umpire_scott

I also want to say that I have no issue taking advice and using it or not using it. Multiple high-level umpires posted on this topic. The only one I "defended" my position against was the one that was arrogant and condescending in his reply. I have had multiple umpires private message me during my time on this forum and tell me that they won't even post anymore because they are tired of being belittled by some of these "high-level" umpires. I find it very sad that these "high-level" umpires are not bothered by this enough to change their colors a little and be more accommodating. Sometimes I'm a dreamer and I feel like if I stand up to it enough that some of them will get the hint. It hasn't worked so far as they just belittle me. But I don't really care. I know within the realm of what I do I am a good umpire. Am I a high level umpire? No and I don't pretend to be. But most high-level umpires are instructing based upon their level of games. That does not always apply to what I'm doing. And for once when I bring that up I'd love to hear a high-level umpire back off their stance and admit there might be another perspective.

I agree that it is too much to cover all the differences. But the coaches know most of the other ones or they don't come up. I've had the live ball balk happen twice this month. In fact it happened today during a 16U game. I did not do the plate meeting as I was the BU. My partner did not mention the delayed dead ball balk. R3 and F1 balks. I call it. Batter swings and pops ball up to shallow center. R3 stops and has no idea what to do. F4 goes back to field ball but does not catch it. BR never moves from the batter's box. After the ball hits the ground I wait and wait for someone on either side to do something. BR should have easily made it to first on the play and R3 would have scored negating the balk. But after a few seconds of everyone standing around not knowing what to do I called "time" and awarded the balk. I didn't want to but I didn't know what else to do. F4 was not making any effort to retire BR at first (which wouldn't have made a difference anyway as that would have created the balk being awarded). BR was not going to run to first because he thought is was a dead ball balk. And R3 was looking at me as if to ask "Am I allowed to go home?".

Nor do I know if you would. Maybe that's why it was unclear to you.

I did explain it. I said " I would never have engaged the coach as the ball was still live". That cannot be any more clear. I then added that if i felt that words needed to be exchanged I would call time. This is because I'm not going to "exchange words" across the field for everyone to be a part of. If the coach was saying things that I felt needed addressing I would call time and we would discuss them face to face. I'm quite certain if Maven, Grayhawk, or some others on here had stated something similar you would not have required them to be so clear to the minute detail. I would never assume any umpire on this forum would call time in the middle of a live ball situation just to address a coach.

Doing a 13U AAA game today. AAA is supposed to be the top talent but it sure didn't look like it. First inning pitch comes in about 6 inches above the top of the zone. F2 barely gets his mitt on it as it plunks me square in the mask and bounds out in front of home plate. I'm a little annoyed of course. After throwing the ball back to F1 he addresses me. I'm expecting "sorry about that won't happen again". Instead he asks me if it was a strike or a ball. I just laughed. I so wanted to say "A ball. The same thing every close pitch is going to be if you keep letting me get hit".

Catchers are more likely to lose strikes by allowing the ball to drive the mitt away from the zone than they are by pulling it into the zone. If the pull is egregious and the pitch was clearly out of the zone I'll see that and ball it.

FWIW the main reason for the statement that I make is to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the coaches calling out to one umpire asking if they had a better angle or saw a pulled foot. A few years ago I was having a lot of coaches do this. Even if they called time they would go to the umpire that they wanted to change the call rather than the umpire that made the call. In addition to this they often felt and sometimes still do feel that an umpire that does not go to his partner to get a second opinion is arrogant and stubborn. So I witnessed another umpire instruct this at the plate meeting. I felt it held some merit and incorporated a shorter version in my plate meeting. Once again I would never do this at high school and above. Paid coaches should know how to act, and if they don't then they deal with the consequences. When I do tournament ball I like to nip the common headaches in the bud. I have personally found that most coaches at least attempt to adhere to what I say. My entire comment is "If you have a question on a call, request time. Once it is granted go to the umpire that made the call. It is his/her discretion whether they go to their partner for help. Please respect that discretion". It takes about 5 seconds and has greatly reduced instances of coaches not following that protocol. Another example of this is rules set. We play these tournaments under OBR with slight modifications. I would say that less than 10% of the coaches I've dealt with know that a balk is a delayed dead ball in OBR. After a few instances where F1 pitched, the batter bunted, and everyone stood there looking at the ball, I added to my plate meeting. "Remember that we are playing under MLB rules and a balk is a delayed dead ball. We wait for the play to end and award accordingly" My plate meeting generally takes about 30 seconds. I review the lineups, cover the ground rules, say my two tidbits of info, ask if there are any questions and then if it's pool play we flip for home. The tournament director is big on rapport with coaches and talking things out. He doesn't wanted coaches dumped unless it is absolutely necessary. He appreciates us covering these things in the ground rules to try and minimize conflicts. I've found it works. Once again I would never do this at higher levels where I'm evaluated. But I'd also never do 6 games in one day at higher levels where I was being evaluated.

