MadMax

The rule doesn’t exonerate a Runner who absentmindedly steps off the base, thinking that the fielder (F3, typically) has thrown the ball back to F1. To @Richvee’s point, this is perceived as a “natural” extension of the pickoff attempt play. How often have we seen a youth F3 repeatedly tag a returned R1 as he climbs back up (hand on base, foot on base, stand up)? The F3 doesn’t hold the tag on, but instead tags him at each of the steps in the sequence, thus requiring the umpire to give a safe (or out) judgement at each of those tag attempts. On each of those, are we checking to see where the F1 is? No, that’d be ridiculous. Extend that further… we have a F3 receive a pickoff throw, with a cursory check of the Runner (legal, step & reach). He fakes the throw, and immediately spins around to tag the R1. Are we checking as to where the F1 is now? No, to do so is absurd. So what’s the difference? What’s the determining factor? It’s a passage of time, or series of other events leading up to it. Those, as @jimurrayalterego points out, are adjudged, not blatantly codified. Sure, the rules establish what constitutes it as a violation (ie. Balk), but just as we cannot expect the Batter to disappear on a steal attempt by R2 of 3B, so too we cannot expect the F1 to completely vacate the mound on every pickoff attempt wherein his F3 attempts to catch the R1 off the bag. Can’t say that. NCAA 4-man crew, and either: A. The umpires (plural) weren’t checking to see where F1 was (in space), because they interpreted the F3’s “hold and delayed tag” as an extension of the pickoff attempt, or B. They were checking, and F1 was not in violation.

Out. Simple. Uhhh, no. The X poster (“tweeter?” “expresser?” ) went so far (so very, very far) as to say, “stared him down”. 🙄 I just don’t see that happening. I’ve seen better flops in poker and soccer.

Leadoff batters. You’re welcome. But hey, it’s cheap (Amazon) garbage! Much, much better value than that stoooopid My-First-Umpire-Kit (MFU… hey hey hey! 🫢) ya get from Champro, along with a gardener’s tool pouch and some… sort of plastic thingy that looks like it came in a box of Cracker Jacks at one time. In my headspace, it was a French Maid meme. 🤩 Don’t disappoint me, Beaker!

Ah, you don’t know about ol’ Clarence Callsafew? Clarence’s been callin’ local “little league” and “high school” ball for 20/30 years! He and Ned (the Assigner for the association) go “way back”, but he can’t understand why Ned doesn’t put him on “big” games no more, considering Frank (the association president or founder) is his longtime coworker (outside of umpiring), or fishing buddy, or brother-in-law, or any other familial bond. He can’t tell you any of the rules changes for this year, but he’s been reminded of the Points of Emphasis so much, that he himself will make a point of stressing it at any plate meeting he conducts. In any meeting, no matter the size or context, he’ll cue up his own personal war story, about how he handled this “one play (or situation)” and how that is (or should be) indicative of how to “work your craft”. He has exactly 2 shirts (and yes, one is typically navy) and 1 jacket. When presented with “a new guy”, he’ll expect the two of them to get together at least 30, if not 45 to 60 minutes before first pitch, for the purposes of explaining Clarence’s own methods, signals, and mechanics for calling a ballgame. And then, if-&-when he’s working bases, he’ll come down to chat between innings, or will go and talk in the 1st Base Dugout, etc. He uses “my” a lot – “my game”, “my call”, “my field”, etc. Can’t quote rules to save his skin, so resorts to “my judgement” to extricate himself from any situation. You will encounter a Clarence in your umpiring path.

