The journey that led Jon Briggs behind home plate, where he's stayed for 45 years

Jon Briggs has been delivering Alexander’s Golf Carts for 17 years, 14 years with Alexander and nearly three years with Joe Perdue, who took over the business.

It’s not what Briggs is well-known for, however. Briggs, a 1977 North Kitsap graduate, is familiar locally for wearing a striped shirt after umpiring baseball, slowpitch, and later fastpitch softball for most of the past 45 years. He also has been a volleyball official for the last 11 years.

He had a break from umping during his first marriage but went back into it during his 30-year marriage to Connie, who tragically died two years ago when a blood clot developed after surgery and went to her heart.

Briggs got involved in umpiring thanks to a high school classmate, Ron Beckwith, who got him into baseball,. He also received encouragement from the late Dick Todd, a Kitsap Sports Hall of Famer who now has an annual award in his name, given to a top official in the area by the Kitsap Athletic Roundtable.

Briggs started out doing high school baseball games and did them for four years until he got married and his umpiring stopped. His work didn’t stop. Briggs worked at the Poulsbo IGA Store after his graduation and then was hired by Budweiser to drive a beer delivery truck, which he did for 29 years before retiring.

”I did drive, sold, worked in the warehouse – I did everything,” says Briggs.

It was through his Budweiser work he developed a friendship with Paul Peterson, then co-owner of the Cloverleaf Sports Bar & Grill in East Bremerton. That friendship led him to ump at softball and baseball tournaments Peterson hosted at the Fairgrounds, where Peterson had the concession contract with Kitsap County.

That friendship also led to other things. Briggs began playing on the Cloverleaf Chuggers slowpitch softball team and the Unified Special Olympics team, called Shamrocks that Peterson started and coached.

“He was a good softball player, our pitcher,” says Peterson. “He was a good teammate – a funny guy – and a lot of fun to be around. He also bartended for me part-time and late at night he would clean the beer taps. He was a hard worker.”

Briggs still cleans beer taps. He has eight accounts. He used to have more, but his son Jonathon went into the business and took over some of his accounts.

That friendship with Peterson also produced his second marriage to Connie, who for years worked at the Cloverleaf as a key employee, which included preparing the dough for pizzas.

Briggs was born in 1959 in the small Canadian town of Mayerthorpe, Alberta, and made it to Poulsbo as a result of a car accident that killed his biological father when he was six years old. His mother, Lillian, who had moved the family to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, remarried a man – Glen Danielson – from Poulsbo, who worked for the U.S. Navy transporting torpedoes from Bangor to the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental and Test Ranges at Nanoose Bay, British Columbia.

Being a Canadian, Briggs holds a permanent resident visa that allows him to live in the United States. He has been a welcome addition to the country and has carried on with honor. It has allowed him to attend North Kitsap and become a good sports official.

It is how Briggs, who has two older sisters and one younger, became a baseball player and wrestler at North Kitsap. He wrestled at 168 pounds for the Vikings and played right field in baseball.

During his Budweiser years, Briggs intensified his work as an umpire with the Peninsula Umpires Association. He umpped slowpitch and baseball games at Lions Field and Roosevelt Field.

When high school fastpitch was introduced by the state in the early 1990s, Briggs changed directions and became a fastpitch umpire that continues to this day.

“Basically I stopped doing baseball and started doing fastpitch,” says Briggs. “I enjoyed fastpitch more than baseball. There is more action. It’s not as boring as baseball.”

He’s made a name for himself, although he is too humble to acknowledge it all. He’s made national tournaments. In fact, he recently got back from U-14 USSSA fastpitch nationals in Kansas and from July 11-15 was the Umpire in Charge for an 80-team USSSA Cascade Nationals in Olympia that covered 10 age brackets from 10U to 18U.

As the lead guy, Briggs was responsible to make sure games went smoothly, solving disputes, enforcing rules, overseeing scheduling and on occasion stepping in and umpiring a game or two if needed.

In the early 2000s, he worked a national slowpitch championship tournament at Wide World of Sports just next to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. He has been back to Florida several times for national fastpitch championships and in 2017, worked the USSA World Fastpitch Championships in Kansas. He did the 14U title game.

Briggs is in charge of the Kitsap County Umpires Association that schedules local USSSA umpires for the recreational Peninsula Fastpitch Association league, stretching from Belfair to Port Orchard and Silverdale.

He also does the select travel fastpitch teams – Kitsap Ospreys, Diamond Dusters, Titans – when they have local tournaments, and he also finds time to sleep, about four hours a night, he says.

In 2016, Briggs was inducted into the Washington USSSA Hall of Fame.

“I was kind of surprised when they called me and told me,” he says

What makes Briggs special is he is an honorable man who does things right, and is dependable.

“His word is gold,” says Perdue, who runs the Village Greens Golf Course in Port Orchard and Alexander’s Golf Carts, where Briggs comes in.

”When I have a schedule to deliver carts, I don’t give it a second thought," Perdue says. “I know he will get them there on time. He takes a lot of pride in his work.

“He’s a good guy. He helps his daughter and two grandsons. He puts them first, which is what you are supposed to do. He’s the type of guy who I would always want to officiate a ballgame for me. He’ll always keep his head.”

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Jon Briggs has been an umpire for more than four decades in Kitsap