DUNEDIN, Fla. — After realizing he would never be a professional athlete, Vic Carapazza is in his 14th season as a Major League Baseball umpire.
“The only other thing to be part of this game on the field besides playing is umpiring,” Carapazza said.
The Countryside High School (Clearwater) graduate is one of only three MLB umpires to be promoted to crew chief status for this season.
“To me, it’s the pinnacle of this career,” he said. “To be able to go out and lead three other guys on the field is pretty neat. It comes with a lot of responsibility, but I wouldn’t be there without the crew mates or what my colleagues taught me as I’ve come up through the ranks.”
It was a long journey to get to this point.
He played one season at Hillsborough Community College before joining the United States Air Force. After his service, he enrolled at the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School in 2003.
He called minor-league games for seven years before being promoted to “The Show."
“Go through A-ball, go through Double-A, Triple-A, and all those experiences you go through, what works, what doesn’t work,” he said. “How to handle situations. How to handle people booing you and all that."
It’s heated confrontations with managers, coaches or players that can make or break an umpire.
“The biggest blessing that I had was that having military service helped me with those situations when the tension gets really high,” Carapazza said. “My job is to de-escalate. Not escalate. That’s what I try to do.”
For Carapazza, it’s the human element that’s the beauty of the game.
“The pressure that they have today and back then even, it’s a lot of pressure,” Carapazza said. “What helps me through it is my faith and sometimes I even mess with these guys out here, I say ‘Listen, I’m not perfect.’ He is the only one who I know is perfect. He died for me. I don’t have to be perfect. We strive to be perfect. When we miss a play or a pitch, it stings.
“We get every play, video, dissect it, learn from it…For me, I want to know if I was in the right spot. Did I move? Did I get to where I wanted to be? Sometimes, you just miss the play. It stinks.”
When spring training is over, Carapazza will be working MLB games all over the country. However, he’ll only work one series in Tampa this season.
