HokieUmp

I try not to work any lower than 10U any more, but I've found, if they miss my saying it, a simple "Dude. Ball 4." usually gets them moving, regardless of age.

I guess some of my "outrage" comes from .... "Dude, I'm roughly 110' from the play you didn't like. My partner was RIGHT THERE. Looking RIGHT at it. What, exactly, do you think imma add to this convo??!?" And the first one - I was 5' away from the play or less. What is my plate guy gonna see, from behind the foul line, roughly (this was a 60' diamond and math is hard, so ....) 100' away? This line of reasoning also leads me to reply "No" to the question "Can you get help on that?" The looks I get from different coaches/managers is a LITTLE like my dog, when I ask her a question that starts with "Do you ...." - the side-head-tilt. Because often, there's no help really to be given, and it IS, after all, my call. The question is just being asked out of hope, more than from the rulebook.

I have my '14 Sonata. I can get 30+ mpg if I'm on the highway, and all my gear fits great in the trunk. I hang my clothes from a handhold in the backseat. I'll live with the fading issue.

This one's not as philosophic or otherwise deep-meaning as the "Why do you umpire?" thread, and it's probably more meant for the coaches that are on here - or the guys that are, or used to be, coaches - but I feel like I need to ask. I personally don't mention it during the plate meeting, but there are plenty of guys I work with that say something like "if you have an issue with a call, talk to the guy that made the call." Here's my question - and you can see it coming from the subject line - but shouldn't they already kinda KNOW that? I mean, I get it - especially in a house league, it's daddy coaches, and they're there for their son at that level, and will move on when the son moves up or stops playing. As a counterpoint, though: even when you're watching an MLB game on TV, when there's a disputed call at, say, 1B, the manager doesn't go running to the 3B umpire, looking for a changed call. This has been quite a week at the one place I'm working right now. Tuesday night, I had a tag play on a kid coming back to 2B. It was close - not helped by the kid trying to tag the upper body, with the runner trying to slide - but I get the out. It's the 3rd out, so I'm heading for short RF, only to turn and see runners still on the bases (another peeve), and the HC talking to my partner. As God is my witness, my partner heads out, and motions me over. Right or wrong, he's still 10-15 feet away when I say "I'm not changing that call. Those runners can stand there forever, but I'm not changing it." I'm also a little irritated that my partner listened to him, to the point of doing that. So that didn't help my mood last night, when (again, BU) my partner gets a tag-out at the plate to end bottom-1. HC. in the 3B box, starts walking towards ME. "I want to appeal that play." "Good for you! [Pause] Go talk to the guy that made the call!" Yes, I realize that was dickish of me. And I even said so to the 1B coach on my way to my water jug. But I also tried to explain the 'why' on that; don't know if it worked. But back to my original question: shouldn't coaches already be aware of this concept? Doesn't anyone ELSE notice, even when there's a conference on a call, the decision is made/signalled by the original calling umpire? Or that too much of an "insider" deal? Anyway, just kinda venting some irritation

Actually, it DOES seem like the kid was behaving in a taint-like manner. So, sure - you can verb that word.

Really?? I'm not sure where you are, but here in the South Texas area, "wear it!" is like a damn battle cry in a HS game on the close miss pitches.

Maybe he won't feel the wheels of this (short) bus, but: I $%#&ed this up on my own. HE let ME talk HIM into it!!!

The DM *did* bring the discrepancy up. So it was done in accordance with the rules. I just kicked the hell out of it. And yes, I had a partner. Did I not mention that I can be wrong AND persuasive, both? I managed to $%#& HIS chance to make the proper call, too! For God's sake - it was a house-league game in a small-town environment. They friggin' all KNOW each other! How does it even get to that point?

