When the sixth inning began Tuesday night and the game was official, the fans at Coors Field in Denver rose and gave the home-plate umpire a standing ovation, which is about as common as sending a thank-you card to the Internal Revenue Service.
The umpire, Joe West, was working his 5,000th major league game and he told the Post-Dispatch, “It was a very humbling experience.”
And, for those of us who have known, for 40 years, the brash “Singing Cowboy,” who has cut two country albums and appeared with Leslie Nielsen in one of the “Naked Gun” movies, humility is not a word commonly associated with West.