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Because you are out of position for a swipe tag and pulled foot calla t first -- and those two happen more often than the next play at third.

Jesus Christ people...make a leap. The point is "doing what he's supposed to be doing" is a lazy, dangerous and stupid statement. R1 leading off first who gets hit by a screaming line drive, where he has no Godly chance whatsoever of avoiding contact, is "doing what he is supposed to be doing" and is still out. There are dozens of cases where batters, runners, fielders and coaches are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing , but still get penalized because the rules say so, and SH*# happens. (ie. no intent, no negligence, no chance) "Doing what he's supposed to be doing" is a meaningless statement...and rarely matters....it should not be used in baseball....ever.

BU. The thing is not to go to 3B, but go to the 45'--doing that means that there's usually only about 60' to move before you have an angle.

I have never worked for a college assignor who didn't want us on the 1B side. I'd rather take the chance of having someone blocking my view of the slide than having an angle that doesn't allow me to see 3/4ths of the criteria I need to see to determine if it's legal or not.

Since several feathers have been ruffled, I want to clarify something...maybe I could have worded my last post better yesterday, but at no point did I make reference to the impact of the virus being blown out of proportion. What I was attempting to state was - I think we should be playing baseball, but that’s out of my hands. What I believe that has been blown out of proportion is umpires complaining about the situation. I thought that was the point I was making. My entire post was about how I do not believe the NCAA owes anyone anything. Again, maybe I could have done a better job in how I worded that. Now that I’ve hopefully cleared that up for everyone, I’m done.

I’m not going to continue to argue the point but I’ll say this... Your argument would hold much more water if you took it up with your supervisors or assigners than the NCAA. You say “a good portion of their umpires never got a chance to do a game”. The truer statement is ALL of “their umpires” didn’t get a chance to work a game because the NCAA itself doesn’t assign any regular season games. The NCAA’s obligation is to prepare college umpires for the season and provide them with information and guidance throughout the year. Yes, that costs money. Shipping alone for probably 3000+ CCA manuals and rule books has to be extremely costly. The technology behind an online meeting/clinic, video editing/publishing, rules testing, etc is also very expensive. Now, for the argument that a good portion of umpires didn’t get a chance to work... The season for D2 and D3 started January 31. I live in Missouri (not the most accommodating climate for February baseball) and worked 25 games prior to everyone closing up shop. It is no one’s fault that umpires who live in a geographically challenging area didn’t get a chance to work. I know umpires in Minnesota who haven’t worked until May in the past few years. They haven’t asked for refunds of their NCAA fees. It’s the luck of the draw. We can only control what we can control... Don't like your schedule? Control what you can to change it. Go to a clinic and get better/get exposure. What is your availability? Can you work at noon on Tuesday or are you only a weekend warrior? Can you travel or do you have to stay close to home? Look, I think we should be playing baseball right now. I think this thing has been blown out of proportion. I’ve personally lost $25,000 this spring. But it’s not the NCAA’s fault and the NCAA doesn’t owe any of us any sort of refund. Would it be nice if the conference’s stepped up and provided some financial relief? Yes...but not the NCAA.

Why don't they have a class for Underwater Basket Weaving? I mean, they seem to have everything else on there......

I did use cue cards one game with my team to get a point across - too many incidents of missed signs...so, I did this one game to ensure there were no excuses. Funny thing is, for the first half of the game the other team wouldn't believe the signs. One other time i gave my signs, the batter did the "twirl the finger" universal sign language for "do that again please"...after three attempts I finally said "for crying out loud, just bunt".

Counterpoint? "They give you that stick for a reason, son"

I feel ya. It's 66 right now and supposed to be a high of 72 this afternoon. Perfect baseball weather. *sigh*