The Sedona Parks and Recreation Department’s 2023 Adult Softball Recreational League wrapped up its season on Thursday, Aug. 31.
The final game of the season saw A Day in the West win the championship over The Dirty Rats. The game was also the last hurrah for the league’s long-serving umpire for the last 20 years, Noel Marquis, age 79.8. As a former math teacher, he is more precise about his age than most.
“I would almost do the job for free except you do have calls that are so close you’re going to get [into] an argument no matter what,” Marquis said. “You got to take crap sometimes regardless of how well you get in position on the play. That’s what you get paid for. Because umping and making the calls and being part of the game is just plain fun.”
Growing up in Stoneham, Mass., a suburb of Boston, Marquis spent a lot of time at Fenway Park idolizing Ted Williams of Red Sox fame. He started playing golf when he realized he wasn’t going to make the Major Leagues and also liked the idea that one still can play golf at age 80.
“I played Little League baseball, that was a big deal,” Marquis said. “Because you get to compete, learn the value of team play … I played high school sports. I was a cross-country runner, goalie on the hockey team and played golf, and then when I went to college, I ran cross-country and lettered in golf. Franklin’s a Division III school and it was [a] good competitive experience. I didn’t play baseball that much. But I always loved the sport.”
Along the way, he got exposed to officiating when a Stoneham resident who was in charge of the umpires for the local Little League asked Marquis to officiate as a favor because of staffing retention problems due to disputes between umpires and parents.
“I gave it a try and it worked out fine,” Marquis said. “It was a summer job for four years [1962-65] and I enjoyed it. But then I went off to Utah to grad school, and when you’re in grad school you’re really consumed with your subjects, and you get away from extracurricular activities.”
After earning an undergraduate degree from Franklin College in Franklin, Ind., Marquis received a master’s degree in mathematics in 1967 from the University of Utah, specializing in topology.
“When I got my master’s, I played amateur hockey in Salt Lake for the Salt Lake Seagulls,” Marquis said. “Then I had a student at the school I was teaching that [told] me about the need for umpires in their softball league, and that was in 1969. I went and met the head of the softball program, and he put me on and I started umpiring in Salt Lake City, and I umped there in ’69 and ’70.”
Marquis and his wife Rosemary, who he met as an undergraduate, later moved back to Franklin, Ind., where he continued umpiring from 1972 to 1999. The couple eventually relocated to Sedona in 2002 and he started officiating locally in 2003.
Marquis has served as a clinician at different umpire schools over the years and has always emphasized hustle when training other umpires, the need to be on top of a play and be at the correct angle to make an accurate call. As he feels he has slowed down in that regard over the last decade, he decided it was time to retire from what he views as a public service.
He guaranteed that he will still go out to watch some softball games next summer at Posse Grounds Park, and residents will also still see him around Sedona as a volunteer Policeman working parades and Halloween, one of the things he has in common with his second wife, Sandy McDaniel, a former police volunteer in Whittier, Ca.
“I was married 52 years to [Rosemary], and she died in her sleep,” Marquis said. “About eight months later, I got on a dating service called SilverSingles and I met a woman. She’d been married 50 years, [and her] husband passed away.”
“We lived together for a year,” Marquis said. “She moved here in [2020]. Her father had always wanted to visit Sedona; she had a liking for Sedona. She elected to give it a try with me and we lived here for a year and got married on 4-3-21 … It’s worked out well.”
“I respect Noel,” veteran Sedona softball player Anthony Franklin said. “He’s been there through seasons where there’s been highly competitive teams and he’s never broke form. He’s always maintained composure. There we go. And some of those games, some of those seasons, especially [2009 through 2012] seasons, he was umping some boys that were pretty serious about playing softball and he caught the brunt end of calls because he’s the umpire.”
“The thing that’s so good about Sedona is that it’s a recreational league, and virtually all the players are playing for fun,” Marquis said. “The best teams take it more seriously, and that’s understandable. But as an umpire, what’s neat is they have the mat and home plate. If the ball hits the mat or home plate, it can be a strike. [So] there’s much less arguing on balls and strikes.
“I knew he was always going to be at the ball field,” Franklin said. “I knew whether or not I was going to go out and play ball, or have a good game or a bad game. I knew I was going go and say hi to Noel. He’s just always been a pleasure to be around. I call him by his first name because he’s earned that more than ‘blue’ or ‘umpire.’”