Managers had better bring their best logic and argumentative skills if they want to discuss a call with umpire Dan Bellino.
For this time the arbiter is actually an arbiter.
Bellino who worked first base last night as the Blue Jays hosted the Tampa Bay Rays at the Rogers Centre has a law degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago.
“Actually, it’s The John Marshall Law school, they’re sticky about that,” Bellino said sitting in the umpire’s room at the Rogers Centre.
“Aha,” we thought aloud, “has Mike Port of Major League Baseball assigned Bellino to Cowboy Joe West’s crew to keep West out of trouble?”
“Naw,” West said, “Rob Drake is on vacation.”
Bellino worked for the law firm of Morici, Figlioli and Associates and served as an aide for a federal judge Charles P. Kocoras in the Northern district of Illinois earning $35,000 US.
“If I’d stayed with the judge for a few years it would have led to a lucrative career,” Bellino said.
In 2003, Bellino attended Harry Wendelstedt’s umpiring school in Daytona Beach, Fla., finding umpiring as a fluke. The phone rang in his dorm for his missing roommate who was supposed to ump a high school game in Chicago. Bellino, a basketball referee at the time, agreed to fill in for the $50.
After attending ump school with 150 others — 25 were offered jobs — he made his decision: He wanted to be a umpire, not a lawyer.
“My father told me: ‘As long as you finish law school you can do anything,’ ” Bellino said. “Katie, now my wife, well ... she was a little surprised. I knew basketball better, but once I was exposed to baseball I liked it’s structure better.”
He gave up the $35,000-a-year job to earn $1,800 a month in the three-month class-A New York-Penn League in 2003.
When minor league umpires went on strike in 2005, Bellino returned home and passed the bar exam.
This season he’s earning $2,900 a month in his fourth year of triple-A and guesses he has worked 50 games since 2009, earning a pro-rated “daily rate” of a first-year staffer, roughly $492 per day.
Bellino met West years ago in Daytona when both were instructing at Wendelstedt’s school.
http://www.torontosun.com/sports/column ... 21321.html
Just a nice little story about this guy becoming an Umpire.
