It isn’t often that my personal baseball experience intersects with a national sports story in any significant way.  In the April 12, Washington Post, Scott Allen wrote about the 50^th anniversary of Emmett Ashford breaking baseball’s color barrier as an umpire.  Almost 20 years after Jackie Robinson played that historic game as a Brooklyn Dodger, Emmett Ashford became the first African-American to umpire a regular season MLB game.

In 1974, playing for Biola College, I was privileged to have played in a game at Pepperdine University umpired by the same Emmett Ashford. The details of the contest are not clear in my mind, but it was probably my closest connection to playing in the big leagues.  It is no wonder I recall little about the game; Biola lost 13-2.  However, I will remember Ashford as someone who having reached the pinnacle of his profession still loved the game of baseball enough to umpire a rather insignificant college game.  It took some research to find the score of that game, but the autograph I have from Emmet Ashford can still be found in one of my two boxes of baseball memorabilia.   Those boxes hold many great memories and that afternoon with Emmet Ashford calling balls and strikes will always be an important part of that rich collection.