Impossible for Varsity. Every Varsity game I’ve bore witness to could not start without 2 umpires. Now, as far as completing? Anything’s possible. No, a far more likely scenario is Ned the Assigner sends our rookie here to work a JV game solo, so as to free up Jimbo to go work Varsity. Or, worse, Ned sends him to work that Varsity game with Clarence… who takes this to mean that: He (Clarence) knows what he’s doing… 🙄 He’s (Clarence) been sent a reprieve, and since he (Clarence) is the “senior / veteran guy”, he should be at latitude to work bases, and stick rookie on the plate. 🫣 He (Clarence) should evaluate the rookie, and “train him” in all the idiosyncrasies of how he (Clarence) handles Varsity and JV and Freshman baseball for Ned for the past bump-teen years. Then you are an expert. And no “evaluator” has any grounds to tell you otherwise. If any umpire has the gall to observe or witness your solo game, and then approach you to tell you what “you did wrong”, then you are now at liberty to reply with, “Well why didn’t your pompous a$$ come out of the stands to show me how it’s done??” … or something along those lines.

There wouldn’t have been; nothing good comes from U (umpires) staying, once the game is over. In fact, their/your/our presence may instigate, intensify, or embroil the participants even more. God forbid if one of us ever gets seriously injured if we try to “break it (a fight) up”, let alone get accused of antagonizing or instigating further conflict. Even if they (simply) loiter around, and “take names & numbers”, by staying, somebody will get incensed, and will be tempted to lash out, either in present time, or in post-action, with something akin to, “Well why didn’t you (they) do something (to stop it)??!!” Do you know the phrase, “Silence cannot be misquoted”? Absence cannot be misinterpreted.

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Stock imagery. My actual hands cost money. That reminds me of an umpire friend, who is a… ready for this?… professional stunt actor in Hollywood, and has also been a hand model. His hands have better insurance coverage than my car!

You want to see my indicator? I actually have two of them… They indicate the count very, very well.

Ah. The original ZRO-G. Several weeks ago, another mask appeared on Purchase Officials' catalog, labeled as a "ZRO-G", but it was clearly a Honig's K4. While both are hollow-steel, the two mask designs are visibly different; the ZRO-G was like a pared-down café racer, while the K4 was more like a touring cycle. The ZRO-G keeps to the classic, iconic layout of the Nike "Icon" Titanium, but still stays wildly affordable. The K4 is a fantastic "do everything, go everywhere" mask frame, with the large, chisel-shaped XCG, the oversized ear guards, and the discreet, yet protective, extended crown guard. Now, this might have been a simple mistake in labeling, or in photography (did anyone actually buy that "ZRO-G" that was listed, and got the K4 delivered?). What is listed now, today, on Purchase Officials' website is the correct ZRO-G ala +POS. You're going to dig it. The entire DX family is based off the same dimensions and geometry, and after being a career-long Schutt owner (Schutt used the same carapace plates on all three successive CP models they made – AiR Flex I, II, and XV), I made the switch to GerryDavis, specifically the DX Enduro.

Hey! I'm not Canadian! 🇨🇦 I should hope so! @DerekGDS & The Dominoes have done some fantastic effort in developing, progressing, and in some cases, completely rebuilding the way gear is perceived. Other than a few holdout Majestic pieces (shirts & jackets), I've replaced all my other uniform pieces with GerryDavis. Which one? Which one?

I got one of the first sets from Ray, and I heavily favored them because it allowed me to carry 16-18 baseballs. During Spring Training, not only are the POs or player-who-is-tapped-to-act-as-Bat-and-Ball-Boy minimally responsive, but frequently, I’d have to use 2-3 different ball types per session. MLB, MiLB, then an international specific (the most wild ones in my collection are the Korean and Dutch baseballs), and I could easily put 8 (can squeeze in a 9th if need be) of each on either side. College and inde-pro games, I load up. Their depth and shape also impedes baseballs hoppin’ out and escaping when you’re on a… vigorous rotation to 3B. The only drawback is the inevitable fading…

Twas not my Gold. This is a colleague’s CP. I’m not slighting him by saying he has a slighter build than me, but with that Gold, he was looking like a 90s NFL/NCAA linebacker, and was routinely struggling to get shirts on over it. Nothing on the Gold qualifies as “intelligent design”. Everything on it is cheap & stupid. It’s greedily disgraceful they still get $225 off of us (umpires) for it. I dare say, the Platinum was a better CP… and that ain’t saying much.

