Even baseball stops for this

   By Buck Lanier

   The game comes first ... always.

   Well, almost always.

   There are moments in human history that just cannot be ignored, and our games take a back seat to events that transcend our everyday lives.

   Sept. 11, 2001, was one of those days. So was Dec. 7, 1941. Tragedy trumped balls and strikes.

   There was also one day when the human spirit shone so bright that it was the duty of every American to bear witness. And for those of us umpiring games that day, the figurative seventh-inning stretch had to come early.

   The date was July 20, 1969. For those of us who came of age in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, it's remembered as the day man conquered the last frontier, when Neil Armstrong left his indelible footprint on the moon.

   I had keenly been following the progress of the Apollo mission for several days, but as fate would have it, I was scheduled to umpire a game in the Western Softball Conference between the Lakewood Jets and the East Los Angeles Braves in South Gate.

   I was working as a newspaperman, and earlier in the day I followed the mission from the Associated Press wire reports. But duty called, and so I headed 10 miles north to the game site.

   I took a portable radio to listen to during the game.

   I gave a local kid $1 to listen for the moment when Armstrong was about to step down onto the surface: Working the plate, I thought the game was going well even though I had one ear cocked to the goings-on in space.

   We were in the thick of a close contest in the fourth inning when the boy hollered ``It's about time'' while waving my radio at me.

   That was my cue. I called, ``Time!,'' and called the managers together. I told them, ``The game is suspended until after Armstrong steps down on the moon.''

   The East Los Angeles manager Fregozo Greco said, ``OK,'' but the Lakewood manager grumbled, ``It's a waste of time.'' I remained adamant and that's when the Lakewood manager Howie Juarez shouted, ``Get your f------ head out of the sky and pay attention to the game.

   I don't mind telling you the moon rocket wasn't the only thing that was launched.

   Out went the manager from the game and the site. Officially he was ejected for ``flagrant stupidity.''

   Base Umpire Bill Reinal, the park kid, about 20 ballplayers and I huddled around my little radio and heard these stirring words ... ``That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.''

   We had made it to the moon.

   And that's all I really remember from that day. And really, what else matters? The game continued in fine fashion and the better team, the Jets, won 3-1.

   I later found out that while I was calling time in South Gate, 400 miles to the north of us the plate umpire for the major league game between San Francisco and Los Angeles stopped the game and the PA announcer turned the sound system on to the broadcast.

   They paused for 11" minutes before the incomparable Vin Scully picked up the radio broadcast with the immortal words, ``And now, back on Earth ...''

   Through six decades of officiating, I've worked thousands of contests and because the games are important, I've given my all in every single one of them.

   Well, almost every one of them.

   Buck Lanier of Long Beach is a retired Press-Telegram reporter whose long and varied career included covering the Vietnam War for the paper. His sports officiating career spans baseball, softball and basketball dating back 35 years. This column originally appeared in Referee Magazine in May 2006.