She found her calling after not getting the call

Pam Postema shed the machismo.

She banished the bluster.

“I don’t need all that ego,” says the Ohio native who fell short in her well-chronicled attempt to become major league baseball’s first female umpire, settled a sexual-discrimination lawsuit out of court, wrote a 1992 book about her experience and never looked back. “You had to go out there and be the one. Now I don’t use my ego when I think and talk. I try to use my heart. I don’t need an ego.

“That’s probably the thing I like best about not umpiring.”

The former umpire is 53, single and living in Henderson, Nev. After coming closer to reaching the majors than anyone else of her gender, she is a developmental support technician in a facility for mentally disabled adults.

In other words, the woman who once called major league spring training games and whose image graced the cover of Sports Illustrated -- “The Lady Is An Ump,” the headline declared -- cares for people incapable of caring for themselves.

It’s a long way from the majors, but that’s OK with her.

“I love taking care of these people,” says Postema, whose own life experiences led her into healthcare. “These people are so wonderful and so special.”

Postema spent most of the last 12 years tending to the needs of her failing parents -- her father died in 2002, her mother last month -- and according to a job description posted by the State of Nevada Dept. of Personnel, employees in the former umpire’s current position “may be exposed to verbal and physical assaults,” an ironic description considering Postema’s background.

But despite its drawbacks, Postema adored umpiring too.

Though the catcalls could be hurtful, the taunts vicious and the practical jokes sexist and juvenile -- she once found a frying pan atop home plate -- Postema says, “It was fun and, man, I loved doing it. When you’re behind the plate, that’s the greatest. I could work the plate, man. I’d get in a zone and it was fun.”

Postema spent 13 years steadily moving through the minor leagues after finishing high in her class of 130 at the Al Somers Umpire School in Daytona Beach, Fla., where Somers’ initial reluctance in accepting her only strengthened her resolve.

Her last six seasons were spent in triple A, the last rung before the majors, but in 1989 she was released from her contract by the Triple-A Alliance.

Her dream of reaching the majors shattered, Postema filed her sexual-discrimination lawsuit and blew off steam in her book, “You’ve Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League: My Life As an Umpire.” Addressing the sexism she believed responsible for dooming her attempt to find a place in the sport’s all-male domain, she wrote in her memoir, “Don’t give me that line, ‘Baseball is America’s game.’ To me, baseball is the exact opposite of what America stands for.”

In the years since, Postema has held a variety of jobs -- welder, factory worker, delivery truck driver -- but she insists she is not bitter.

“I don’t know if I was angry, even,” says Postema, who does find it sadly remarkable that no woman has cracked baseball’s glass ceiling in an era when women are presidential candidates, senators, firefighters, astronauts -- even NBA referees. “I wouldn’t give back a second of all the time I spent in baseball. I don’t have any animosity toward anybody. I just wrote a book about what I thought happened. If I sounded mad, I wasn’t. I’m not mad. I didn’t attain my goal, but so what?

“I don’t think it was right, but there were a lot of umpires as good as me who didn’t make it, so what are you going to do? You just go on with life.”

Criticized for not mobilizing women’s rights groups in her bid, Postema agrees that failing to do so may have been a mistake. But she also notes, “It could have been a different outcome, but then that wouldn’t have been me. That was my flaw, I guess, not wanting anyone to help me. I was going to do it on my own.”

At 5 feet 8 and 145 pounds, she’s “in fighting weight,” she says, and stays in shape by running. “I can outrun any umpire in the big leagues right now,” she says, laughing, “but that ain’t saying much because they’re all huge.”

She’s less antagonistic, she says, than when she was umpiring.

Umpiring “made me always on guard,” Postema says. “You were always tough. I drank and I swore. I didn’t think anything about it. I didn’t realize it made me sound so mean and hard, but I started to notice that people would cringe and I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t need to cuss to get my point across.”

Though she describes herself as a sports fan, Postema says she rarely watches the game that used to consume her life. But she has kept an eye on Ria Cortesio, professional baseball’s only female umpire.

“She reminds me a lot of me,” Postema says of the minor league umpire who in March became the first woman since Postema to call a major league spring training game. “I think she’s great. I think she can do it. She’s got the attitude.

“I hope she can get into the majors. It’d be cool. It’s time.”

jerome.crowe@latimes.com