When kids take the field for baseball in Pittsburgh, do the umpires have the necessary clearances?

In the game of baseball, every run and every rule counts, and it's in umpire Charlie Forster's nature. 

"My parents like to say that it combines my love of baseball with my love of rules," said Forster.

He started getting paid for umpiring youth baseball games in 2017. 

"Some of these Squirrel Hill kids tonight I've hired for several years in their league in Squirrel Hill, and in tournament games like this," said Forster.

As he approaches eight years with the Pittsburgh Umpire Association, he has all three clearances to earn money for his work focused on rules.

"It starts off the field and extends on the field," Forster said. "So, the fact that Dave is concerned about safety before you become an umpire shows that he is also concerned about your ability to maintain everybody's safety on the field during a game as well."

When Forster said Dave, he's referring to Dave Gregory, the association president of the Pittsburgh Umpire Association. He assigns umpires for these youth baseball games. 

"Anything 18 and below," said Gregory. "If you get paid, you have to have those clearances."

Those clearances are Act 34, a Pennsylvania State Police background check, Act 151 is the child abuse clearance, and Act 114 is the fingerprinting.

"It takes about 20 minutes to do the Act 34 and the Act 151 online," Gregory told us. He took over this role as president for this specific association in 2017.

"When the former president told me he had no way of doing it or tracking it, he didn't keep track of it, I started calling other signers in the area because I didn't want to try to reinvent the wheel," said Gregory. 

The former president confirmed with KDKA-TV that he didn't have a system set up and told us he didn't know, which he believes a lot of other assigners for other youth baseball associations don't know either.

So, Gregory said that he asked other youth ball association leaders and assigners. 

"But surprisingly, when I called all the other assigners, not one of them kept track of whether their umpire had clearances or not," said Gregory, "Not one."

Gregory, upon taking over the Pittsburgh Umpire Association, created his own spreadsheet system. Checking it monthly for the credentials expiring, knowing the consequences.

"For me as an assigner, I have to maintain copies of everybody's clearances, and if I don't maintain them or have them, it's a third-degree misdemeanor, and it's punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine, and I don't think I would do well in prison," said Gregory.

He said following the rules means he's an outlier, so much so that he hasn't heard from other organizations about using his system.  

"No," he said. "It's shocking that they fight with me, that they say, ' No, we don't have to do that, and it's like, 'No, you do.'"

It means his options are limited in a field seeing a shortage.

"It can put me in a precarious position at times, but somehow the baseball Gods always smile, and I end up getting somebody to cover a game from my roster," he said.

Right now, there are over 100 people on his roster, but he's faced pushback from umpires he tried to hire.

"They'll just go and work for somebody else rather than spending the money, the lousy $60 to get the clearances," he explained. "They'll go and work for somebody else who doesn't ask for them." 

He then went on to explain that recouping the money for getting the clearances takes all of umpiring two games. 

However, those three mandatory credentials last for five years. Forster said he umpires for the City of Pittsburgh's League too, called R.B.I now, in his second year with them. 

"I know that 'R.B.I.' for the first time collected my clearances this year, for the city," he said.

We reached out to R.B.I to find out when they started tracking clearances. In a statement, it said, "The CitiSport and Pirates' R.B.I league is a celebration of youth sports for the players and their families, and our priority is their safety."

When the question of clearances was brought to the administration's attention, we checked in with R.B.I's Umpire Assigner, whose records indicated that all R.B.I umpires have their clearances. In addition, RBI will reimburse umpires to obtain or renew their clearances. 

Volunteer umpires don't need the same clearances, but when it comes to rules in the game of baseball, "bottom line, it's another level of safety for the kids, and the most innocent of things can turn out to be pretty ugly," Gregory said.

"Safety is paramount for everybody involved," Forster added.

It's not as clear as a home run knowing who's behind the plate umpiring your kid's game.

Gregory said only one other assigner he knows has everybody on his roster with clearances, and it's for high school baseball, for PIAA.

So, who enforces this? 

Well, the Department of Human Services, Pennsylvania State Police, and the FBI issue three clearances.

However, those who don't follow the law simply face getting in trouble if something goes wrong and there's no track record, but no one is knocking on doors or necessarily keeping tabs on the organizations.