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This what happened to me. I just got tired of the BS over stupid meaningless SH*# during a game. My tolerance level just isn't there. I don't know if it's getting older or what. But as I slink into retirement, I just don't want the aggravation. Stepping back from umpiring a little bit has helped. I no longer do the 9 hour adult baseball DH ordeals. I don't instruct at clinics (my first year in about 20 years), I don't go to endless useless meetings, I'm just not involved at any other aspect but just doing the occasional game. Honestly, I did a game last week, and even though I had an assistant coach bitch about something stupid, It was pretty darn ejoyable. I just want to peacefully and gracefully exit from the game before I'm one of "those guys" that either can't move or doesn't want to listen. It's just a hobby for me, and it needs to be fun. When it ceases to be fun, that's when I'm done. It's getting close, but cutting back has definitely helped. As I've always said, everyone has a shelf life. I just don't want to be past my expiration date and not know it.

Imagine how ABS could help a knuckleballer if ABS actually called a whole zone and not a 2D plane.

I’m going to join the skull cap wearing crew.

Timing...such a great topic. The element of timing within the ball/strike-verse that I find so fascinating is...the consistency of an umpire's timing. To include my own of course. As last year wound to a close, I had some college guys tell me, "Your strike timing is great. Your ball call is too quick." And I started to hear this repeatedly so, I spent some time addressing it. Then one night it hit me... We are all trained to stay DOWN on our ball calls, call the pitch a ball...and then stand up to reset for the next pitch. And for a strike call we are all trained to come UP on our strike call, call the pitch a strike married to a mechanic...and then reset for the next pitch. Ok, nothing revolutionary there...wait for it... In order to mirror our timing so the interval is the same whether ball or strike...we must make room in the sequence on the ball call FOR THE STANDING UP part of the strike call which we don't do on a ball call! When we SLOW DOWN the ball call, just a beat or two...that beat or two is the space filled between when we process the strike call and when we stand up. As soon as I added that beat or two to my ball call, it brought both calls beautifully together. If you were to close your eyes and just listen for the pop of the mitt, the pause and then the ball or strike call...you would hear little change to the timing of either call. ~Dawg

Thanks to all the replies. It all helps. I'm sure it's a bad stretch that will improve. (Doesn't mean I can see the end of the college road not fay ahead. Special thanks to those who have said I've made a difference in their umpiring career. That's the best compliment I can ever receive. ❤️

I know a lot of people are going to come in here and say, "If you had interference, why didn't you call it? Why did you wait until after the play to say you had interference?"...and so on. I get it. That's NOT technically plate's call but...if you saw it when it happened? You're an umpire. Call it. 1) I have interference. 2) It's U1's call. You got together and decided to call interference. The proper procedure is for the umpire whose call that was, (U1 here) to go to the "impacted" coach first. (The coach of the team the call is going against.) Was this an NFHS rule game? If so, the ball is dead on the interference so, R2 would be out and the BR is awarded 1B. "Coach, after conferring with my partner, we have interference. Your runner from second base is out on the interference call and the batter runner is awarded first base." Then U1 should go over to the other coach and inform him of the final ruling. Oh...and make sure you send the coach back to his dugout BEFORE you get together with your partner. 5-1-1e is your NFHS citation. 3) Yes, your partner had his opinion..."that's nothing" and you can have something different. You had interference? Call interference. Then you can get together and talk about it. Please make sure you are 100% sure of that in real time. 4) Correct...see above. 5) That is entirely your judgement. As described, I have interference and I am enforcing it as indicated above. ~Dawg

If that happened, we’d have a lot more curveballs, sweepers, and sliders thrown… and Umpires such as #63, #58, #83, #51, #49… and others who are “conditioned” to call that low front-edge of the three-dimensional zone… wouldn’t be getting as much grief.

This 👆🏼 is why Boone & the Yankees (and other particular coaching staffs) want “those pitches” called Balls, and force the catchers to challenge, instead of called Strikes and forcing (his) Batters to challenge. He may be a ferret, but he’s a shrewd ferret.

Go all the way and track from a RHP or a LHP, pitching to a RHB or a LHB, further, an Umpire being right eye or left eye dominate. Left handed or right handed catcher.... sorry, got a little carried away.

