Keeping an eye on the ball

For the past half-century, Gary Broadbent has been a Technicolor man living a black and blue life.

Since 1959, when he first officially donned a black-and-white referee jersey as a 19-year-old former basketball player, Broadbent has been a game official. He added the baseball umpire’s blue to his wardrobe a few years later and followed that with a softball uniform and another for volleyball.

The same year fans flocked to movie houses to see Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot,” Broadbent decided he liked life in the hot seat, armed with a whistle and a rulebook.

“I love it,” he said. “Always have. I love the game, whether we’re talking about baseball or basketball or volleyball.

“I think if you’re going to be successful as an official, you have to know the game and I think you have to have played the game. For me, this is my way of giving something back.”

It all started on the court.

“I played basketball when I was in high school in Mead, back when Mead was still a little school,” Broadbent explained. “Our coach got sick and took a leave of absence. I found out later that the guy that took over while he was gone was a basketball official, but it made sense. Whenever we would scrimmage together, he would have us officiate ourselves. That’s pretty much where I got started.”

The love of baseball started years earlier, he said.

“When I was a kid, you listened to baseball games on the radio,” he explained. “That was your entertainment. I remember listening to games with the Yankees and the Dodgers back when they were still in Brooklyn. In those days, you played baseball all summer long. You’d get some kids together, grab a couple baseballs and a bat and you’d play baseball all day long.

“That’s where my love of the game comes from. Oddly enough, though, I never played baseball in high school – I was a track kid.”

There were times when he shelved umpiring softball because he was busy playing. Wear and tear on a knee and on his throwing shoulder (“I don’t have any rotator cuff left,” he laughs) curtailed his time as a player, but he could always call balls and strikes.

“When I started out, I was doing Catholic school games,” Broadbent said. “In those days we were doing one-man mechanics and we were paid two dollars per game.”

In 50 years behind the plate or behind the whistle, Broadbent has refereed, umpired or officiated more games than he can count. There have been four national softball tournaments and a trove of elite basketball tournaments. State tournaments. Varsity games. Junior varsity games. Pony League games. Parochial school games for the Knights of Columbus all the way up to the occasional college games.

“I like working with young kids,” he confesses. “I always have. I’ve done a lot of high school games over the years and I’ve done games for Whitworth and Gonzaga and the community colleges. I had opportunities to go on and do college games, but by then I had a family and I didn’t want to get into all that travel.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for the small schools. I love the State B basketball tournament and love doing those kinds of games.”

Small school baseball games, in particular, can be a challenge.

“With the small schools, there’s so much travel involved for those games and so little flexibility in the schedule that you really have to try to get those games in,” he said. “You end up doing games in the snow and the rain that you might otherwise want to postpone.”

These days, as umpire-in-chief for Spokane Pony Baseball, Broadbent is on the lookout for more people with an eye for the strike zone and who are willing to don a chest protector.

“You always need more umpires and referees,” he said. “There are a lot of games that need to be covered and you always have to have fresh blood coming in to replace the people you lose and who retire.

“I’m always on the lookout for people I can recruit. I’ve recruited high school players to come back and do youth baseball games and they’re very good. I found one that I think has a bright future, even a major league future one day, but he stopped umpiring for a couple years so he could keep playing high school baseball. Thankfully, he’s coming back this year.”

As the start of the 2009 season looms, Broadbent has stepped up his search.

“We have a lot of games and we’re going to need more people to do the job,” he said.

If a potential umpire or referee needs any proof about how the game can keep you young, one need only look at Broadbent. At 69, he still gets up and down the court with the best of them and is in no hurry to hang up his whistle or his chest protector.

“Someone once did a study that showed that a basketball official will run between five and seven miles during a game,” he said. “It keeps you in shape. I think it’s kept me young.”