The cancellation of the high school spring sports season impacted countless student-athletes and their coaches, but they weren’t the only ones in the game who felt a sense of loss.

High school baseball/softball umpires across the state also lost a season of experience — not to mention a little income — and it’s uncertain if they will have work come summer.

“We’ve been through ups and downs, weather issues,” said Larry LaRochelle, spring assignor for the Central Maine Board of Approved Baseball Umpires. “Late starts to spring, but this is the ultimate in not having any baseball at all in spring sports.”

“Everybody is sad about it,” added Steve Salsbury, executive secretary of the Eastern Maine Baseball Umpires Association. “I think we realized some time in early March it probably wasn’t going to happen. We kept meeting and kept prepared anyway, did everything on our end. We have to start (training) early, way before (teams) even start practicing, we start our work, with test reviews and rules reviews. We were all done, basically (with the prep work) by the time they announced they were canceling spring sports.”

Many umpires hold other jobs but rely on their craft for supplemental income. Others rely on officiating to supplement retirement income.

“I’m one of those people,” LaRochelle said. “As an assignor in baseball and soccer — and an official in all three sports, including basketball — this is my sole source of revenue. I was postponing taking Social Security, but with the loss of this income, I decided to start taking it this spring. The revenue is definitely a loss. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get some unemployment from the pandemic unemployment, they’re open to self-employed people for the first time.”

“It’s definitely hit people differently,” added Dan Labrie, an Auburn native and fifth-year umpire with the Central Maine board. “There are some officials, this is their livelihood, between baseball and other sports they do, that’s what they do year-round, officiate. It’s hurting many of them.”

Luckily for those umpires, as Salsbury explained, there may be possible compensation to make up for the lost season.

“A lot of (umpires) are retired/semi-retired,” Salsbury said. “So they use it to supplement whatever retirement income they have. We have a lot of school teachers that supplement their income with officiating, not just baseball but all sports. That makes up about two-thirds of the (Eastern Maine Umpires Association). They don’t do it for the money, necessarily, but it’s cutting into their income. Those that, I assume, could file for unemployment could use that as one of the reasons for getting some partial unemployment compensation. There’s been some discussion amongst that, because we’re considered self-employed independent contractors. Now that group is eligible for unemployment compensation, to some degree.”

Labrie, a facilities and transportation director for MSAD 52, has used his downtime to support healthcare workers. He and family members have sewn more than 3,000 face masks, and donated them to healthcare workers in Maine, as well as New York, New Jersey and Cleveland, Ohio.

“I had been watching the daily updates from (New York governor Andrew Cuomo) on my phone,” Labrie said. “One of the days, he was talking about masks and the need for masks, it kind of got me thinking ‘That might be something I can do.’ I kind of put it on the back burner in my mind for the moment. When my wife (Caroline Labrie) got home from work that night, she had mentioned to me about Jo-Ann’s Fabric had a social media post out that they were giving away fabric to make 10 masks, with the hopes you bring them back and they were going to take them to the hospital. As soon as she said that, that’s when it clicked for me that, ‘Ok, that’s my sign, we’re going all in on this.'”

Labrie bought a sewing machine and the necessary supplies at Wal-Mart, and received a quick tutorial from his mother, Sherry Labrie, on how to sew. According to Dan Labrie, his first mask took 45 minutes to put together. He said as long as he has the fabric and elastic for the ear pieces ready, he can now put together a mask in three minutes. The Labries have received donated fabric and elastic from Terry Maher of Bags from Mars, a stitching company in Lewiston.

The Labries have also made masks — made of donated, unused operational dress uniforms — for members of the U.S. Coast Guard in Portland. Dan Labrie said he spends about seven hours a day sewing masks.

“I remind myself each week, ‘Look, even if I make one mask a week, that’s one more mask somebody going to the hospital is going to wear,” Labrie said. “This is all benefitting the doctors and nurses and people showing up to the hospitals. If they don’t have masks, they need something.”

While the spring sports season is gone, LaRochelle said there has been some discussion about Babe Ruth leagues opening up in the summer, as well as other amateur competition. LaRochelle hopes that time can be spent training the five new members of the CMBABU, who would have normally been set by the high school season.

“Typically, we use the spring season to have them work with other umpires,” LaRochelle said. “In the summer there’s usually just one umpire (per game). Babe Ruth games, there’s one umpire for the most part. We do some Cal Ripken games as well, and that’s usually just one umpire. They’ve hung in there, up to this point at least, and we’re going to try to get them — maybe there’s a play day that some league will have — that we can get them out to, get some work… I’m hoping that those people that have come in stick with it and get some umpiring in this summer. If they don’t get in any umpiring this summer, who knows if they’ll come back next year or not.”

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