scrounge

I doubt it's worth fighting....but directly tying assignments to purchasing a specified item from a single approved vendor sounds like it's venturing awfully close to employer territory, with all its attendant responsibilities. Just yesterday, the Kansas Supreme Court found for a group of strippers who successfully argued that somewhat similar requirements (requirement to work under specified house rules, minimum prices, etc) made them employees and not independent contractors and therefore entitled to worker's compensation and back wages. I haven't done the requisite....uh, research, into this situation to see if it's applicable, but just found it interesting after seeing it on Yahoo a few mins ago.

I can't even comprehend that, to be honest. What on earth can they do at age 3? Some of them are still wearing pullups, ferpete'ssake! Unless it's tee ball with a big plastic yellow bat and a wiffle ball, it just sounds way too early to me.

There's virtually nothing that gets me angrier faster than these bullies trying to intimidate youth umpires. In our local league - a very good one btw - they use 13 and older umpires for base umps and 16 yr and up for plate for 9/10 yr olds, with a youth umpire and a certified (generally adult) umpire for 11/12 yr old. I don't do a lot of games for them, since I usually am doing other games or have a kid in the league, but on the times I have I am EXTREMELY protective of the kids. I will not tolerate for even a second any loudmouth daddy coach trying to browbeat a kid who's just trying to stay in the game, make his $15, and apply his 2 hour training class to a mildly competitive non-travel recreational league. Fortunately, I haven't had too many incidents but I won't hesitate to step in and make it clear that this won't be happening on this field today - AT ALL.

This sounds like a timing issue, to me. If you're too quick, you won't let the pitch finish and you decide on the pitch before it finishes low. The Davis stance probably helped you get that look through the zone. Someday I'll move to it, but I just haven't felt comfortable enough to use it in anything but summer ball. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD You're spot on, it was definitely a timing issue on top of distance. I slowed WAAAY down and it helped a ton. Now that I think about it, probably more than the stance change, which has helped my consistency. It's not a true GD/HOK, but more of a hybrid HOK/heel and toe. Basically the slot and feet positioning of the heel and toe with the hands on the top of the triple knee shin guards (tucking the slot hand in at the pitch with the other hand generally well protected behind the catcher).

The real long-term danger to this sport isn't the spectacular but relatively rare massive hit, it's the repetitive subconcussive hits that are endemic to the game. That's where the latest research on CTE and long-term damage seems to say. I don't how you could ever reduce that risk. In 20 years, I'm not sure high school football survives, at least in anywhere near its current form. It sounds crazy to say it - but boxing used to be the country's 2nd most popular sport and look where it is today. Frankly, I'm not all that upset that my kids aren't playing, and I love the game. But I don't know how much of a future it has.

My area of development in my 1st year was not calling too many low strikes. My initial stance was too close or something, because I was consistently calling the hollow and often straying down to the shin, really too low. Got a lot better and more consistent the next year after more experience and moving back a little into more of a Gerry Davis/HOK stance. It's still an area that I consciously work on so as not to stray too low, but I think that lower knee strike - especially if well framed or hitting the spot - needs to be called, esp if we're not going over the belly button much.

I agree, they're responsible. But if it's a youth travel game with daddy coaches using OBR rules (fairly rare around here, which mostly use modified NFHS) then I'd probably make a quick mention at the plate meeting, simply to avoid a yelling match later as some preventative officiating.

That actually may be practical, in a sense. Could require all coaches to umpire one pre-season scrimmage, not involving their own team.

HOT XXX ACTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Manti T'eo's girlfriend in the shower nekkid!!!

Well, not as long as Lance Armstrong is in the world, but he could be in the back row of the team picture!

