Indeed , despite a library of books by and about pitchers -LRB- Jim Bouton 's `` Ball Four , '' Jim Brosnan 's `` The Long Season , '' Christy Mathewson 's `` Pitching in a Pinch '' -RRB- , Darling said he believes that people still do n't understand what it takes to stand on that mound . `` Within baseball circles there is a common baseball axiom , ` If pitchers were n't so stupid , hitters would never get a hit , ' '' he said in an e-mail . `` Of course , I knew this was a fallacy so I decided to write about the travails of major league pitchers . Throwing a ball 95 mph to tin cup-sized quadrants sounds pretty difficult to me , and I wanted to express this to the reader . '' Umpires , on the other hand , rarely get written about at all -- in fact , they 're often treated as less than human . -LRB- `` The owners basically see them like bases , '' former baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent told Weber . `` They say , ` We need a base ; we need an
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- No play can begin in a baseball game until the pitcher throws the ball . And no play can conclude until the umpire makes the call . `` We 're not just robots they send out there , '' umpire Tim McClelland -LRB- 2nd from L -RRB- told author Bruce Weber . Yet these figures -- the man on the mound and the men who stand in judgment -- are vastly different in importance to the average fan . There are countless children who dream of becoming a major-league pitcher . He is , literally , the king of the hill . Umpires ? Almost nobody dreams of becoming an umpire . And yet the positions share a number of similarities , according to two new books : `` As They See 'Em '' -LRB- Scribner -RRB- , by New York Times writer Bruce Weber , and `` The Complete Game '' -LRB- Knopf -RRB- , by former major-league pitcher -LRB- and current New York Mets broadcaster -RRB- Ron Darling . Both jobs require a great deal of command , neither gets enough training , and both are often disrespected by others in the game .