19-year-old umpire thinks he made the right call in career choice

JUPITER, Fla. — It’s not quite 10 on a hot and sticky Saturday morning when Ryan Powers strides onto a remote back field at a minor league training complex.

Carrying a protective titanium mask that reeks from previous sweat-soaked bouts with the punishing South Florida weather, he wears bulky pads beneath his uniform of gray slacks and a black polo shirt.

Powers is an umpire. At 19, the second-youngest in professional baseball.

Behind the plate for the next two hours and 15 minutes, he will squat low more than 200 times, render decisions on nearly as many pitches, and try to maintain order among teams of newly minted Major League Baseball prospects.

For his trouble, he will be paid $65, plus expenses — about half of what he used to make for umpiring junior college games near his mother’s home in Riverside.

Yet he is living his dream.

“Every day I wake up thankful, just knowing that I’m a professional,” he says. “You feel accomplished. Not that I’m anywhere close to where I want to be. But it’s the first step. I do not take it for granted. Ever.”

Where Powers wants to be is the major leagues — the same place all the players, managers and coaches in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League want to be.

To a man, they face long odds. None longer than Powers.

Each year, there are 1,200 players and about 300 managers and coaches on major league rosters. There are fewer than 100 major league umpires.

Turnover is so rare that during the first seven years of George W. Bush’s presidency, there were as many openings for Supreme Court justices — two — as there were for big-league umpires.

“Somebody has to go and you have to be ready to go right up,” Powers says. “You have to be the No. 1 guy. It’s about timing and luck.”

And paying your dues.

Becoming an umpire wasn’t always Powers’ career goal. He played baseball his first three years at Martin Luther King High in Riverside, and was a defensive back and linebacker on the football team.

“I wanted to be on TV, either on Sundays playing football or I wanted to be on TV playing baseball,” Powers says. His high school coaches knew there was little chance of either happening.

Umpiring was different. It was more about brains than brawn; about control and presence more than quickness and coordination. “I thought it was easy,” Powers says. He was working junior college games while still attending high school.

Most big-league players prove themselves in lengthy apprenticeships, and it’s no different for umpires. Powers’ path began with a five-week winter boot camp in Florida.

Away from home and on his own for the first time, Powers almost washed out early. He called his mother after three days to say he was quitting.

“I do not want to do this,” he told her. “It’s too hard.”

At that point, he would not have been missed. Instructors said he had developed a number of bad habits while working unsupervised in Southern California. Basic things eluded him, such as remembering to grasp his protective mask with his left hand so his right hand was free to immediately signal calls.

“It came down to the wire with him,” says John Libka, one of the instructors. “He had a good last couple of days there.”

At the graduation ceremony for the 180 students, Powers was among 27 who received a diploma with the notation “honor student.” That meant he had qualified for a 12-day spring evaluation by the Professional Baseball Umpire Corp. (PBUC), which decides who goes on to the pros and who goes back to the bush leagues.

When he made that cut, he was sent to work in a summer league for college players, a finishing school for umpires awaiting assignments in the minor leagues.

The Coastal Plains League, with teams across the Carolinas and Virginia, wasn’t a bad starting point. The games were played in the cool of the evening in spacious stadiums before crowds in the thousands.

Then came a promotion, though in many ways it didn’t feel like one. In June, Powers was assigned to the Gulf Coast League, the lowest level of competition affiliated with Major League Baseball.

Room 205 of the Juno Beach Holiday Inn Express is in such disarray the maids aren’t sure what’s trash and what’s treasure.

Three empty pizza boxes have been stacked for days on a round table and the remnants of a six-pack of beer sit near the television. Clothes are strewn everywhere because it’s moving day.

The two-man umpire crews in the Gulf Coast League work six days from one location and share a hotel room. On their day off, they pack up and drive to the next assignment. Rarely are they separated.

“Even if you love the guy, you still get sick of being married to him for 2 1/2 months,” says Libka, the umpire instructor. “You do everything together.”

That includes laundry. The players have clubhouse attendants who wash their clothes, but Powers and his 22-year-old partner, Matt Carlyon, do their own. That means piling sweat-soaked uniforms in the back of a rental car and driving back to their hotel and a coin-operated washing machine.

“It definitely gets a little smelly,” says Powers, explaining the four pine-tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror of their compact sedan. “I’ve spent more money on laundry this year then I probably have on food.”

