of
Clanbrassil; and of the six other daughters born to the Earl and
Countess of Monmouth, only three seemed to have reached maturity
—Elizabeth, Mary and Martha—of whom Elizabeth must have been
seventeen in 1648. These three, with the Countess, his widow, were
left in the Earl’s will—dated July 1659—his co-heirs. They were then
all three unmarried; the Earl their father left some of the property
under certain conditions relating to their being, as he quaintly
expressed it, “in my life preferred in marriage or otherwise dead.” It
was not till some years after the Earl of Monmouth’s death that Mary
and Martha married—Mary becoming the second wife of the Earl of
Desmond and Martha the second wife of the Earl of Middleton.
Elizabeth died in December 1676, and was buried a few months
before the Countess of Monmouth, her mother, in Rickmansworth
Church. The inscription on the stone over her grave is not an
ordinary one—
Sacred to the Memory
of yᵉ Right Honᵇˡᵉ yᵉ Lady Elizabeth
Cary one of yᵉ Davghters & Co-heirs
of the Right Honᵇˡᵉ Henry
Lord Cary Baron of Leppington
and Earle of Monmovth. Shee
dyed the 14ᵗʰ day of December in
the year of ovr Lord 1676 & in
the 46ᵗʰ year of her age having
livd all her time vnmarried bvt
now expecting A joyfvll Resvrrecᵗⁱᵒⁿ
and to be joynd to her onely
Spouse and Saviour Jesvs Christ,
lies here interd near the said
Earle her Father.
 Was this the heroine of Boyle’s love story—the Hermione whose
“cold usage” sent him to write his Seraphick Love at Leeze?—the
woman whose views on a Marriage State found their way into his
Martyrdom of Theodora and of Didymus? It will probably never be
known. Whoever the lady, whatever the reason, the affair seems to
have been, in modern parlance, “off” before the end of 1648. And
yet, a whole year later, in December 1649, Robert Boyle was in
London again, scorching his wings at the flame.
“I know Frank will endeavour to persuade you,” he wrote to his
sister Barrymore, “that it is the thing called Love that keeps me
here”; and to Lord Broghill, at the same date, “My next shall give you
an account of my transactions, my studies, and my amours; of the
latter of which black Betty will tell you as many lies as
circumstances; but hope you know too well what she is and whence
she comes not to take all her stories for fictions....”
Some strong attraction, then, in or near London, there undoubtedly
was, and Robert Boyle’s family knew of it; but all their thrusts were
successfully parried in what Sir Henry Wotton had called Robyn’s
“pretty conceits.” In company Robert Boyle was to “prate” with “pure
raillery” of “matrimony and amours.” He was to pity those who “dote
on red and white.” He never could deplore the lover who “by losing
his mistress recovers himself.” He was to declare that he had “never
known the infelicities of love except by others’ sufferings”; to write
exultantly about “this untamed heart.” He had, he said, so seldom
seen a happy marriage, that he did not wonder “our Lawgivers
should make marriage indesolvable to make it lasting.” Marriage was
“a Lottery, in which there are many blanks to one prize.” And yet
Robyn was as sensitive as he was proud. Not in company which
prated of “matrimony and amours,” he had his own ideal. Love to him
remained “the Noblest Passion of the Mind”; and at twenty-one he
acknowledged the existence of “a peculiar unrivaled sort of Love,
which constitutes the Conjugal Affections.” Lady Ranelagh,
frustrated in one attempt, might go on hoping. “If you are in the
west,” she wrote at a later date to this incorrigible brother, “let me
beseech you to present my humble service to my two Lady Bristols,
and wish you would disappoint Frank[179] by bringing a wife of your
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