A while back I was talking with Kevin Goldstein from BaseballProspectus.com, and he made the comment that on average, one eventual Hall of Famer debuts each baseball season.

That thought has stayed with me in the month or so since I heard it, and it was the thought that kept coming to my mind as Bruce Weber’s new book, As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires. Why has that thought stayed with me, you ask? Because quite simply this is the best baseball book I have read this year.

Weber takes the reader straight into the world of umpires, starting by enrolling us at the Jim Evans Academy of Professional Umpiring in Kissimmee, Florida. It is there that we start to learn about how umpires have to watch a game – which as Weber so effectively reminds us, is nothing like the way we watch a game from the stands or even from the field. Weber introduces us to the people that try and become umpires – men and women from all walks of life and areas of the world. They’re all “chasing the dream,” a theme that becomes common through the early chapters.

From umpire school, Weber takes the reader to the minor leagues, major leagues, and to the game’s greatest show – the World Series. Along the way, he chronicles the nearly constant struggle umpires go through to obtain any kind of appreciation or recognition, from sub-par hotels to repeated criticism in the media. He tackles labor struggles, slights by organized baseball, QuesTec, instant replay, and many more other topics that affect the on- and off-field lives of umpires.

He brings in some of baseball’s most well-known stories that involve umpires – the George Brett pine tar incident, the 1985 World Series and Don Denkinger missing a crucial call at first base, and Roberto Alomar’s run in with John Hirschbeck that involved the former spitting on the latter.

With a mixture of history, personal interviews, economics, and philosophy, Weber turns the seemingly two-dimensional life of umpires into an explosive, three-dimensional masterpiece that any baseball fan would be better for reading.

What makes this even more special is that the nature of umpires is anonymous – it is a fraternity who lives without fans, without fanfare, and generally without recognition. Short of the few seconds the umpires get at the beginning of a game when they are introduced and the occasional mention by a broadcaster, the names of umpires are rarely in the minds of fans. Umpires generally don’t speak to the press, and they certainly don’t like to speak critically of one another. The general anonymity of umpires is both a gift and a curse, and Weber successfully works both sides of that coin in crafting this book.

To write about the life of umpires, you have to enter the life of umpires. There aren’t nearly enough newspaper articles or magazine profiles to put something like this together. This is a hands-on, in the trenches look that any author attempting to write a similar book would do well to take notes from.

This is a remarkable book that takes the reader into the world of umpires, one that few of us really know anything about. For anyone who has even the slightest interest in baseball, not only is As Thy See ‘Em a must-read, it’s something that should be permanently added to your baseball book shelf.