This week, Rudolph Giuliani threw his hat into the ring. He will run for President as the candidate from the Republican Party, he hopes.

As it happens, this year, I am in the final stages of editing a memoir I have written about the last half century in the Hamptons. It was sold to Crown and is scheduled for publication a year from now under the Harmony Books imprint.

I mention this because one of the chapters I have written for this book is about the annual Artist-Writer’s Softball game played every summer in East Hampton. For most of this last half century I have umpired this game, calling balls and strikes behind the pitchers mound, but always allowing for a celebrity umpire to take over for some of the game.

Last summer, that person was Rudolph Giuliani. He has a house out here in Mecox with his wife, Judy, and she attended as a spectator and watched as he did this job of umpiring very well.

The chapter I wrote about the game tells about the time that Bill Clinton, who was then the Governor of Arkansas, served as the celebrity umpire in the game back in 1988. He also did the job well.

And then there was, back in 1974, at the Artist-Writers game, Eugene McCarthy, who had BEEN a Presidential candidate in 1968. McCarthy had run in the Democratic primary in ‘68 as an anti-war candidate and he was doing so well in the early primaries that his main adversary, President Lyndon Johnson, announced that he would bow out of the Presidential race and retire after his term ended.

In 1974, at the game, McCarthy wore a t-shirt, tan shorts, white socks and sneakers. When he would lean forward to get a better look at the strike zone, it was possible to see, after the third inning, that the seam of his shorts had split in the back. Nobody said a thing. He left off umpiring in the fourth inning, then played for the writers and hit two doubles and a single — not bad for a man in his fifties. And everybody applauded.

And then there was Barry Commoner. He also was a candidate for President — this was in the 1980 election — and he umpired for half an inning in 1980, and then spent the rest of the game going around introducing himself to people and shaking their hands. I did get to know him on the mound. But what took me completely by surprise was that, the next day, he actually called me up personally on the telephone to re-state his political positions and ask me to vote for him.

This was the first time a candidate had ever called me personally to ask that I vote for him for President. It was special. So when the time came, I did. (He ran on the Citizen’s Party ticket. The other candidates were Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.)

Now, between 1974 and 2007, how many people are there among the 300 million people in America who have seriously made a run for the job of President of the United States? Maybe 500? And what are the odds that four out of these 500 would be calling balls and strikes, at one time or another, on the little sandlot softball field behind the East Hampton Waldbaum’s Market?

And what are the odds that all four of them would do a very credible job at being umpires? I can tell you that over the years, we have had celebrity umpires who embarrassed themselves doing this. Congressman Charles Rangel from the Bronx was one. I know that he is now the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in Washington and I am sure he is doing a great job, but I can tell you, according to the commentary of the game in our newspaper the year he umpired for a few innings, he did not distinguish himself. But that was a long time ago.

In any case, what I was wondering — given that this is President’s Day Weekend — was if we could get another candidate out to guest umpire with me at the Artist-Writers Game this coming August.

I don’t know if Howard Dean has any plans to run again. His mom lives in East Hampton, about one block from Town Pond, and he grew up summering here. The Deans are members at Devon.

Anyway, he has never shown up for the game.

Or what about Hillary? She comes here a lot. We’d be happy to have her. (Does the woman know softball?)

I’d like to see Barack Obama behind Roy Scheider, the perennial pitcher for the Artists, leaning in and calling a pitch that bounces along the dirt at the feet of John McCain, playing shortstop for the Writers. (He’s a writer. He wrote all those diaries from a North Korea prison camp, didn’t he?)

Or maybe I’m just looking at this backwards. After all, two of the four people who got involved in the Presidential race got involved AFTER they umpired at the Artist-Writers game. Maybe the Game MAKES presidential candidates.

Now that I think of it, there is one person who, year in and year out, has been the umpire at the Artist-Writers softball game more than any other and — well — do you think — is it possible — that my time has come?

Softball Candidates

Run for President. Umpire the Artist-Writers Game in East Hampton