I’ll sample the occasional NBA game, especially if Stephen Curry or LeBron James are playing. Preferably against each other.

And I watch every Buffalo Bills game, almost always alone. Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but I have my reasons.

It began when I spent years in the near-silent Buffalo Bills press box, then continued when working Sunday afternoons at the OBSERVER editing and paginating the Monday paper.

Alone, I can vent my anger, spewing the occasional profanities. Or celebrate, spewing different profanities while doing what some would call a dance. No one, not even family members, should hear or see that. Ever.

Bill Hammond

But this is about baseball. I played five seasons in Little League and was hooked on the sport.

A congenital spine condition kept me off the football field and the best part of my game in basketball was rebounding. Small hands and slow feet did me no favors.

Soccer and hockey were foreign sports growing up. I was a poor swimmer. There were no outdoorsmen anywhere on my family tree. Golf and tennis were expensive and frustrating, in that order. Auto racing seemed and still seems pointless. And dangerous.

Over five decades on baseball and softball fields as a player and coach, I was only ordered to leave the premises twice. I loved the game so much that the thought of being deprived of playing was more than enough to keep me on my best behavior.

My first ejection came while playing American Legion ball in the summer of 1968 on the Dunkirk High School Field.

Long before its 21st century upgrade, the DHS field was downright dangerous. Just to the left of home plate, where the backstop fence ended, was a steep 5-foot gravelly drop-off into the out-of-play area. It was marked with a white chalk line on game day.

See HAMMOND, Page C2

During what would turn out to be my final at-bat of the game, I fouled off a pitch that skied right above that area.

The catcher backed up toward the embankment and then suddenly and violently slid down it. Remarkably, with his chin now hovering over the chalk, he lunged for the ball and caught it just inside the white line.

It was as good a defensive play as I’d ever seen, but clearly the catcher was in a dead-ball area. Had he left his feet while inbounds, caught the ball and then landed out of play, it would have been a legal catch.

But this was different. Both feet were out of play when he made the catch. The correct ruling should have been “foul ball.”

You can imagine my dismay when the home-plate umpire ruled the catch legal and called me “out.”

Knowing the out-of-play rule thanks to a class for junior umpires I aced in a previous spring, I had a few things to say. Loudly.

I made my case forcibly, pointing out by rule that the umpire was wrong. I said we would win our soon-to-be-filed protest and he would have to return and work the game for free.

With that zinger, I turned and walked away. I had made my point without using the magic word.

The umpire began to respond, but I wasn’t listening. I was certain the rule book would back me up once I fetched it from the bench. There were no dugouts back then. Told you it was dangerous.

Well, the ump took off after me at a quick pace, then ordered me to stop.

I did what I was told, if in retrospect, perhaps a bit too abruptly. I stopped, he didn’t. He ran right into me. Face to back. He was pretty short so it was more like face to upper butt.

When all the laughter stopped, he threw me out of the game, chiefly for making illegal contact with an umpire.

I don’t know if it was the laughter or that he had been exposed as incompetent, but he clearly was wrong again. He ran into me.

By now, my enraged dad arrived at the scene of the back-to-back crimes from his third-base coaching box. He was ejected almost immediately for frequent and colorful use of the magic word.

Dad was familiar with this guy’s sub-par judgment. He had no problem ripping the ump a new one.

We won the game, so our protest was dismissed. But things didn’t end there.

Months later, after our season ended in the WNY championship game in Gowanda, my dad told me the umpire had contacted the WNY American Legion Baseball League commissioner with a demand. He wanted my father and I permanently banned from Legion ball. A little harsh, right?

An investigation was conducted and when the game’s other umpire and the opposing head coach were interviewed, their testimony vindicated the Hammonds.

I consciously avoided working with that vindictive ump when I joined our county’s umpire association. He and I rarely spoke and that was totally fine with me.

When he passed away years later, I got a phone call from a fellow media member who told me of a terrible but funny printing mistake.

The top line of the ump’s obituary featured his name and age. The second should have read, “Spent 50 years calling balls and strikes.”

But karma had intervened. A production error allegedly caused it to read instead, “Spent 50 years calling balls strikes.”

Fake news or fate news, you decide.

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DO YOU have a favorite, funny, weird, best or worst memory of amateur sports refereeing, playing or spectating? Drop me a line at mandpp@hotmail.com and let’s reminisce.

Bill Hammond is a former EVENING OBSERVER sports editor.