Powers and Carlyon could be mistaken for seminary students. Both have short hair and are clean-shaven. They dress conservatively in khaki slacks and polo shirts because they must adhere to an umpire’s dress code that prohibits T-shirts, jeans, shorts and sandals.

About an hour before a noon game at the New York Mets’ minor league complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Powers steers the car into a parking lot near a row of batting cages and walks toward a windowless concrete-block clubhouse not much bigger than a gas station restroom.

Above a mini fridge — empty save for two bottles of water and two cans of soda — a small air conditioner struggles to keep the room cool while Powers and Carlyon quickly change into their uniforms. Then it’s time to get the baseballs ready.

New balls are so bright and slick the players call them pearls. Unscuffed, they can be slippery and hard to throw, though. So before games the balls are broken in with Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, which comes in plastic jars similar to those that contain face cream.

In the big leagues, clubhouse attendants perform this task. In the low minors, it’s left to the umpires. Powers and Carlyon dip their fingers into the stuff and rub until the balls have a tea-colored stain.

When the game starts, Powers is working the bases, which has its own set of challenges in a two-man crew half the size of the units that work MLB games.

On a base hit to the outfield, he sprints to the center of the diamond, tracking the ball with his eyes and pivoting to check on a base runner.

Concentration is also important. Unlike the plate umpire, who makes a decision nearly every pitch, a base umpire can go several innings without making anything but an obvious call.

Powers says he sings in his head — today it’s Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” — to keep mentally sharp, though he can’t explain how the habit started or why it works.

“I find myself thinking about other things not related to baseball while I am working, and singing is the one thing I can do out there and still stay focused,” he says. “I don’t sing all the time. Only when things are being dragged out, or it’s a long inning.”

Tow-haired and baby-faced, Powers looks every bit as young as he is, so establishing his credibility and authority with coaches has been a priority. Many of them have been in professional baseball longer than the umpire has been alive.

During one unusually tense game, Mets Coach Josh Towers became so enraged by a call that he charged Powers, who immediately ejected him. But Powers didn’t make a show of it, and recalling the run-in later, Towers, a former major league pitcher, praised the rookie umpire.

“I have a very, very strong demeanor on the field, and I’m very confident,” says Powers, who received high marks for his field presence from umpire evaluators. “I do my job correctly because I know what correct is.”

For the players, most of whom are teenagers themselves, Powers’ age is not an issue.

In one late-season game, Powers was behind the plate when Marlins prospect Ron Miller stepped into the batter’s box, glanced back at the umpire, then backed out, surprised to see a familiar face. He had played against Powers in high school.

Powers, equally startled, said hello — then called Miller out on strikes three pitches later.

Hours before he will be the plate umpire for a noon game between the Marlins and Cardinals, Powers downs breakfast — a 16-ounce energy drink — on the drive to the ballpark.

He may skimp on his meals, but he clearly takes his work seriously.

“I see myself as the professional integrity of the game on the field,” Powers says. “The managers are representing their teams. The players are representing themselves. You’re the only thing that’s representing professional baseball and trying to hold the integrity of the game together.”

On the field, he looks fit and trim even in protective padding, and when the game starts Powers operates by the book. He maintains good posture and his calls are made without hesitation in a loud, authoritative voice. His mechanics — the arm and hand gestures umpires make to indicate balls and strikes, safe or out — are crisp and uncomplicated.

Libka, who was ready to bounce Powers out of umpire school last winter, arrives after a few innings, climbs to the top of tiny bleachers and says he’s impressed by how far his former student has come.

“He looks pretty solid,” the instructor says. “His stance looks good. He does have a good presence. He looks good in uniform. That stuff goes a long way. You can’t really teach that.”

Libka, 26, provides an example of the tough road Powers has ahead. In only his fourth year in professional baseball, he has mastered his craft well enough to become an instructor. Yet he still works games in the low minors — the Class-A Florida State League.

The higher an umpire climbs, the slower the progression. More than half the 94 umpires who worked in the major leagues this season have been there at least 14 years —- 21 of them at least two decades.

For Powers, patience isn’t so much a virtue as it is a job requirement.

That makes Powers’ age an advantage. As is his attitude.

“I almost see it as having fun every day,” the teenager says of umpiring. “When you have love for a game, it makes it a lot easier.”

Kevin.baxter@latimes.com

Twitter: @kbaxter11