Behind the plate: The life of a Bay Area umpire
Wayne Yoshitomi knew only English and his grandfather mostly spoke Japanese, but they didn’t need to talk on summer nights in the mid-1960s when the San Francisco Giants were playing. At the kitchen table or in the backyard of their family’s Richmond neighborhood flat, 6-year-old Yoshitomi and his grandpa would tune in a Zenith transistor radio. Shigeo Ogawa would play solitaire as Russ Hodges narrated the game, yelling “Bye Bye Baby!” to call a home run. Their shared love of baseball is the only strong memory Yoshitomi has of his grandfather, who passed away in the 1980s. Baseball has since taken Yoshitomi around the country, meeting others who share his…
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