Greenville Little League : Official Web Site

Ken Hart has been umpiring for nineteen years, concentrating his talents exclusively for us now in the Greenville Little League. Ken, like most hometown kids in the Upstate in the 60s and 70s, grew up playing baseball. He finds umpiring to be the best way to stay actively involved in the sport after playing and coaching it for many years.

He has seen it all, and heard it all, and after shepherding some 270 kids (and their coaches!) every season through the wonders and mysteries of baseball for the Greenville Little League, he has a wealth of stories and many great memories.

Along with umpiring partner, Rex Darnell, Ken completes the T.R. connection for the GLL (that's Traveler's Rest for the geographically unenlightened!) Ken's "day job" has been as Manufacturing Manager for St. Gobain's Abrasives. (Maybe he can help us coaches learn to "manufacture" some runs!) He and his wife Laurie are parents to son Zack and daughter Allison. As all us parents can attest, Ken surely honed some superior umpiring skills in his twenty-some years as a Dad to a son and a daughter, so dealing with about 25 over-energized Coach-Pitch kids, or dodging high fast-balls and foul tips in hot home-plate gear from a few slightly wild Majors fireballing pitchers, enduring the rantings of six or eight coaches, and acknowledging the cheers (and jeers) of a slew of adoring Moms and Dads on a hot, sun-baked evening is in all in a day's work for Ken!

Ken's other hobbies includes golf (and ducking those "Frisbee golf balls" on his many trips into and out of Timmons Park.) When asked for his "words of wisdom" for us Greenville Little League coaches, Ken replied "Coaches should coach & umpires should call the game."

Sounds simple enough, but it seems we all have a little bit of umpiring in us... Too bad we can't do it as professionally and as impartially as Ken and his colleagues on the Greenville Little League umpiring crew!

Thanks, Ken, for sharing your time, your talents, your patience and your words of wisdom with all of us in the Greenville Little League family!

Rex Darnell (L) and Ken Hart (R)