Really?? The fact that I said "I would never engage a coach while the ball was still live" would not infer a reasonable assumption that I would wait for play to stop? Instead you assume I would call time while the ball was in play? Why don't you read an entire post before jumping to critique mode. As for the plate meeting you notice there are ellipses, which means I did not include the entire sentence. I often have coaches come out of dugouts and ask PU to rule about BU's call and vice versa. So my statement at the plate meeting for lower levels is "If you have a question about a call, request time. After time is granted go to the umpire that made the call. It is their discretion whether to get help from their partner". This has been very effective in letting coaches know how to properly address the umpires. I would not do it at levels where the coaches clearly should know what they are doing. But it is very effective when the coach is just a dad of one of the kids and is not well versed in proper protocol.

Red - At lower levels this is pertinent information for the coaches. I'm not being evaluated and it sets a positive tone for any communication. Blue - Are you saying that if a coach was yelling from the dugout and refused to stop you would not address it? I already stated I would call time so clearly no further playing action is going on, thus no penalizing of the other team.

I usually wait and let the coaches do their jobs. Most halfway decent coach will tell their F2 all the things I would tell them (stay down longer, stick the pitch, etc.). If however I see F1 or F2 getting frustrated and the coach not doing their jobs then I will offer "Stay down longer and I can see the zone better" or "If you move your glove that much you didn't think it was a strike either".

Part of my short plate meeting at lower levels (meaning levels below high school) is "if you have a question about a call, request time. . ." Anything they yell from a dugout should be ignored, especially during play. As BU I would never have "exchanged a few words" as the ball was still live. If I felt exchanging words was necessary I would call time and then address the coach.

Well it not only looks awkward, but it is also difficult to do athletically speaking. If you move the free foot at all towards the plate prior to stepping directly towards first then you have a balk. That is why you don't see lefties throwing to third and righties generally jump-turn or step off before throwing. Clearly simply lifting your left leg and stepping towards first is more deceptive, but it also puts the pitcher in danger of balking.

The coach that came out was the head coach. My point was that my partner implied that the reason he was so short with him was because he was only an assistant. My partner assumed he was an assistant because he was not the coach at the plate meeting. I was not privy to the conversation that they had so I don't know why my partner decided to end it with "you can go to the dugout or go home". The conversation was never heated and didn't take that long, but it could have been that my partner said what he had to say and the coach kept debating the point. As for entertaining a discussion between innings I didn't know what he came to talk to me about. He walked up to me and started saying that he was very upset because he has been a coach for years and is known for treating umpires with respect and he didn't appreciate how my partner talked to him and that he was about to call the tournament director and voice his concerns. I never said a word. About 5 seconds into his dialogue my partner came in and engaged the coach in further conversation. Had my partner not come up and gotten involved all I planned on saying was that I was not a part of the conversation so I have no idea what was said that led to my partner saying "go to the dugout or go home". I had coaches question multiple plays this weekend. In each case I explained what I saw and what I called and I did it with civility and respect. I never had to even warn a coach during any of these instances. They disagreed with my call, but my explanation left no room for anything other than to agree to disagree. But I also made sure I did not say anything to promote an adversarial situation. At the same time I saw the two different guys I worked with get into adversarial situations with coaches because they took it personally when the coach questioned their call. Their explanation was short and then when the coach persisted in the slightest they shut him down like he was a little kid. I will say that this sight has really helped me to deal with coaches better than I used to. I've had almost no issues this year and I've found that I am keeping my calm much better and giving coaches better explanations (i.e. ones they can't use against me). EX: I had SB play at second. Throw came in a little towards first base. R1 was under tag, but tag was on helmet and I had tag prior to foot hitting bag. As all coaches seem to think (at least all offensive coaches) he felt that since the tag was not on the foot then he must have been under the tag and thus safe. He came out and asked "where did he tag him". I said "on the helmet". He said "right so he had to be under the tag". I said "no the slide was to the outside of the bag and the tag was applied well in front of the bag before his foot got there". The coach looked at me and said "okay". What else could he say? It seems to me that you would have had me stop and after he said "right so he had to be under the tag" I should have replied "no and we are done discussing this coach". I just don't see how that is better.

