As umpires go, Al Clark was a nice guy, a friendly guy, who went out of his way to talk to writers, not avoid them, as most umpires do. It’s not that umpires dislike writers, but the only time they wanted to talk to umpires was when they have blown a call.

Clark’s different demeanor was understandable. His father was a baseball writer himself, a newspaperman in Trenton, N. J., and Herb Clark was a nice guy, too. So Al had a good beginning. The ending was something else. Where did he go wrong? He didn’t lose his job after 26 years and spend four months in prison for nothing.

We find out in Clark’s new book, “Called Out But Safe, a Baseball Umpire’s Journey,” written with Dan Schlossberg, a New Jersey freelance writer, and published by University of Nebraska Press.

Clark lost his job and went to prison for different incidents, though it’s possible that he might have been more careful to avoid the second incident if he hadn’t experienced the first.

Now 66 and a retired resident of Williamsburg, Va., Clark was …

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When is a search for a new baseball commissioner not a search? When baseball owners conduct one?

The long-time but retiring commissioner, Bud Selig, has named a seven-man committee to identify his successor, but its chairman, Bill DeWitt Jr. of the St. Louis Cardinals, said the committee does not plan to hire a search firm to aid in the search.

But wait. What the committee plans to do may not even qualify as a search.

A sharp-eyed lawyer with plenty of experience with baseball owners noticed the wording in the announcement after the owners’ meeting in New York last Thursday:

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“Rodriguez is over!” the baseball official exclaimed in annoyance, frustration and exasperation at the mention of Alex Rodriguez’s name. But is it over? Will it ever be over? Even if Alex Rodriguez has disappeared from the baseball public’s view, will he fade from its memory?

Just last Sunday a 2,500-word article appeared in the Long Island (N.Y.) newspaper Newsday and on its web site detailing Major League Baseball’s tactics in its investigation of players’ alleged acquisition of illegal performance-enhancing drugs from the South Florida anti-aging clinic Biogenesis.

The article, which painted those tactics as highly questionable, caught my attention but more important, MLB’s attention. The Internet link is long and unwieldy but worth its use:

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