If you're a photographer, they give you a camera. If you're a writer, they give you a typewriter. If you're an umpire, they give you an unseen object and they call it a strike zone, and nobody seems to agree with you no matter what you call.
Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it's all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter.
When you're in between the white lines, the game face is on. I was only focused on the task at hand - out, safe, ball, strike - leaving little time to think about how special a player, moment or game happened to be.