Jeff Merzel, Cape Cod Baseball League Umpire
This article was written by Bill Nowlin
This article was published in Cape Cod Baseball League: From College Stars to Big League Futures (2026)
Umpire crew at Hyannis on July 30, 2024. L to R: Jeff Merzel, Sam Finn, Joe LaBella. (Photo: Bill Nowlin)
For more than 20 years, Jeff Merzel has umpired Cape Cod Baseball League games. His path to this pursuit was unusual in several respects, and one of his progeny – his son Dan – went on to become an umpire in Major League Baseball.
Jeff umpires for pleasure. One might never have predicted the twist and turns his life has taken. He’s a first-generation American. His parents were Holocaust survivors, from Poland, postwar immigrants to the United States. His father owned a laundromat in Brooklyn, then a grocery store, and then, with two partners, a couple of other stores, and eventually a liquor store.
Jeff was born in Brooklyn in 1958 and grew up in Brooklyn and Queens a Yankees fan. He started playing Little League when he was 10, then Babe Ruth, American Legion, and high-school ball. He was a catcher, so he spent a lot of time behind home plate with a mask and shin guards.
After high school, Merzel became an Ivy Leaguer, attending Columbia University, played baseball for two years, and graduated with a degree in computer science. “I worked in high tech for 22 years or so,” he reflected in an early 2025 interview. “I got a job after college with Data General – one of the big computer companies at the time – and moved to Marlboro, Massachusetts, in 1979.”1 He and his future wife, Annie, married in 1980, and six years later bought a house in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. They have two sons – Dan and Adam. It’s Dan who became a professional umpire. Adam is a lawyer in the United States Air Force. He and his wife, Leah – both coming up on 10 years in the Air Force – were stationed in Okinawa at the time of the interview.
Both boys started playing baseball in Little League, and eventually in college. Adam pitched at Washington University in St. Louis, was a history major, and continued on to law school at WashU. Dan played infield and outfield at Johns Hopkins University and made it to the Division III College World Series in 2008. He majored in applied mathematics and statistics.
Working in high tech helped Jeff provide for the family, but over time, he says, “I got tired of the corporate politics, the bureaucracy, and all the b.s. I was miserable, so I left and started working for myself. I was always handy, a do-it-yourself guy, so I bought a fixer-upper in the next town over, and flipped it. I did that seven times. Then the mortgage crisis hit in 2008, so I just started contracting. I became a remodeler.” That is what he has done ever since, often working with subcontractors as his business expanded.
He had started umpiring and officiating ice hockey when his sons were in Little League, in part because, as he watched others, he thought to himself he could probably do a better job. “The first game I ever did was a Babe Ruth game. I was not patched, certified or anything. They needed an umpire and I just showed up. I didn’t have umpire equipment, so I used my catcher’s mask and shin guards. They had a balloon – the outside protector – so I used that. I think I did OK, and it was fun, so I decided to pursue getting patched.”
Plate umpire Jeff Merzel in action, Orleans, on Father’s Day 2024. (Courtesy of Jeff Merzel)
Jeff contacted the Massachusetts Baseball Umpires Association, which assigned umpires to youth and high-school games, and he started his official umpiring career on junior-varsity games and then high-school games.
Also during that time, Jeff discovered and fell in love with the Cape League. “All through the ’90s, while the kids were growing up, we’d rent a house somewhere on the Cape for a week or two every summer. We went to Cape League games, and we all just loved it – the games, the crowds, the whole atmosphere. So I looked into how to become an umpire on the Cape. I pursued it, and that’s where I met Nick Zibelli.” One couldn’t work Cape League games without college baseball experience.
“If you wanted to work on the Cape, you had to have college baseball umpiring experience. And if you wanted to work college baseball in the Northeast, you had to work for Nick. He required five years of umpiring experience before he would accept you into the college ranks. I had started umpiring high school in ’98. In 2002, I had my five years. I passed Nick’s written and field tests and started working college games. I think I did my first Cape game in 2003.”
And more than 20 years later, Jeff Merzel is still working Cape League games. He was named Umpire of the Year in 2021 and again in 2025, not long after working that year’s final championship series.
Clearly, he does not do the work because he’s in a situation of financial need: “You can’t make a living on summer baseball game fees – from the Cape or any other league.” He wouldn’t be doing it as often, or at all, if he didn’t enjoy it. It’s certainly not the luxurious accommodations. “Falmouth is the only place we get to change indoors, and that’s in a garage. Everywhere else, we’re in the parking lot, under the trees, or in the woods by our cars.”
He continues to work more than Cape Cod baseball. “I do regular season, which starts in late February/early March. I’m in two or three conferences around New England and New York. America East, the Northeast Conference. The Ivy. I’ll go to Lowell, Maine, Bryant, Northeastern. Places like that.”
Both of Jeff’s boys had also been attracted to officiating early on. “When they graduated from Little League, they started umpiring Little League games. We occasionally worked together. There was one Father’s Day, sometime in the early 2000s, when the Hopkinton Little League had a three-man crew – me and my two boys. I was on the plate, Dan at first, Adam at third. We also had an opportunity a few years later to officiate an ice hockey game together. Adam and I were the linesmen. We let Dan be the ref.”2
Jeff has also seen Dan embark on the long path with the hope of becoming a major-league umpire. Upon graduation from Johns Hopkins in 2009, Dan was offered a full-time job by PricewaterhouseCoopers, but chose instead to enroll in the Jim Evans Academy of Professional Umpiring in 2010. It was a long road from there. He worked his first big-league game in Cincinnati during the COVID year, 2020. In the summer of 2024, 14 years after starting his umpiring career, he finally got the call he’d longed for – he was being hired to the full-time major-league staff.
Dan recalled, “I started baseball and hockey when I was 12 years old. He was definitely a big influence on me – on my officiating career, to be able to officiate both baseball and hockey with my dad and with other officials. Dealing with adults on a very personal level. Handling different situations that came up. Outside of the ride to the rink or the field, I think that back when I was a kid being able to share that with him added an extra level of special that maybe some other people don’t have.”3
So what’s the real attraction to umpiring? The camaraderie counts for a lot. “There’s a brotherhood, for sure,” Jeff said. “And a perpetual competition.” All in all, though, it’s a simple pleasure that makes all the difference. As he says, “It sounds corny, but being on a baseball field – it’s my happy place. I love the game. I enjoy the umpires I work with. I enjoy interacting with the kids – the players. The coaches – for the most part – are good people. The people interaction and the baseball aspect, I guess those are the two things that keep me umpiring.”
BILL NOWLIN was born in Boston and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He sometimes says he “hasn’t gone far in life.” He hesitates to admit it but, despite going to well over 1,000 games at Fenway Park (including every game in 2022), and hearing about the Cape League for years and years, he had never been to a game on the Cape. He’d even been to the Midnight Sun Game in Alaska and seen baseball in several other countries. That changed once this book got underway. Now he gets it!
Dan Merzel and Jeff Merzel, September 3, 2025.
NOTES
1 Author interview with Jeff Merzel on January 13, 2025.
2 What impressed Jeff Merzel most about first seeing Dan officiate was – on top of his evident umpiring skills – the “handling of people part” of the game, responding to overly aggressive parents and being able to defuse situations.
3 Author interview with Dan Merzel on September 3, 2025. Dan also expressed a measure of pride in “getting the texts and emails in the locker room in Colorado when he got the Cape Cod League Umpire of the Year Award – as he did again this year – being able to share that with my crew at this level was also really cool.”