Chris Jaksa is an

emergency physician An emergency physician (often called an "ER doctor" in the United States) is a physician who works at an emergency department to care for ill patients. The emergency physician is a specialist in advanced cardiac life support (advanced life suppo ...

and former professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

umpire An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

. Along with fellow umpire instructor

Rick Roder Rick Roder is an author, editor, consultant, and educator specializing in baseball rules and umpiring. He attended the Joe Brinkman Umpire School in 1987 and was a professional umpire from 1987 to 1996. His umpiring experience included the Pioneer ...

, Jaksa co-authored the only complete re-write of baseball's professional rules; this work is commonly known as the "Jaksa/Roder Manual."

Umpiring career

Jaksa put his studies on hold at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and attended the

Joe Brinkman Joseph Norbert Brinkman (born April 9, 1944) is an American former umpire in Major League Baseball (MLB) who worked in the American League (AL) from 1972 to 1999 and throughout both major leagues from 2000 until his retirement during the 2006 sea ...

Umpire School in 1984. Upon graduation from the program, he entered professional baseball and umpired in the

Appalachian League The Appalachian League is a collegiate summer baseball league that operates in the Appalachian regions of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Designed for rising freshmen and sophomores using wood bats, its season runs from ...

(1984),

Midwest League The Midwest League is a Minor League Baseball league established in 1947 and based in the Midwestern United States. A Class A league for most of its history, the league was promoted to High-A as part of Major League Baseball's 2021 reorganizat ...

(1985-1987),

Carolina League The Carolina League is a Minor League Baseball league which has operated along the Atlantic Coast of the United States since 1945. Having been classified at various levels throughout its existence, it operated at Class A-Advanced from 1990 unti ...

(1988), and Southern League (1989). He was the head rules instructor at the Brinkman school from 1987 to 1989. In Jaksa's last season as an umpire, he appeared in an ESPN documentary on minor league umpires.

After baseball

After six seasons of umpiring minor league baseball, Jaksa went back to college at Michigan, earning a philosophy degree in 1993 and a medical degree in 1997. He completed an emergency medicine residency at

SUNY Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

and practices in the emergency room at Modesto and Manteca Kaiser Permanente in California.

References

External links

rulesofbaseball.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jaksa, Chris Living people Minor league baseball umpires American emergency physicians University of Michigan Medical School alumni Year of birth missing (living people)