You may have seen the coverage of the manager of the minor league Asheville Tourists baseball team going absolutely berserk over a disputed call. I encourage you to watch the video; it's an amazing spectacle. During his argument with the umpire, the manager dove into second base, ripped the base out of the dirt, tossed it, then went to home plate, covered it with dirt, then washed it off with a bottle of water. At some point he was ejected.

I asked my Dad about this guy, because Dad used to be a baseball player, manager, and umpire. I was curious for his reaction. I asked, "What would you have done if a manager did that while you were calling a game?" He said, "I'll tell you what one did to me..."

Dad was coaching one of his best teams. They were undefeated and playing at one of the district's lesser teams. And they were trailing, but it was still early. It was 2-1 and Dad's team was batting and had a man on third. Dad was coaching third base, as most high school teams back then just had two coaches, and one would take third and the other first. Anyway, on a short fly ball, Dad sent the runner home. The throw was close, and Dad thought the kid was safe. And it was important, because he was the tying run. The umpire called the kid out. Dad stormed down the basepath to argue it. He didn't get more than a few words into his tirade (and Dad is a great tirader) when the umpire said something like, "If you're going to be like this, I quit."

Dad told me, "I thought, Oh hell, he's going to forfeit this game on us!" Meaning, Dad thought for a moment that the umpire had not only ejected him but called the game off and given his team its first loss of the year, to a scrub outfit, no less. Dad quickly realized that the umpire had in essence called himself out -- he had literally quit in the middle of the game! Dad said that the athletic director for the other team got some guy out of the stands. The new guy put on the umpire gear and took over as the home-plate umpire. He told Dad, "I don't care what you say to me, I ain't quitting!" It all turned out okay because Dad's team broke it open and ended up winning something like 11-2. And after the game Dad saw the new umpire drive away in a state trooper's car. Only in high school baseball would you ever see an umpire quit in the middle of a game and a state trooper come out of the stands to finish things. I don't know if Dad argued any more calls in that game, but he probably didn't because otherwise he might have left the game in the trooper's car, too.

The reason I had called Dad when I saw the Asheville manager flip out was that it reminded me of one of my favorite stories from my Dad. It probably happened about the same time. He had been managing high school ball for a few years. This was back when they had semi-pro baseball teams in little towns like that. My Dad did some of that, too. If you're not familiar, imagine those softball beer leagues you might see at the park these days, except they played real baseball and got paid a few bucks for it. (When my Dad played the local Pepsi bottling plant gave players a case of Pepsis for every home run.) One day a semi-pro club from a nearby town called him to see if he could ump a game that afternoon. Dad grabbed his buddy Ron the basketball coach to help him out, and off they went. Dad was behind the plate, and Ron was working the bases.

The host team had a stud player everyone called Runt. Runt was, of course, about 6'6" and huge. I guess he was the Barry Bonds of this little mountain town semi-pro team. But when the game started, Runt wasn't there. Shortly after it started, Runt showed up, drunker than Cooter Brown. The manager knew Runt was too drunk to play, but let him stay on the bench with the team. Problem was, Runt was a belligerent drunk.

Early on, there was a close call at second base. Ron called it against Runt's team, and Runt started yelling. Dad told him to settle down, and he did for a bit. But with every ball or strike that went against his team, every close play in the field, Runt got louder and louder. Then, there was a close play at home. Dad called the runner from the other team safe --

-- Every time I hear my Dad tell this story, I always interrupt here to ask, "Was he safe?" And every time, Dad says, "Well, I called him safe, so he was safe." --

-- and Runt blew up. He stormed down the third base line, yelling and cussing. He was out, Runt screamed. "Now Runt," Dad said, trying to calm him, but getting pretty fed up by this point, "you didn't see it, so go back to the bench and be quiet." Runt gets right up in Dad's face. Dad's about 6'0" and about average build; Runt dwarfed him. "Runt, go sit down," he says. Runt, full of sneering drunk bully macho: "Are you going to make me?"

Dad said that at this point, he realized that either he's running this game, or Runt's running this game. And it sure wasn't going to be Runt. So Dad reared back and hauled off and punched Runt right in the face and knocked his ass in the dirt! Dad tells me, "When my fist was coming around, I saw his eyes get as big as saucers. There wasn't anyone in the stadium expecting me to do that -- and Runt was the most surprised of anybody."

Needless to say, nobody argued any more calls the rest of the game.

Not long ago I went a week or so without hearing from former co-blogger Fitz-Hume. It's safe to say we correspond, either by email or phone, most weekdays, and quite often on weekends. So, while it's not unheard of to go two or three days without talking to him, it's rare. And going a non-holiday week without hearing from him was notable enough that I started to get concerned. I wasn't to the point of checking his local obituaries, but I was a little worried that everything was ok. (The previous time we went so long without talking, he was so sick he couldn't speak.) It turned out that he was just busy, and we didn't have a lot to chat about anyway, so all ended well.

But I find this kind of thing happening more and more, it seems. Not Fitz's disappearance, but going long stretches without talking to friends of mine, and the thought that I really wouldn't have any idea if something happened. My college and law school friends are spread out all over the country. My parents know that I sometimes mention my friends X from Alabama or Y from Michigan, but they can't always keep straight how I know them, and certainly wouldn't know how to get in touch with them if something happened to me.

I swear I'm not being morbid. I just find myself musing about the practicalities of this sort of thing in the internet age. After all, I want as many people as possible at my funeral.

So what I decided to do was, more or less, to make a phone tree. I'll have some emergency contacts, like my parents, and I'll give them a couple of names. Those people (probably one from college and one from law school, given my friend distribution) will then have their own lists of people who might want to know if I get run over by a bus or something. I imagine it'll basically be my Christmas card list, plus phone numbers and emails.

I think I'll also set up an email account somewhere so I can store more sensitive information (PIN numbers and the like). What I plan to do is give one person the address and another the password. That way, they have to simultaneously turn their keys, like the soldiers at the start of WarGames.

Fitz still has access to this site, so I'll leave it to him to close things down if necessary. But be assured that I'm not going to write any "I've always loved you and I wish I'd had the guts to tell you" emails for him to deliver. So if you get any of those, he's composed them.

Re-reading this, I realize it could sound like a suicide note. It's not, I promise. I have way too much to live for. But I thought about making a will once and concluded I don't have any reason to, given that I know how things will transfer through intestate succession, and I don't have much worth transferring anyway. So what bothered me wasn't that my heirs might have fights over who gets the good Chinette. It just made me sad to think that I have good friends whom I don't hear from very often, and whose families I might not hear from if something happened. And I wouldn't want that to happen to the people I care about.

So, that was the motivation for the list. Now I just need to compile it and put it in the right hands. And watch out for buses.

The other day I announced that I'd be participating in an end-of-term discussion of the Supreme Court. My post starting things off is up now. All the posts will be available at this link. We should start having a lot more fun once some decisions come down Monday morning. Thanks again to PG for hosting us at De Novo, and thanks to PG and Will for joining me this week. I hope BTQ readers will check it out.

UPDATE: Will's first post is up here, wherein he offers some suggestions for the term's most underrated case so far. And my first-blush look at today's decisions is now up here. Finally, since we're pretty blatantly copying them, I should link to the first entries in Slate's similar discussion.