The one constant through the years, James Earl Jones famously said as he stood in the middle of a cornfield, has been baseball. And as long as baseball has been a constant, so too has the umpire. The looming figure in blue with a booming voice and the personality of a junkyard dog has always been a unique character in the timeless nine-inning drama that is — or at least was — America’s pastime. But the 2025 baseball season, which gets underway in earnest on Thursday, could serve as a curtain call for those all-too-fallible arbiters of the game.
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