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The sober part has reinforced every stereotype I've ever heard about Wisconsin lol

Welcome back!

Honestly, the D-home plate logo is much sexier than the upside-down fast food restaurant, too.

I used to be active on here about a decade ago when I was a rookie umpire. Back then I worked a bunch of summer HS games (when WI still had sanctioned summer baseball) along with some youth/travel ball. I even had the chance to work a 14U championship with @MadMax. Around the time Wisconsin moved to a single spring HS season, I became a varsity head coach and later an athletic director, so my umpiring opportunities mostly disappeared. I still picked up a few games here and there and spent a few summers assigning for an inner-city league. Fast forward to now: I’m no longer coaching, but part of my role as AD is overseeing baseball for our district. After losing a long-time assigner, we’ve had a rough time finding quality, competent umpires (and yes… sober ones—unfortunately not a joke). 😅 So this year I’m getting back on the field myself. I’m also implementing an internal umpire-rating system for our conference and hope to take over some or all of the assigning next year.

How is @MadMax not all over this post?

...

Imagine the commentary. "Timmy up to bat, 0-5 today and he's been hit and he's CHARGING THE MOUND!, TIMMY gets picked up by the umpire and it seems like this is ov- TIMMY IS NOW AIRBORNE HEADING TO MARS!"

Pick them up? Hell no. Punt. Always punt.

I don't see how the players' physical appearance matters in this.

So....I purchased the 'Universal Davis' pads, because they come with a patch. The other pads (the Cloud4's which I purchased for my two Davis Mirages), don't come with the patch. I took the patch off of the Universal, and put it on my current setup. It's that sexy.

The business side of this fascinates me because it’s clear to me at least that Derek and the Davis crew are spending a lot of money on R&D to produce better products across the board.

I have this also. I only use ball first indicators, got this one, and it seemed to very quickly go 'loose', or spinny. So I purchased another, and had the same result. I went back to the champion ball first. I've actually been wrestling with the idea of football down indicators, just because I'm annoyed at indicators these days.

All-Star 4-Dial Die Cast Steel Umpire Indicator - 3/2/2 Count It's notched so you can feel which number each dial is on, so you don't have to look at it. It's quite heavy and can serve as a lethal projectile, if needed.