It's playoff time. The winner goes to Baltimore Arena to compete for the city championship, and the loser stays home. Three seconds remain in the game, and the home team, down by a point, huddles on its bench as the coach diagrams the final shot.

Awaiting the horn, I stand on the baseline holding the ball. I've been down this road before. If I'm lucky, someone will take a perimeter jumper. But the chances are greater that the ball will come into the paint, and I'll have to make the call, or the no-call as the case may be, on which the season hinges.

It's bedlam as the capacity crowd rocks the gym, and I can barely hear the the photographer kneeling beside me. I lean closer. "Better you out there than me," he says.

Whenever I officiate, my wife, a Tar Heel who loves basketball, will attend only one or two games a season. Not long ago, she witnessed a heated struggle between two of Baltimore's finest high school teams. It was magnificent ball: a double-overtime game featuring acrobatic dunks, numerous blocked shots, silky ballhandling and five consecutive three-pointers.

During the drive home, she marveled at the level of skill and then asked if I had heard the crowd. One especially vocal group has accused me (I'm sanitizing the language for this family newspaper) of having unnatural desires pertaining to my mother and had demanded that I perform upon myself an anatomically impossible act. Of course I'd heard -- I would have had to be stone deaf no to -- but I was neither surprised nor bothered.

I have never had anything thrown at me. (I'll never forget the account of the Division I official who went to the table to report a foul and saw a knife stick into the floor next to his foot.) But I have experienced my share of criticism from the benches. This, I learned early, goes along with the job. There's nowhere to hide out there.

Some coaches stand and glare balefully. Others holler about our supposed blindness and lack of consistency, shopworn complaints that have been made so often as to have little impact. Some of the more inventive remarks, however, have stayed with me for years: "Ref, I could get sued if my players go home maimed," and "Fitzpatrick, you couldn't referee a hopscotch game."

One junior college coach was losing and had just seen three charge-block calls go against his team. I knew that I'd get an earful when I went to the table. "You ain't nothing but a ------- generic official," he snorted disgustedly. I had never been called "generic" before (or since), and I couldn't help a fleeting smile after I turned back to the floor. The coach had definitely gotten my attention.

During a time out, I have seen an impeccably dressed fan rage at my fellow official. The fan's belly shook, and his eyes bulged, and spit sprayed from his mouth as he barked at the official across the court. He reminded me of a rabid dog. I doubt that Dr. James Naismith foresaw such bestiality when he invented the game.

I have been blasted in the newspapers, and, after close games of consequence, the phone in my home has rung in the middle of the night (unidentified callers, of course). This is clearly no job for the timid, and it is little wonder that officials constantly remind one another: "Don't take all that ---- personally." I have lost all tolerance for those misguided souls who bubble during parties: "It must be wonderful to get paid to watch basketball!"

Why, I have frequently been asked, and in darker moments have sometimes asked myself, don't I find a more tranquil way to spend my free time? I certainly don't officiate for the money. After fifteen years of refereeing that encompasses Bureau of Recreation, high school, and junior college, I have never made more than $70 a game. (College Division I officials, on the other rTC hand, now make more than $500 a game plus expenses in some conferences.)

One of officiating's attractions is that it allows former athletes to remain close to sports in a different role. In addition, it is enjoyable to associate with athletes in their teens and twenties. This keeps one young at heart and thereby helps to preclude a failing that has afflicted multitudes: taking oneself too seriously. Finally, there is considerable camaraderie among officials. Although a few have tried, you can't do it alone out there. A good official always covers his partner's back, and I have formed some lasting friendships.

But for me, and I suspect for numerous other referees, officiating's greatest satisfaction comes from meeting the harsh challenges of the job. Many people diligently avoid situations that can become confrontational. They shun tasks that can generate swift and public evaluation. Officials relish such challenges, or they don't last long.

It takes an unusual sort of personality, I have concluded over the years, to choose a closely scrutinized avocation where anonymity is the ultimate accomplishment. Almost always, the best official is the one who's never noticed.

This is far from easy. When I write a poor sentence, I merely revise it in the privacy of my study. I can't do the same with a blown call. Words never move from where I put them, and I have never gotten screened at the typewriter.

When I have an unproductive session at my desk, the futility remains between me and my wastebasket; there are no howls of contempt. On the other hand, a poorly officiated game, there for hundreds or thousands to see, goes irrevocably into the scorebook. Officiating proves an unforgiving task.

And it's getting harder. More teams are applying full-court pressure on defense and are pushing the ball up the floor at every opportunity. Scores can run very high -- I had a junior-college game in 1990 where the teams combined for 236 points -- and keeping the floor covered proves a constant challenge. Many an official, badly out of position, has embarrassed himself with the waggishly named "long-distance call." The three-man officiating crew solves this problem, but, because of the increased cost, one wonders to what extent this measure will be adopted outside Division I.

Moreover, because of the increasing size and athletic ability of the players, the game is played more frequently above the rim, a situation that generates its own set of problems. The willing suspension of disbelief applies as much to officiating basketball as it does to analyzing poetry. I once saw a 6'4" player pin a shot well above the top of the box directly above the rim, and I gulped a bit before I blew the whistle.

The official must remain ever vigilant for goaltending as well as offensive and defensive basket interference. A missed call here, obvious to everyone except the referee, is downright humiliating.

Finally, the game constantly grows more physical. Despite all claims to the contrary, basketball is very much a contact sport. In theory, the rule is simple: contact not generating an advantage should be ignored. In practice, it is far harder to apply consistently.

Bodies can collide and crash loudly to the floor without a whistle. On the other hand, a silent brush of the shooter's elbow, a favorite trick of the wily defender, must be called a foul, as must the seemingly innocuous hand on the dribbler's hip that prevents his turning and driving to the basket.

The charge-block remains, by long odds, basketball's toughest call. To the dismay of officials, this situation occurs more and more often as coaches, hating uncontested lay-ups, teach players to step in and try to draw the charge. Bodies litter the lane far more frequently than we would prefer, and, unlike omniscient television commentators, we have no recourse to slow-motion replays.

Despite the huge potential for chaos, there are indeed games where all goes smoothly. The players make their shots -- it's always easier to officiate when the ball goes in the basket -- and the floor opens up (there's relatively little banging in the paint), and the coaches are happy with the calls, and the spectators never even know that we're on the floor.

"Isn't it easy when you know what you're doing?" my partner remarks laughingly in the locker room after the game. The showers are hot; nobody bangs on the door, and we walk contentedly out of a now-quiet arena.

"Vince, is there anything else that you'd rather do with you time?" he asks as we part. I can't think of anything, although I'm fully aware that the next night's game may well generate a far more bellicose scenario. For an official, any success can last only until the next opening tip. But we're not complaining, and we're

never bored.

Vince Fitzpatrick, author of "H. L. Mencken" and co-author of "The Complete Sentence Workout Book," is a basketball official living in Towson.