Per the subject line: I stipulate fully that I [fornicated] the pooch on this. In fact, of all the rules we enforce, among all the codes, BOO is my personal Waterloo. It's happened now twice in my career, and I've managed to $%#& up the application of the rule both times. I'll give the situation, and what I did/didn't do, and then you can tell me how wrong I was. (I'd PREFER it not be done in a condescending manner, but hey - if I REALLY didn't want that, I could try not $%#&ing up in the first place.) LL Majors. Runner somewhere, I forget what base. B3, we'll call him, steps to the plate. He works the count full, and then hits a ball into LF. It looks like it might end up a LL-homer - a ball that's a double at best that becomes a comedy of errors/misplays. He trips over F2's leg as F2 is taking the throw, and misses the plate. He gets tagged coming back - 1 out. Then the defensive coach has checked the lineups, and it's determined B2 was skipped. Now, I might suck at figuring this call out, but I'm VERY persuasive, apparently, and/or no one else knows any better how to deal with this, and they're only too happy to take the solution I offer. I somehow had it that, since we'd finish dude's at-bat, we legalized him. I REALIZE THIS IS NOT CORRECT. So we let the run score that had scored when B3 got out on his adventure at the plate, and we moved on. Hours later, I said - possibly even out loud: "Holy @#!$, I $%#& that all up." So, board: tell me what I should have done. Remember: B2 should have been batting. B3 did instead, and finished the at-bat getting thrown out at the plate. If I may try: I THINK we should have called B2 out, and then made B3 come back to bat, having put the runner back on [whatever base he was on]. Maybe? Okay, let me have it.

Once you call it foul, it needs to stay foul. For one, how do you place runners? Everyone's now going half-speed, or some variation. Also, how in the WORLD do two umpires get together and make a change THAT profound, when one of the umpire's input is ".... it *might* have tipped the glove"??!? Yeah, I *might* have the winning Powerball numbers, too - so just go ahead and award me the check.

Dude - that's not all school ball! Sorry, I wasn't clear on that. That includes a couple men's games, some of the travelling road show stuff, and some house league already. Actual school ball? About 50, maybe? I don't think I'll be doing any 3rd round stuff - I've looked on Arbiter, and our chapter doesn't have a lot stored there in the Master Calendar. I've tended not to ever put my hand up for playoffs before - I've done a 2-man and a 3-man game back in Virginia, but I've taken the stance that playoffs are too important for those guys for me to go out and stumble around working unfamiliar mechanics. But this year, I felt - they tell me it's called "ambition" - so I took games. My first round series had 3 of the 4 of us being 4-man-virgins. And yet we survived.

Had game #78 on Friday. HS is about to start the third week of the playoffs at the end of the week. Lost some HS scrimmages from the week of stupid actual winter that we got in Texas. Since we had a drought until recently, rain hadn't killed too many games. I decided to just go ahead and put my hands up for postseason ball at the HS level, finally. I was never a big fan of spending all year doing 2-man, then just as the game started REALLY meaning something, doing mechanics we're not remotely as familiar with. But since I realized *I* was gonna change long before The System did, I decided to give it a try. I like the TASO 4-man mechanics, and can't wait for the the day when I'm not reminding myself what to do before every pitch. Soon be time for just the house leagues and the travelling roadshow of "select"/"elite"/whatever ball.

At the risk of mis-reading the room, imma vote "yes" on this one.

I *think* "Bi-district championship game" is a fancy way of saying "Second round matchup." Four teams per district make the playoffs - which is weird, especially when it's a 4-team district. Then there's some cross-district, where teams from your district cross-over and play some other district. (I have ZERO idea how that's determined.) So even my first-round series tonight is a "bi-district" round. Although, now that I'm thinking it out, with the math and all, I guess that means there *might* be a third-round, to get a champion from that bi-district match-up .... 8 down to 4 down to 2 down to 1. Hell, I don't know, man; I'm just going where Arbiter sends me. I just wanted to point out that this series was likely early-on in the process, and between the sheer number of matchups, and the universal need everywhere for umpires, you might not be seeing A-listers.

