Brothers David and Thom Sutton express their love for baseball as umpires

David Sutton and his brother, Thom, grew up in a baseball family and both fell in love with the game early.

At first, this love led the brothers to the field, where they played the game.

But their love initially proved to be, well, unrequited.

“I just could not play the game at the level that I wanted to,” David explained. “So I became an umpire. I could still be part of the game and I enjoyed it.

“You know, when you watch a baseball game there are really two games being played on the field at the same time. There’s the game of baseball, and there’s the game the umpires are playing.”

With a combined 75 years of experience calling balls and strikes, the brothers have had a long, successful love affair with the game.

Last month, it reached what David Sutton, 67, calls “the pinnacle.”

The brothers were invited to umpire at the USSSA-sponsored International World Series invitational youth baseball tournament in Riverside, California.

“These are called Big League Dream tournaments, and USSSA is a big-tme big deal,” Sutton explained. “They’re United States Specialty Sports Association, and they are a multimillion-dollar operation. They build these sports complexes and set up each field as a replica of a big-league park so the kids feel they’re playing at Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium. We umpired on the Polo Grounds replica.

“We played a game in front of a packed house in Yankee Stadium. I walked out to check out the fans in the bleachers and discovered they’re just painted on. But still, it felt pretty real.”

Big League Dream tournaments draw teams from around the world and the Riverside event featured teams that already had won their respective state tournaments to qualify.

“These are elite teams in each age group, and they wanted to make sure they had umpires who were equal to the challenge. There were several sent home early because they just weren’t good enough.”

Sutton said he talked to a number of players throughout the tournament.

“I found out that these kids pay $800 to $1,000 each to play on these elite teams,” he said. “It’s not cheap.”

The Sutton brothers got their invitation through networking.

“Thom and I went to professional umpires school in Springfield, Missouri, a couple years ago and the head of umpires for the tournament was one of the instructors there,” David Sutton explained. “It was a real honor to be invited.”

The tournament came with a unique set of challenges.

For one, the language barrier.

“There were teams from all over,” he said. “I told (tournament officials) that my Spanish is only so-so, and I don’t speak Japanese at all. I told them that I do speak Canadian, however. But once you get on the field, ‘Ball’ and ‘Strike’ are pretty universal.”

The weather was an even bigger challenge.

“The temperature on the field during the tournament reached 115, 117 and 119 degrees. We drank a lot of fluids – six, seven, eight bottles of water a game. They lost a couple umpires during the tournament to heat stroke and they’d take us into the tent and give us IV fluids.

“I wasn’t too worried about Thom. He’s 68, but he works out every day. There were a couple times I worried about him being able to get into the right position to make the call, but you know what? Every time he’d get there and have just the right angle to get it right.”

The brothers worked together throughout the tournament, which employed two-man umpiring mechanics until the finals.

“That made it extra special, being able to work together,” Sutton said. “We’ve worked so many games together that we just know what each other are thinking on the field.”

Neither is thinking about quitting any time soon.

“When you umpire, you can easily do 60-70 games a summer and easily do 100,” Sutton explained. “The summer after we went to professional umpire school, Thom and I did 130 games.”

They are, however, thinking about taking their umpiring act on the road.

“We were invited to umpire another tournament while we were in Riverside,” he said. “This one would have been in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. But it would have meant driving home and turning around and driving to South Carolina. We had to decline that one, but we’ve talked about traveling around and umpiring tournaments around the West Coast. I think it would be fun and we’d get a chance to see some major league and top minor league ballparks while we do it.”