Walks are up 7.3% as pitches in the strike zone dropped markedly and the average time of games increased by 5 minutes through the first full month of Major League Baseball’s initial season with robot umpires. Walks are up from 6.8 per game through April of last year. Over a full season, the average would be the highest since 2000 and the ninth highest in major league history, but walks have declined since the season’s start and averaged 6.98 per game from April 21-30. Could it be that the ABS system us changing actual strikes to balls (cases where it is wrong) more often than it is correcting erroneous balls to strikes? Not just the horizontal vs. the vertical, but I'd like to see stats on the distances (particularly in each direction). I did that random, non-scientific one-day survey a while back and showed that "errors" (calling 3D strikes as 2D balls) were slightly more prevalent than fixing egregious errors. We've been to three Cardinal games this season, and I will say I don't think the ABS challenge has much to do with the game time. I know the article said MLB is attributing 64 seconds added for ABS challenges, but in the park, it is very easy to miss the fact that a challenge is even occurring. I would bet (ahh!) most people in the park didn't even know it occurred. Since the system is measuring every pitch in real time (not going back and reviewing it), the turnaround is very fast. I imagine generating the graphic and sending it to the board is the most time consuming piece. The stolen base statistic surprises me, given the rule changes meant to goose that number.

sorry MadMax...wanted to have my hand up first...and was about to eat breakfest...and the dog ate my homework!!

I'm with @love to ump . . . Here is the rationale: 1.) Fish 2.) Fish Fish

Agreed. Awarding strikes against would be useful. (which made me think of this classic

The bench jockeying nonsense - where teams are more concerned with dissing the other team than just cheering - is filtering our way. They think they can laugh after calls, chirp us etc. The problem with baseball is we have limited tools. There isn’t a penalty box, a flag to throw, or a technical foul to assess. Those are easy things to toss out there. Immediately hurts the team and/or player. Gets everyone’s attention. In baseball…you can remove them from the game. Nothing else matters. If I don’t remove you from the game, you’re going to hear back from me. No, I’m not ignoring it. I can’t believe the number of players that will chirp at umpires. And if the coach is a moron, going to him isn’t going to help anything. I wish we had something else. Removal for periods of time. You’re next at bat is an out or forfeited. Your team loses an out or the other team gets a runner. I don’t know. But we need something.

Like it or not, those platforms are the way people are communicating, connecting and “learning” and that’s not going to change. If you want a new generation of umpires that are educated in the field, I’d suggest some of the excellent knowledge, experience, and talent on these forums be apart of that future and join in the conversations on those platforms. Heck, if @MadMax were smart, he’d start a TikTok channel. He’s got the knowledge, the personality, and the looks to be a REAL benefit to the profession as an “influencer”. A good chunk of the information being shared by “umpires” on the gram or tt is just crap and, outside of myself, its rare to see anyone respond with actual rule book quotes. There is almost zero information on gear. Zero information on positioning. Heck, half of the umpires on those platforms don’t even use obstruction/interference correctly. I try to steer some of the young ones here but they don’t understand forums, to them they are all boomer Reddit trash. Believe it or not, umpires are generally well liked on those platforms (more tt than gram), coaches and parents do make very positive and supportive videos and comments about us, far more than you’d imagine.

The 20-seconds between pitches... not between pitchers. The batter and pitcher have the same time limit... because of that it is unenforceable.

The timing rule between pitches... It is unenforceable as written.

No surprise given how many Seattleites and Californians that are moving your way (said by someone was/is from those places)

When a toaster looks like this, you talk to it.

Vanity, vanity... all is vanity. What difference does it really make? If the association you're auditioning for is a solely collegiate association (or, alternatively, led by collegiate umpires), I can venture an experienced guess why they perseverate on sartorial details like this. Insidiously, it's not someone who's 80 years old; oh no no, instead, it's someone younger... think mid-40s / 50s... What's absolutely maddening, is working for one particular association/assigner, who insists that we are to "look like the Big League guys", yet another association – often at the same or similar level of competition – insists, nay mandates, that we are not "Big League guys" and we will never wear that style of uniform (ie. shirts, shirt colors (ahem, Wisconsin just a few years ago), jackets, pants, etc.). Like that assigner / association head has a chip on his shoulder, or a grudge against the Big Leagues because he... oh... ohhhhhh... I get it. 😉 Again, if you provide the uniforms, then you have all the control and justification of directing what we wear. If ya don't... If you're too freakin' cheap or that much of a control freak over your little fiefdom...

Thanks for sharing and best of luck as you keep recovering! I'm learning that there is no stop recovery phase, it's keep moving and keep getting better every day or you stop getting better and lose the range of movement.