Ohio does the same in football, uses full NFHS rules but uses an entirely custom and very detailed mechanics book. No need to even open the NFHS mechanics book, it's been superseded.

mostly the push by K. McNeely to enforce/reinforce NFHS mechanics - esp last year. Perhaps not all repeated the message with the same fervor as it was delivered

and yes, Bonds WAS popped - in the sense that we know definitively that he used them. He admitted it! He just claimed he didn't know that was what the cream and clear was [wink wink]. Screw him, screw Sosa, and screw Mcgwire. Yea, it's not fair and LOTS of others used - but it's a good enough start to me to exclude the most prominent poster children. As to the rest, I think there's perfectly non-steroid reasons to vote no. Morris? Even as a White Sox fan, I say meh. Biggio? Longevity more than excellence. Martinez? Maybe, I guess, I dunno. Lee Smith? No - Hall of Very Good, sure, not Hall of Fame.

Yep Here in central Ohio, it's pretty straightforward - we WILL use all NFHS mechanics as described in the umpire's manual. The last couple yrs, especially last yr, it was a point of emphasis on evaluations. There's more flexibility for non-school games, simply because there isn't the evaluation infrastructure, but it makes it easier - pretty much everyone knows the same thing and is on the same page. Pretty much the only major difference is the PU rotating to 3B on a no-one-on triple...do it for school games since it's full Fed mechanics, but most guys don't do it for summer/non-school.

generally, long sleeve shirt but if it's cold enough have no hangup about donning the jacket. No one around here uses plate coats.

actually, the two mandated colors in Ohio for school ball are navy (shirts are navy) and grey, with grey being fairly common. If it's the same fabric (Smitty charcoal bags with Smitty charcoal pants), I don't think it looks bad at all.

ooops...as to my post, scratch that - reverse it.

Under NCAA rules and only NCAA rules, if a team goes for 2 the defense could potentially run back an interception/fumble all the way down the field and score 2 pts for themselves. In HS and NFL rules, the ball is dead once it's obvious the offense won't score a try/PAT. However, a virtually unknown rule is that a safety on a try attempt is worth 1 point (a TD, which a runback of an INT/fumble, is 2 pts, same as the try). What happened was the PAT kick was blocked, an Oregon player caught the ball past the line of scrimmage, so it's like a punt. He got caught in traffic and retreated on his own into the end zone, where he was being tackled, lateraled the ball to a teammate who then fumbled and got tackled. So KSU scored a safety - the exceedingly rare 1 pt safety.

Rare, as it's only happened twice in NCAA history (as well as twice in NAIA/JUCO). And oddly enough, Brad Nessler was the announcer both times!

I have both an All-Star HSM and a Diamond with TW pads, not really for one as a backup per se but sometimes I like to go with one vs the other. If it's a bright sunny day and the field has a deep backstop I often wear the traditional mask. The silver Diamond just seems to disappear better. If there's a breeze, I'll wear the HSM. Believe it or not, with the vent designs in the All-Star it's actually cooler if there's a breeze than a mask and hat. If the field has a short backstop or an overhanging one, I'll almost exclusively use the HSM - got hit TWICE by rebounds this year (once in the back, once in the head). And finally, if I'm working a tournament for a certain assigner around here who I know has a strong prejudice against HSMs (yes, true situation) then I'll wear the Diamond. It's nice to have both options depending on the situation/feeling that day.