Last game of 6 today. It was 14U pool play A/AA level. One team we had the game before and they lost getting run ruled 11-3 after 5 innings. They played a new team I had not seen yet. New team losses the coin toss so they bat first. They score 4 runs before the HT switches pitchers. HT gets out of the inning with no further damage. The HT then proceeds to score 16 runs in the bottom of the first inning. The first inning took exactly one hour to play. This team was so overmatched it was silly. It looked like a rec league team that decided to stay together and play some tournaments. On one play the bases were loaded and F1 picked of R1. R1 knew he was dead so he started to run to second. F3 starts running towards him and has no idea what to do. He hesitates forever and then finally throws to F6 covering the bag to get the tag on R1. Problem is that both R3 AND R2 scored in the meantime. The only saving grace was that the HT held in the top of the second and then scored 3 runs in the bottom half to reach the 15 run mercy rule at 19-4 and we got to go home early.

At what point do you call CI for reaching forward over the plate to catch a pitch? Do you get it right away or if it does not appear to hinder the batter do you leave it alone? Obviously if the batter swings then he is likely to make contact with the mitt, but if he holds up it is hard to determine if he held up because of the catchers movement.

Well I did look at the video more closely and I do see where it could be a "jump-turn". But for arguments sake if he stepped back, but not far enough back to disengage then it would be a balk, so the base award would be for the balk, even if he chucked it into the seats (if you recall in my post I did say I thought it was a balk because he was still touching the rubber). Now if he was off the rubber then you get the two base award.

Had a game today where there was a play at second R2 got picked off and was attempting to return to the bag. F6 attempted to apply the tag but R2 dodged it and got back to the bag. Coach comes out and asks for time. I'm the PU and grant him time, he goes to my partner and is arguing that R2 should be out for leaving the base path to avoid a tag. I am not involved in the conversation so I do not hear what is being said. But the conversation ends with my partner saying "You can go to the dugout or go home". The coach turns and walks back to the dugout. In between innings that coach calls me over and states that he is incensed by how disrespectfully he was treated by my partner. As he is explaining this my partner walks over and listens to the last part of the coaches statement. So I don't respond at all and in my partner;s explanation he states "you are not even the head coach so I handled it accordingly" at which point the coach says "I am the head coach. My assistant came out because I just had leg surgery". FWIW I have not had to eject a coach this year. And I can't even recall the last time I did. I give coaches respect no matter what their position is until they give me reason not to. It's hard for me to comprehend a better approach than that. I just cannot agree with your statement that "assistants are not entitled to explanations or discussions or anything". That seems to be to be a very adversarial attitude and I just won't approach my games that way. I'm not saying you are wrong, we just disagree on approaches.

I guess I've just never considered it as showing me up. I don't take it personally at all. I can understand Rich's point about having to send him to the dugout after the conversation is over. Especially since as he stated he almost never gets help. So he knows before hand that the call is going to stay. I think level of play probably has something to to with it as well. A good experienced coach knows that if the call gets changed we'll bring the runner back and at the higher level of play the other coach probably would not try and argue abandonment. But for a coach that is not very experienced he might really think if his runner leaves the base he is liable to be put out.

With all due respect can you explain the importance of the runner going to the dugout prior to the conversation taking place? It just seems unnecessary to create a disagreement over that. I can't understand why a better course of action wouldn't be to just ignore the fact that the runner is on the base and deal with the call. Once you have told the coach what you saw and why you don't need to get help, then the runner goes back to the dugout. If you demand that the runner go back to the dugout first then you risk that being a point of contention as well as the call. Is there some reason I'm missing here as to why you don't want to allow this?

Age matters, but so does organization. Typically in a tournament with 16-18 year old club teams I might let F bombs go, but probably not as likely in Little League, even though the players are older.

I believe Man_in_Black has it exactly correct. Last year I had a situation where with R2 stealing better took ball 4. R2 was safe at third and I felt that since batter attained first on the walk and R2 attained third on the steal that the balk was ignored. I was informed that the interpretation is that all runners including BR have to advance a base as a result of the pitch. Since technically R2 had not attained 3rd base when F2 caught ball 4 the conditions were not met and thus the balk was enforced. So R2 got 3rd on the balk and the batter retained his count.

The irony is in making a unnecessary useless comment about someone making unnecessary useless comments.

Oh the irony.

You really think that 100% of the time a manager that says "stay on the bag" is doing it to show us up? I've never viewed it as such. He is advocating for his team, which is his job. Every time a coach has said that to me, he has then come out and asked for me to get help or questioned something about the play. I just don't see the point in even worrying about where his runner is when this occurs or what his motive is for doing it. He disagreed with me and we are about to have a hopefully short, uneventful conversation about what I saw. The last thing I want to do is make a stink about where his runner is, or have anger at where his runner is bias me prior to that conversation taking place.