While a CP's main purpose is to protect one's chest and collarbones, the weakest joint on nearly every CP is the one connecting the shoulder arch plate to the pauldron. The pauldron is the outermost, dome-shaped plate that is colloquially referred to as "the shoulder"; yes, it does protect the shoulder, but it is only one part of a comprehensive shoulder protection group. The shoulder arch plate is the piece that is astride one's neck, and arcs up and over one's shoulder in line with the trapezius (muscle group). Typically, there is a connecting piece between this shoulder arch plate and the pauldron. Often, this connecting piece (or called a "spline") also joins to or includes a gap protector, called an ailette. The presence of this connecting spline is to allow articulation. More often than not, this spline is elastic, since a generically-sized CP has to fit a potentially varied size and shape of shoulders. Unfortunately, with age, that elasticity diminishes, and gaps start to appear between the arch plate and the pauldron that even the ailette can't cover. Or, worse still, Wilson Golds will hard-stitch the pauldron pad to the entire chest pad, all 1"-thick-upholstery-foam of it, simply to forgo having to install a spline! Because the pauldron pad, too is 1" thick (much, much too thick), this causes a very crammed fit inside shirts, limits articulation, and makes one look like a bulky linebacker. How to fix this? The easy option would be to remove the pad. And, you can do that on a Wilson Platinum, or Charcoal, or even the classic Tri-Panel but you can't do it on the pesky, bloated Gold, because that would mean losing the pauldron plate too. It would be disconnected from the rest of the plates. Never fear, there is a solution! You remove the entire shoulder pauldron, plate & pad, by rendering the seam (the tool looks like a miniature pitchfork, used to pick out and kill the stitching; you can usually render the seam without damaging the edging). Once separated, drill 4 holes – 2 on the shoulder arch plate, 2 on the pauldron – within a rectangle created by a 1.5" - 2" piece of nylon webbing. In most cases, I use 2" heavy-duty nylon webbing. To make holes in the webbing, I use a torch-and-awl method to heat up the awl, and then lance through the nylon to create cauterized holes. Then, pass and secure Chicago screws through both pieces to fasten the two plates and webbing together. In order to put a pad beneath the pauldron, I typically favor shoulder pieces from old, old catcher and umpire washboard CPs. I will hold the new pad under the existing pauldron, and with a thin knife, mark out where to lance through the pad with my superheated awl. Fire up the torch, heat up the awl, and lance thru the new pad to create slots that line up with the slots on the pauldron. To secure the pad to the pauldron, I have a roll of double-sided velcro (one side hook; the other side loop, it secures to itself), cuttable to length. I simply loop it thru each of the 4 slot pairs – 2 per shoulder. By using this much thinner pad, you cut down the bulk significantly! But what if the shoulder is otherwise fine, but the elastic spline is shot, making the CP a challenge to wear? A good example of this is a Champion P220... Here, the elastic had completely wore out. The owner didn't want the alettes any more, but still wanted to have a degree of gap protection. So, I once again set about making a 2" nylon webbing to connect the shoulder arch plate and the pauldron. I needed to drill new holes, since the existing ones were spaced out to 3"-3.5". I rummaged through my old spare parts, and located two pec wing pads off a Schutt AiR Flex. Prior to the debut of the Schutt XV in 2015, Schutt used this spongy material called Brock Beads to line their CPs. It was far surpassed by D3O, but here, it would do the trick. I lanced out holes in these pec wings, and secured them with longer Chicago screws than usual. The resulting arrangement was much welcomed by the owner of the CP... Good to go! Don't settle for a CP gettin' old or out of shape on ya. There's always a way to fix and improve it.

And this is why we shouldn't use an indicator. #IndicatorFreeIsDaWay2Be! Once you have your harness set up to your liking, do not feel you have to cut the excess strap lengths. Instead, get some electrical (vinyl) tape, and next fold the excess strap back upon itself in ≈ 3/4"-1" increments, then wrap that resulting stub twice-to-thrice by electrical tape. Why electrical tape? Because it only sticks to itself, and doesn't leave behind a gooey residue, unlike duct tape. And, because electrical tape is intended for high-heat environs, it's not going to bake and turn brittle (like athletic tape), nor get all gooey (like the aforementioned duck! 🦆tape.

