{lives remembered}


As he ran the bases of his life, the game was always there Jay Youngquist


n 1947-2010 by Emma brown


Most of the students were in their 20s, equipped with the young knees required to endure a doubleheader while crouching over home plate. Youngquist was in his late 50s. He knew he was too old for the big leagues, but he had an incurable affection for baseball. Umpiring was a way back into the game. And he was good at it.


W “Had he started 15 or 20 years ear-


lier, Jay could have easily been in the majors,” said John Porter, who assigns umpires to college games across the mid-Atlantic. After finishing the course in Flor-


ida, Youngquist rose quickly through the umpire ranks, from Little League to high school and college games. He had a natural eye for discerning balls from strikes. He had an uncommon ability to stay cool when coaches screamed at him. And he had drive, working six days a week during the height of the season. “He had something in him that said,


‘I need to do this, and I need to do it well,’ ” Porter said. Youngquist had been that way since


he was young. His trademark was inten- sity in every facet of life — as a business executive and a father, a church vol- unteer and a small-plane pilot. And particularly as a baseball player. He taught himself to pitch when he


was a kid, starting with a whiffle ball and using his home in South Minne- apolis as a backstop. By the time he graduated to a baseball, he’d spent so many hours in the yard that he’d worn a bald spot in the lawn.


He wasn’t big or particularly power-


ful. But he hated to lose, and he had a wicked curveball. “He could really make that ball


bend,” said his younger brother, Chuck, who played catcher. Youngquist might have made it in


professional baseball. He was a starting pitcher in the late 1960s for the Univer- sity of Minnesota, a national powerhouse ranked No. 1 during his junior year. But then he hurt himself shagging


fly balls during practice, and by his se- nior year, he had lost his starting slot. In 1969 — the same year one of his


teammates was drafted by the Boston Red Sox — Youngquist graduated from college with a degree in math. He put his signature intensity to work crafting a life outside the diamond. Youngquist worked for a utility com- pany in Minnesota before joining what


Jay Youngquist pitches at the University of Minnesota around 1968 or 1969.


was then the Watson Co. in Reston in the early 1980s. Along the way, he earned a pilot’s license and bought a 1981 Cessna six-seater. But he never quite shook baseball.


Evenings and weekends, he played rec- reational softball until his only child, Steve, became a Little League pitcher. Then Youngquist became a dedicated fan and backyard coach. “I don’t think he ever missed a game,”


said Kathleen Youngquist, Steve’s moth- er, who was married to Jay for two decades before they divorced. “From the time Steve was 9 through high school — he played varsity baseball at Herndon High — Jay was always at the fields.” When his son reached high school, Youngquist ferried him to far-afield tour-


“He had something in him that said, ‘I need to do this, and I need to do it well.’ ”


24 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | december 26, 2010


hen Reston resident Jay Youngquist retired from his job as a senior manager at benefits consulting firm Watson Wyatt, he went to Florida — not to check out real estate or take a cruise, but to take a grinding five-week course in becoming a professional baseball umpire. ¶


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