A look behind the mask.(Baseball)(Book Review)

I love a good read. Oprah's Book Club? All over it. The Da Vinci Code? Devoured it. But here's a "summer read" I actually took to the beach one day: the 2004 Major League Baseball Umpire Media Guide. It would give Moneyball a run for its money if ever made available in stores.

I know, that's a stretch. It takes a special kind of baseball fan--all right, geek--to immerse oneself in 92 pages of umpire minutiae. Ich bin ein geek. Where else can one discover such tasty mental morsels as:

* Which umpire supervisor recently was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame? (Jim McKean.)

* The total number of "squats" by home plate umpires last year (617,294) and who squatted the most? (Jeff Nelson, 10,471 times.)

As an information junkie, I can't thank the MLB public relations department enough for publishing this, the most perfect volume since The Great Gatsby. More random vittles to fire down your throat:

* Five umpire uniform numbers have been retired: I for "The Old Arbitrator," Bill Klein; 2 for Nick Bremigan and Jocko Conlan, who once said of umpiring: "You've got to have thick skin and a strong heart."; 3 for 33-year veteran Al Barlick; 9 for Bill Kunkel, whose son Jeff was chosen ahead of Roger Clemens in the 1983 draft, and 16 for Lou DiMuro, who was killed crossing the street after working a game in Arlington, Texas, in 1982.

* There is a directive regarding the rosin bag pitchers have on the mound, to ...