Where are you located?

And this is where I source the ammo to tell an “evaluator” to sod-off and pound sand when they even mutter the words, “but it’s a bad look (to wear (sun)glasses on the plate)”. It may not be to me necessarily, but I sure will pass the ammo! Whether or not you wear glasses, of any kind, on plate does. Not. Matter.

I’m going to blow your mind, @Rock Bottom and @concertman1971… I finally got all 3 of my magnesiums in the same room at one time: So that’s a (nee Champro, now Champion or Tucci) Rampage, the GerryDavis Mirage12, and an All-Star FM4K Mag. The FM4K Mag is 16.2 oz. The Rampage is 15.4 oz. The Mirage12 is… 11.7 oz. Here’s the Rampage and Mirage placed back to back… the Mirage is actually wider, earguard to earguard, by at most 1/4”. Three big selling points, other than the magnesium composition, which affords the “no bend”, “no break”, “very lightweight!” benefits: To Tim’s point – the sightlines, or “vision window” is a lot freer, and less confining. This is because the bar breadth has been minimized by @DerekGDS as safely as possible (tested to and thru 140mph, IIRC). The Mirage looks the part. As we know all too well, style & appearance matters. Why, who, or how much it matters is an exhausting discussion, but it does. I say this, hand on heart, the FM4K performs the best at Protection Method #1, which is geometric. It just looks quite radical, and for some, that becomes off-putting. The Mirage has that iconic style pedigree, in spades. ♠️ It has umpires in mind, almost wholly. Who do you think is going to benefit the most from this? ↓ ↓ ↓ A properly lengthened XCG, with a rake of no more than 2-3°. Bonus Trivia Point! – Why “Mirage12”? There are three wonderful coincidences at play. One is etymological – words, and their meanings. The second is atomic. The third is “whose name is on the door?”. Anyone got guesses?

I’m blaming the ads. In typical fashion, these ads are… strategically parsing all our cookies 🍪 (collectively), and generating ads to intersperse in our browser displays.

Pffft. Didn't chew. Sniffed glue. Funny you ask that... I'm a farm kid who tried engineering, couldn't excel even tread water at math, and instead gravitated towards materials and design. One of my roommates and best friends is an electrical engineer, and by adjacency, I got into (unlicensed, ha!) electrical work, ie. physically setting up server racks and rooms and communication nodes. I had to get a major, so I sped through graphic design, and put some emphasis on "environmental design". So, I could infuse my interests and knowledge of materials into designing useable, functional spaces, without the burden of being an/the architect. 🤓 I am easily distracted, though, and I am terrible at sitting at a desk or workstation. Oo! Shiny!

Higher conductive resistance than copper; but, (significantly) lighter, stronger, and cheaper (per foot) than copper. Thus, a fire hazard inside your home’s (or other structures’) walls. However, just fine when jacketed and exposed, as it doesn’t corrode (reductively). We wouldn’t be able to have a sprawling power grid without it. That was the entire intent of making the Mirage’s XCG so elongated and by raking it out only 1-2° from plumb (straight down). The Nike “Icon” Titanium had this for the first few years of its introduction, until, ultimately, it got shortened on feedback from catchers. On the one extreme, we didn’t want to make it as drastically long as Jeff Nelson’s custom XCG, but we also didn’t want to exaggerate the forward rake into the 30-45° range, like the Wilson “Billy Goat” Platinum DynaTite masks had. They were raked that much so as to allow a DTG to hang between the XCG and the (stoooopid!) billow pad on the Platinum CP. @DerekGDS really kept this inclusion in the design path. We figure that if barbaric guys – like @tpatience the Blue Butcher – want to lop it off, then we’ll give ‘em sumthin’ to challenge ‘em.

