I learned the phrase when my oldest son was in Little League. It is when the home team provides the biased umpire. To be sure, to really admit it, there were not as many cases of home cooking as I thought.

For sure, we did get some bad calls. On the other hand I am sure most of the umps were trying to be objective. Were there biased umps? Sure. On the other hand, there were umps that maybe called it the other way, to make sure they weren’t being biased.

It’s hard to find an umpire that isn’t biased. I guess even in the majors there might be one or two calls that go the wrong way. On the other hand, their calls are watched carefully and if a bias, either way shows up, someone has a few words with the one making the calls. Moreover, there is a professional pride involved.

I was never a professional umpire, but I was an unbiased one. I went to Syracuse for ten weeks for a school. In the afternoon, I often went for walks through a nearby park. I started watching Little League games on the way. Next thing I knew I was called in as the unbiased umpire. You see, being from Desoto County, I had no bias, at least theoretically, in the games.

I must not have done too badly. They kept asking me back. Either way, no one ever accused me of home cooking.

It is a problem in our society. Getting unbiased people to call strikes and balls. All too often those who sit on the bench in judgement are biased. Even those who try to be unbiased are. Worse yet, many are biased and are open about it.

What it means is that we have a serious problem in our society. When the judge and jury is biased and calls a person guilty when no law was even broken, it puts the general population in fear of false judgement. It might even encourage people to break the law. It encourages people to look the other way as the government officials openly break the law.

However, it’s not just the court system. Recently, the director of the FBI admitted a very biased activity in saying he knew the laptop belonged to Old Joe’s son. But why did he cover it up. There can only be one reason, to let Old Joe win the election. This is home cooking at its worst. This is the highest office in the FBI interfering with the election and openly admitting to it, without any fear. And then, of course, they all insisted there was no fraud. Worse, if someone suggested fraud, they immediately hushed them up. They made threats. They immediately made fun of them. They tried to put their businesses out of business.

Then too, there was more home cooking, by the press. You can ignore it. You can try to deny it but it was not only obvious, but in some cases, they even admitted it. This, when they say that the job of the media is to call balls and strikes. Yet they call nothing but strikes when the republicans are up and they call nothing balls when the dems are at bat.

Are we destined to become a third rate society because we have an obvious Pravda making all the calls?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone honestly and unbiased calling the balls and strikes at least half as well as the professional major league baseball umps. Sorry. Not going to happen in our lifetime. And the consequences will likely be far worse than any of us can imagine.

Actually, at this time, I would settle for what we called home cooking when my son was playing baseball. Better than what we have in the no-justice system. Better than what we have in the court system. Far better than what we have in the new media. Even more, it was less obvious back then.