If it’s basketball season, Bob Daniels probably has a whistle around his neck. For the past half century, Daniels has been calling basketball games up and down the Big Sandy.

He’s called everything from elementary to college, in big gyms and little gyms, games with statewide implication and others where the parents believed it was the only game in town.

Daniels was tweeting before it become a new way to communicate on the computer.

He’s done it through good times, and bad ... and sometimes to help the family put a meal on the table.

But Daniels isn’t complaining. Quite to the contrary.

He’s 72 years old and still loves to walk into a gym with a striped shirt on his back and a whistle around his neck.

Daniels umpires baseball in the spring, although crouching behind the plate is out these days because of bone spurs in his back.

He started his baseball umpiring career on April 10, 1958, and began officiating basketball on Oct. 12, 1958. Since then he’s called at least one basketball and one baseball game on some level every year.

That includes 2005, when Daniels had six-bypass surgery but stayed true to the craft.

He takes care of himself better these days. “I’ve lost 56 pounds starting in 2008,” he said. “I was 237 in October 2008 and I’m down to 181. It’s been a gradual process. I walk quite a bit and have been working out. I feel good.”

People feel good when they see Bob Daniels walking into the gym. He still likes calling the elementary level game as much as anything.

“I love working with kids, watching them grow and develop,” he said.

Everybody knows Bob Daniels. He also served as an assistant coach at Paintsville High School in football, baseball and basketball. He taught at Paintsville for 20 years, in Johnson County for eight and in Michigan for seven more years.

Bob and Ruby Daniels have two children, Lance and Lori. They also have “seven wonderful grandchildren,” says Ruby.

Ruby, a stay-at-home mom, said the family was “raised on ball.”

They have no complaints though. “It’s been an interesting life, a good life,” Bob says.

Ruby didn’t mind her husband spending days teaching and nights officiating because it helped to pay the bills. “It was a good side income,” she said, “and I knew he loved it.”

Sure enough, he did.

Daniels would take his son Lance to games with him. He remembers once when he was officiating a game between Sheldon Clark and Johns Creek and the game got out of hand. Fans spilled onto the floor and started taking swings at each other. He found Lance hiding under the scorer’s table.

Bob also remembered a game in Mullins when Phelps was playing with high-scoring Ervin Stepp.

“Anyway, the guy in the stands was calling me everything in the world,” Bob said. “The next morning, we were eating breakfast, and Lance said ‘Why do they call you a pot-bellied crook?’ I told him, when you’re refereeing, you’re the jury and you’ve got to make a quick decision. He was really disturbed over that.”

Lance Daniels was a good athlete himself, playing on Paintsville High School’s 15th Region champion basketball teams during the John Pelphrey-Joey Couch era. Today, Lance is an attorney for the U.S. Army and stationed in Fort Bragg, N.C.

His sister, Lori Rice, lives near Indianapolis and is a registered nurse.

Ruby said she remembered going to games and bringing her children along.

“The children and I would be watching the game and some didn’t like Bob’s refereeing,” she said. “I wanted them to know he belonged to us. I’d turn to one of the kids and say ‘I think Dad is doing a great job tonight, don’t you?’’’

Bob Daniels was a referee who tried to be fair.

“I tried to do three things when officiating: Be consistent in my calls, keep the game under control and be on top of the play when I called it,” he said. “That was my three philosophies.”

Daniels was a former basketball and baseball player for the Van Lear Bank Mules, graduating in 1955, before going on to Morehead State where he also played baseball.

He remembered umpiring a baseball game between Salyersville and Hazel Green. The Salyersville coach was arguing every ball-strike call and, by the third inning, Daniels had heard enough.

“I went down beside him and ordered the pitcher to throw a ball (to the plate),” he said. “He did and I called it a strike. The coach said ‘You can’t do that!’ and I said ‘Why not, you’ve been doing it for three innings!’’’

Daniels officiated in the 16th Region for several years.

“I called for (Russell’s) Marvin Meredith and thought he was one of the greatest coaches,” he said. “I remember Doc Murphy at the old Hitchins High School and George Cooke at Fairview. He was my baseball coach at Morehead.”

In the days before assigning secretaries, Daniels once officiated 68 games in one season. He said he liked officiating in the 16th Region because of assigning secretary Bob Crager who “was very fair and didn’t play any politics on assigning games.”

Daniels has a hearing disability — 50 percent loss in one ear and total loss in the other — but that hasn’t been a hinderance in officiating. Matter of fact, it can be a blessing.

“He tells people he had an advantage over them,” Ruby said. “Lance always said ‘Dad doesn’t care what they say to them. He can’t hear them anyway.’ That was exactly right.”

These days, Daniels’ officiating jobs are limited to the little guys in elementary school because that’s what he loves the most.

“Those kids need someone who is consistent, someone who is on top of the play and someone who can keep the game under control,” he said.

The philosophies never change for the good refs.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.