Challenging, yes. Relevant to us (gear geeks), aluminum and titanium both readily & (very very) rapidly oxidize and form a passivational layer. This layer provides protection to further corrosion of the structure beneath. But while that layer is protective, it thwarts conventional – ie. easier, less costly (in time, resources, and skill) – welding. It’s not hard; instead, it’s costly.

Which is why the aluminum iX3 for catchers never amounted to a significant sales wave. Then again, Diamond’s primary sales income and presence is in amateur baseball and softball, neither of which “allow” a TM. Of the two aluminum masks on the market (for umpires), those Diamond iX3s that have broken typically broke at the welds, especially on the wicket (the bottom, inverted U) as it overlays the three transverse bars. A popped weld isn’t a failure of the metal, but a failure of the welding process. Yes, this failure is a failure of the mask overall, because the mask is a “summary (system) of its parts”, but it’s not the bar material failing. It must be of an alloy wherein its inherit qualities introduce (more) elasticity. By contrast, similar to your experience, both of the Wilson DynAlums I’ve had that failed on me sheared on the transverse bar, at the back of the jaw where it curves and becomes the ear guard. Not just a weld pop, but a full-incisive shear. I can easily tell that Wilson is using an inferior, more brittle alloy than Diamond. Have you shared your findings and… sentiment(?) with Wilson? It’s not… it’s paint. The relentless drive in (umpire) masks is to make them – by request – as light as possible. Wilson jumped onto the “aluminum barge” on the river because the cro-moly barge cannot get any lighter. At least any lighter than what they had available. Because of their ridiculously crude manufacturing process on DynaLites (the vinyl dipping you’re talking about), they couldn’t achieve the lightness and thin-ness that made titanium so desirable (amongst umpires). At that time (ca. 2015), their titanium barge was sinking. They were losing money hand-over-fist on their existing titaniums, so much so, they set their Pro stool pigeons onto a smear campaign against titanium. I’m convinced that the DynAlums, especially the first batches, were a rush job, in reaction to discovering that a substantial plethora of MiLBUs were wearing Diamond iX3’s. Why? Because they are light ✅, don’t (easily) bend ✅ (and thus, don’t bring demerits from one’s Supervisor), and are inexpensive ✅. For Wilson, it likely became not a system of making “the best performing mask, period”, but rather, make the mask that will be light enough to compel a pro umpire (lowercase) to buy it, then replace as necessary. Wilson’s CPU (cost per unit) on DynAlums is likely 1/4th the CPU on DynaTites (titaniums). Easton is well-known and highly regarded in the metals space for their work in aluminum, going back to Doug Easton’s introduction of aluminum-shaft arrows for archery in the 1930s. They made aluminum ski-poles in the 60s, bats and tent poles in the early 70s, and ultimately tennis racquets and hockey stick-shafts in the late 70s and into the 80s. There’s a rich, very productive history that unrolls in the following 20 years… then, invariably and inevitably destroyed by private equity “investment”. My point is, despite Easton’s history with aluminum, and then their passing from one corporate overlord to another, and now being owned by Rawlings… they’ve never produced an aluminum catcher’s mask… until this year?! Why this year to start doing so? 🤔 I have to think, that this new Hyperlite aluminum alloy is “safe” enough to do so. I think magnesium is the answer, though, going forward… … and putting the burden on the pads, for which we – collectively – gotta make better ones!

I've been grazed or hit several times. Nothing above the shoulders, so I haven't felt... imperiled. I do set up what you'd likely regard as "danger close". I'm probably no more than 6 feet away (might even be 5). (In)famously, I got hit so squarely (right in the guts), the ball dropped straight down, was retrieved by the F3, who threw out the scampering R1 at 2B. I was credited with an assist... by the broadcast team. 🤨

What has to stop, first, are Assigners and "association leads" taking on a contract, securing their assigner fee, and then scrounging to find as few umpires as necessary to fill the game time slots. Change has to start from the top, and any sort of introspection into "what the problem is" must start with checking one's reflection first.