![\"Noah](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2023_Noah_Katz-84-1.jpg\")
The Umpire Channel is a cross-pollination of several things: Katz’s deep admiration for the umpiring profession, his undeniable entrepreneurial gene, and his skill with social media, where he seems to have mastered the art of generating buzz and building community. A nationally ranked Spikeball<\/a> player, he hosted a series of successful tournaments in Williamsburg while still in high school, attracting teams from across the country by creating a community of Spikeball enthusiasts on Instagram.<\/p>\n Katz’s journey, above all, is grounded in his passion for baseball, and his desire to always respect and preserve the integrity of the game — no more so than when he was both playing and umpiring high school baseball games.<\/p>\n “On Sunday, I’d be umpiring a travel league game where some of my high school teammates were playing, and on Monday I’d be playing beside them on the field,” he recalls. Katz says he remained rigorously nonpartisan when behind the plate, and had no problem calling teammates out on strikes. They didn’t give him a hard time, he insists. “At most, they might say, ‘You know, that wasn’t a strike.’” He smiles. “But it was.”<\/p>\n The day after he finished high school, Katz made a special trip to the Little League field where he’d played and umpired most of his life. He had his 13-year-old brother film him talking about the challenges and joys of umpiring. “We filmed two videos, and each one of them got 300,000 views in a day, primarily on TikTok. We reached 10,000 followers on TikTok within the first two weeks.”<\/p>\n Katz’s evangelical zeal for this narrowest of niches was evident — and The Umpire Channel was born. People soon responded with a surprising hunger to learn about the umpiring world.<\/p>\n “Essentially every video I make is a video that’s never been made before,” Katz says. “No one was recording umpires walking out to the plate for their pre-game meeting, or talking to Major League umpires about their experiences, or taking you behind the scenes of umpire school. We put it all together on the channel.”<\/p>\n He’s conducted interviews at a number of area ballparks, including Polar Park, home of the Worcester Red Sox, and has done a good deal of work with the Savannah Bananas, a barnstorming team that turns the traditional game into a party. (Below is a video Katz filmed with the Bananas, produced by Katz and Moses Millman ’24.)<\/p>\n Story continues after video<\/em><\/p>\n