That's not how it works, it depends on who has them, demographics, history, etc. As you say, there's 300 MM already here - so we take away those from the very people who'll obey the law and aren't the problem? If you could white-sheet it and start over, then this is a relevant debate. Maybe you only have 100 MM after a ban. But they'll be in all the wrong hands. And, before the insults fly, the facts in that are just wrong. Finland and Switzerland, for example, have HIGHER rates of firearms ownership (it's practically required in Switzerland). Both have far lower rates of violence. In the mid-20th century, British firearms ownership was higher and they had virtually no restrictions - you could buy a shotgun right on the street. But even then their rates of violent crime were far lower than the US. So the causality argument is simply wrong on its face. Fair enough - CNN and your local newspaper are then limited to only using hand-operating printing presses. Since we're all about Original Intent and all... Guns - like cars, cans of gasoline, barrels of fertilizer, and airplanes - are amoral tools, to be used for good or ill depending on the operator. By the way, the biggest mass murders in US history all involved those three things, not a gun in sight. The purpose of any tool is what the human behind it gives it. Of course weapons can kill - they can kill an innocent kindergartner or a violent burglar. You're right, the China knife attack is a bad example. A better one is the approx million or so times a year when the presence of a weapon averts a crime, either through direct use or simply being brandished. The stats are there, in numerous refereed studies. Alright, this is just unconnected to reality. Every time a state expands CCW, we hear this "Wild West' fantasy, and it never has happened. And CCW holders prevent crime with regularity. Google "Nick Meli". Don't know him? He's the CCW holder - lawfully obtained - who was at the Oregon mall. He didn't shoot because he was concerned about someone in the background and didn't want to hit them. But as soon as the gunman spotted Nick, he shortly thereafter took his own life. What would the body count have been if Nick wasn't there, not only with his CCW but also exercising discretion - as his training taught him. This was just last week. So 'never' just happened, as it does all the time. If I thought that a ban or any of the proposed restrictions would save one child, I'd melt them down myself. But I simply don't think they will. And all the while we're going to waste enormous time and energy debating silly things like banning the sale of a tiny fraction of rifles because they're painted black or look scary instead of solving root causes like lack of mental health treatment, lack of reporting for background checks, etc. And it's only a matter of time till we're here again.

Assault rifles have been essentially banned since 1934, we're primarily talking about lookalikes and cosmetic issues. Is a Bushmaster really more lethal because it's painted black and has a different grip than a Mini-14 with a wood stock? They shoot the exact same round, can take low or high capacity magazines (which anyone with a little sheet metal and a spring can modify), the bullet doesn't know which gun shot it, but one looks scarier than the other. That's the basis for public policy I guess. The first 'assault weapons' ban did nothing for crime, the next one if it comes won't either. And with 300 MILLION firearms already in this country, frankly this is a stunningly irrelevant debate. It's too late. And unlike drugs that require constant reimportation, firearms are durable items that last decades - only need to smuggle/import them once. Ammo is plentiful, much easier to make than drugs or alcohol, and easy to smuggle. Short of a total ban - which would require invasive searches and a police state beyond any paranoid imagination and make Prohibition x 1000 a reality - we won't accomplish a thing. Except maybe make it worse. And the most tragic thing is that we'll waste an ENORMOUS amount of time and energy fighting these ancillary issues, when we'd accomplish far more and help many more people and prevent more tragedies by improving mental health treatment. There are scant options outside of ERs that can't treat mental patients and prisons that make them worse. And it would be much easier to build a coalition on both sides to improve mental health treatment and reform firearms purchase and background check laws to better clarify eligibility. Look at the common thread through Columbine, Aurora, Gabby Giffords, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, etc. It's not a type of weapon or method of acquisition or video games or anything else - it's young (16-24) men with personality or mental health disorders. That's not just a specious correlation - it's causation. But that's not 'sexy'....more headlines for Dianne Feinstein to attack the 'evil' looking instrument, when by her own admission she can't even define what an assault weapon is. And by kicking the can down the road, we'll just waste time and energy until it sadly happens again. People are screaming "how many children need to die before we do 'something' about guns". I ask how many children need to die before we stop these intractable, quixotic crusades against an inanimate tool and finally start addressing the actual causes.

Had a similar issue in a basketball game last year. Low-level boys JV, kinda sloppy. We start the game calling 6 fouls on the visiting team. I think I called 2 or 3 of them, so it wasn't like my whistle was silent. Midway thru the 2nd qtr, the home team finally gets their first foul, a fairly routine hack on a shot. Immediately, the home coach erupts "CALL IT BOTH WAYS". I actually stopped for a second and stared incredulously at him. I thought after I should have said "we're finally starting to, coach".

I've never seen a coach in uniform in rec ball, only seen it a handful of times in travel ball, about half the time in middle school ball, most but not all the time for JV ball, and pretty much all the time for varsity school ball.