I'm not gonna defend that in ANY way, because it can't be. But let me share a few random points out there to address different issues. (I haven't been in Texas but three years, and I'm not remotely softball, so some of this *might* be wrong, but into the breech....) -- There aren't protests in Texas. At least not in baseball, so I'd guess/assume it's the same in SB. -- For the numerous "how are these guys doing championship' games (And/or "playoff"?)???" queries: given that this just happened, that was likely a first-round playoff game/series. Baseball starts the first round this week, so that would be about right. From what I can tell, there are about 100 BILLION teams that make the first round here. I feel like I'm only slightly exaggerating, given the records of some of the teams in the BB first round. And I can say that our chapter has already said it's 'all hands on deck' for round one, at least, due to the sheer numbers. Also, teams can apparently request "outside" chapters do their playoff games, so that can create body-count demands as well. And again, not saying a word about the play. Not least of which because MY first-round series starts tonight, and karma, as they say, is a bitch.

Well, the OP by @lawump DID in fact mention there WAS hindrance, albeit minor. But what I meant in my write-up, and should have re-worded it, probably, is more along the lines of "a bench coach that's out on the field, and gets near enough to a play like that, has about a 1-in-1 chance of me using 'umpire judgment' to find hindrance." With the comment, to the head coach that comes out, "tell him to keep his dumb ass of the field, then." Or.... more sciencey - that potential hindrance is gonna turn into kinetic hindrance, when I get done with it. Again, my thought process is: we get players for violating rules. Roughly a quarter of the time - and I'm likely being conservative - there's some nonsense defending the action as "he didn't mean it." Proper response: "So?" And so, if we're getting people who were just doing their thing on the field, where they're meant to be, and a legit part of the playing action, then I'm absolutely finding a way to get a coach, who knows full F*#King well he's not to be out there during live play. It's kinda Old Testamenty of me, but I'm okay with it. Now, if there's some interpretation/edict/memo that explicitly denies me that judgment, so be it.

That's very Zen of you, dude.

I don't know if this is a hill I want to die on, but I'd make a case for INT in all of the above. Not so much because he actually changed the outcome of the play, but the fact that he even had a potential *impact* on it in the first place! We get runners for INT even though "they didn't mean it!" We get - or at least, I've recently seen YouTube footage from a Big Ten game where it was 'got' - an out for a bat tossed into foul ground that causes F2 to stumble an miss a pop-up. But those things BELONG on the field at that time. A bench coach belongs ...... well, on the *bench.* So I guess, until the angry mob tears me to pieces, put me on Team Interference.

You're not kidding. Even as high as that total is for me, if I'd been more aggressive, I could have had a LOT more. So far, I'm staying out of a lot of the weekend traveling road-show stuff, because a) it's filled with crazy people on the field, and b) the one source I have here for it doesn't just assign you some games - he likes to give you a FIELD for the day! (B---h, I'm mid-50s, with feet that are betraying me! That dog don't hunt for me any more.)

Had game 67 tonight. Arch, you NEED to come south, brother!

And as I recall, @BLWizzRangeris a new umpire. One of the things coaches are gonna do, is test a new umpire - even if he's just new to *them*. They're not always coming out for the "good of the game - getting the calls right!", flag-waving deal; they're sometimes coming out to see if they can't get over on you. I've been umpiring 18 years now. But I'm only in my 3rd year in Texas, AND I'm in my second chapter in that time. So there are a number of schools I'm seeing now that never had me before, since '20 was such a cluster. I guaran-damn-tee I've had visits from coaches "testing out this guy," based on what and how they argued a call.

If you're looking for replies..... considering it's one of those traveling road-show coaches, "Go f--- yourself" is a classic. An "Ol' Reliable," if you will.

From some of that list, you should maybe look forward to sharpening your Ejection Report writing skills.

I feel you. At my 8U tournament - and the phrase "8U tournament" is already wrong on multiple levels - I saw a lot of the same thing. I wrote in the GroupMe group the umpires of that field use: "the kids are adorable. I'd love to shoot the parents and coaches into the Sun, but the kids are great." That was also where I was introduced to pre-recorded walk-up music. I know you and I disagree on this one, but I just .... "hate it" is probably too strong, but "dislike it" is too weak. Mostly, I think it's dumb. And while I see your point about giving the little dudes a taste of the big time, I'm not convinced they notice or care. If they do, and it makes them feel cool, okay. But these guys are the same ones that, ten minutes later or ten minutes earlier, are digging in the infield dirt, or messing with the dandelions.