The Philly area’s oldest umpire is 82 and spends his days calling strikes and asking sports history questions

In April, Richard Glazer, 82, will put on his blue shirt and start his 28th year as a baseball umpire, now with the Tri-State Elite Umpires Association, officiating high school games and men’s semipro games within a day’s drive of his Cherry Hill home. He is certain he is the oldest umpire of this group of 500 officials, and he suspects he is the oldest active umpire at any level of baseball.

There is no doubt, however, that Glazer has lived up to a promise he made to himself over seven decades ago: to weave his love of baseball into his life. And when he isn’t umpiring, he has a side gig: running his sports trivia contest business. Serious about this pursuit, he considers it foul play when so-called sport trivia hosts pull questions and answers off the internet.

Given Glazer’s encyclopedic knowledge of the game, his questions often come with a backstory.

Just thinking about Oct. 3, 1951, brings back emotional memories for Glazer. He was 9 years old, and he’d rushed home from school in Forest Hills, Queens, to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play the New York Giants. It was the third game of the best-of-three National League playoff series.

“The first game, the Dodgers won. The second, the Giants won. It forced a third game to break the tie,” Glazer said.

On the family’s little black-and-white TV, the Giants were losing, 4-2, and Glazer was feeling down. And then, with two players on base, a three-run home run was hit, resulting in a 5-4 Giants win.

“It was a total miracle, and I jumped out my skin. I couldn’t believe it,” Glazer said. “This is probably the most famous home run of all time.”

It also was the moment Glazer told himself that he had to get into baseball somehow.

“I knew from the excitement of that moment that nothing could beat this,” he said.

Answer: Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” for the New York Giants.

Samuel Glazer, Richard Glazer’s father, was a good ballplayer and solid all-around athlete. Born in 1915 and the son of Russian immigrants, Samuel Glazer learned the American pastime on the streets of the Lower East Side.

Baseball helped the Jewish community, which faced virulent antisemitism, assimilate into American culture. Glazer remembers wearing his baseball uniform on a visit to his grandparents’ home and realizing that baseball was foreign to them. They didn’t understand the game nor his fascination. But his father, a CPA by training, was a baseball enthusiast.

Samuel Glazer started teaching his oldest son how to throw and bat and the nuances of the game. So when Glazer tried out for the newly formed Forest Hills Little League at age 11, he already was better than most of the other kids because of his father’s instruction.

Answer: Cal Abrams, who was born in Philadelphia and raised in New York, also was Glazer’s next-door neighbor when the family moved from Forest Hills to Syosset, Long Island, in 1955. Abrams, one of the few Jewish baseball players at the time, and Glazer often played catch together in the streets in front of their home. “It was a thrill for me to be able to play catch with a major league ballplayer,” Glazer said.

Before starting his trivia business, Glazer was an Army officer, a stockbroker, then a sports agent with his own business for 25 years. He has a story of how he went from being a stockbroker — far from his dream job — to a sports agent, negotiating contracts, broadcast deals, endorsements, and personal appearances for some of the biggest athletes.

Once out of the Army, he returned to work as a stockbroker on Long Island but took a part-time evening job in group sales for the Nets, an American Basketball Association team that featured Julius “Dr. J” Erving.

A perk of his night gig was tickets to the games, and one day he found himself sitting beside Turquoise Brown, Erving’s girlfriend and later wife. That led to Glazer going out with the couple after the game, Dr. J connecting Glazer to his management company, and a job offer to be a sports agent. Glazer resigned from the brokerage.

After two years, never lacking confidence, Glazer thought, “I can do this myself,” and started his own firm in 1977.

As his business grew, he found himself primarily representing Eagles players like Ron Jaworski, Randall Cunningham, Reggie White, Mike Quick, and Wilbert Montgomery, and the Steelers’ Franco Harris.

“The NFL is a small world, and people — if you do well — they tell their teammates,” Glazer said.

Eventually, he could no longer commute between Long Island and Philadelphia, and that’s when he relocated to Cherry Hill with his wife and two daughters.

“Long Island was a busy, congested place, and Cherry Hill was a welcomed change,” he said.

Answer: Sports Illustrated featured Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves on the cover of its premier issue in 1954.

After 25 years of being an agent, Glazer wearied of recruiting new players. So he decided to change course.

“I had a good run, and I did a lot. But a lot of the players were getting out of the game,” he said.

As he neared 70, he also tired of the travel of his senior baseball league, in which he had played for 20 years. But he still loved baseball.

“I knew eventually I would stop playing ball and wanted something to fall back on. And that’s when I got into umpiring,” Glazer said.

Before he stopped playing, he gave himself one more challenge.

At 67, he tried out for the now-defunct Camden Riversharks, an independent team that played in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. “I wanted to see how good I could be against young guys who were a third of my age,” Glazer said.

It was the tryout for the Forest Hills Little League all over again, except instead of preteens, he was pitted against hundreds of men in their early 20s. But something exciting happened.

“All these people, probably thousands, found out I was 67, and it was like I developed a fan club,” Glazer said. “They were rooting for me. I just wanted to have fun against some really good players. I think I did pretty well.”

He added: “Sports has given me a great life.”

Answer: Glazer said as long as he can physically do the job, he has no intention to stop umpiring. When people ask him when he actually will retire, he has an answer, without a backstory: “I am too happy doing what I’m doing — being an umpire, doing sports trivia contests, traveling, and being with my family.”