Majordave

Just finished Mr. Massaro's contribution to umpiring literature. Not a bad read. Not that impressive but well worth the quick read that it is. Like Widac and Big Red I can relate and I agree with both of their assessments and comments. No way I would put up with what he did. I, fortunately and unfortunately, am not laid back and I do not, would not, did not, will not allow some of those clown coaches and players to take over the game with their antics. Of course I have never umpired on Long Island but I would imagine Long Island troublemakers are similar to Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri and Kansas troublemakers but what would I know? Anyway, it is worth the read. Other than the small portion of "As They See 'Em" dedicated to Bruce Weber's amateur umpiring efforts, I don't think any of the other dozen plus books on umpiring I have recently read have been by or about amateur umpiring. So it is worth if for us Non-Professionals just for the "common man's" perspective. My two cents.........

Dang, that was quick. I would have bought them! Sorry Rolo. I posted, went to sleep, six hours later Sold! I said it was the deal of a lifetime. He is now up to 14 books. Just finished Pam Postema's You've got to have balls...... last night.

Sold!!! to the Cuban. A very good friend of mine. Probably the only guy I know personally who loves umpiring more than me. Funny thing is, I didn't know he could read..... (grin, just kidding) But, he did ask if I could come over and read some of them to him at bedtime when I get back from Afghanistan.... (grin, just kidding, again!) Gotcha Frank!

avid umpire/baseball book reader to meet my terms (listed below) and make the deal of a lifetime if you are interested in starting or adding to your umpiring library. I have amassed a significant amount of umpiring and baseball books over these past fifteen months that I have spent in the lovely, scenic, amazing place know as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. For the low, low price of $50, which is what I estimate it will cost me to ship the whole lot, I am offering ALL of the following umpiring and baseball books to some lucky reader. I have to move from where I now live soon and I don't want to carry these things twice. The List: 1) Planet of the Umps by Ken Kaiser, 2) The Best Seat in Baseball...But You Have to Stand by Lee Gutkind, 3) Everything Happens in Chillicothe by Mike Shannon, 4) Umpires by John C. Skipper, 5) The Men in Blue by Larry R. Gerlach, 7) Odd Man Out by Matt McCarthy, 8) Moneyball by Michael Lewis, 9) 3 Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger, 10) You're Out and You're Ugly Too! by Durwood Merrill, 11) You've Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League by Pam Postema, 12) Standing the Gaff by Harry "Steamboat" Johnson and 13) Three and Two by Tom Gorman. That's right, THIRTEEN, lucky thirteen books, most of which I have reviewed here, for only $50. An amazing value. If interested Private Message me and we can work out the details such as payment (Pay Pal) and shipping address (yours). Dave They can all be yours. All are paperbacks except Planet of the Umps

This was a pure baseball book. A fantastic read and I hated to put it down and was sad when I finished it. Since I coached/managed for 20 years before I got into umpiring at age 43 I could really identify the pure baseball point of view. This book was a collaborative effort by Buzz Bissinger (author of Friday Night Lights) and Tony La Russa about a 3 game series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs in St. Louis during the 2003 season. It also includes a chapter about the 2004 National League Championship season at the end of the book. It was so different in focus and approach from any other baseball book I have ever read. It really delves into the decision making and game preparation that La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan must endure in their labor of love as a coaching/managing collaborative duo together for over 25 years. I have always respected how they coach and manage and how La Russa's (and to a large extent Duncan's as well) teams approach the game. The information presented is not always flattering to La Russa but he wanted his story, his methods, presented as they are, warts and all. He is an extremely successful manager in all categories and facets of the game except for World Series Championships. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is a chapter at the end where Bissinger takes on the "Moneyball" book and its theories and followers as being wrong in assessing the game of Major League Baseball as nothing but numbers and the incessant shift to club management taking only the numbers into consideration. I always believed the college coaches I dealt with as an American Legion Coach were only interested in the five tools of a player. They rarely asked my opinion as to the players "sixth tool" his baseball acumen and love of the game itself. I coached and developed many very good players but not that many players that truly loved the game above all else and had a respect for the history and the mental aspects of the game. That being said, in all fairness to the players, the game of baseball at the collegiate and professional levels requires significant amounts of pure physical talent and dedication to excel but the mental development and historical and analytical aspects, i.e. the "game within the game" part that I dearly love and most middle-aged men love is not what the younger generations can truly appreciate. I believe that our baseball minds don't develop as rapidly as our physical tools (if they ever do for many of us) and quite often can't be developed until the physical abilities have degraded to the point that the mind becomes the main asset of the person. In the book there is a sub-plot about a bench player and a star player that La Russa does not like because the bench player does not play with his head and use what he has been coached to do, while the star does not play with the desire and heart that La Russa believes he should play with. In the series the bench player in the game due to an injury of the star player delivers the crucial, game clinching hit and the star is traded after the season. In summary, it is, in my opinion, a great book. IF you love baseball, the game and especially the tactics and strategies of managing and developing players this book is for you. The amount of preparation and time the coaching staffs and other support personnel expend is staggering and leaves time for very little else. For La Russa, he essentially all but abandons his family during the entire season. They live in Northern California while he lives in a hotel in St. Louis or wherever the Cardinals are playing. Not a glamorous existence. It really gave me an appreciation for the almost complete sacrifice that he and Dave Duncan give to be the successful manager/pitching coach duo that they are. Very impressive and eye opening. My two cents........

Just finished this one in my odyssey of umpire book reading during my self-imposed exile in Afghanistan. I really like it. I think I would like working with a guy like Max. He does some things I would never do but then again, he is who he is and is or has worked at that level for a lot longer than me. As a former coach I would have like him working my games. He seems to be in it for pure love of the game. All that being said, I found this book to be more of a baseball book than an umpire book. There are plenty of stories and chapters where the umpire/umpires are barely discussed. It was still a good book. I lived in the Central Kentucky area a bit south of where Max lives for almost all of my life and until 2009 I had never heard of the Frontier League or if I had it didn't register that it was professional baseball. I did work a game at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana and saw the Evansville Otters information at the stadium but it still didn't register that it was a pro team playing there. My loss. I admit that I am really into amateur and collegiate baseball much more than professional. I absolutely would not put up with the commentary and "lip" the pro players and coaches seem to believe they have a license to spew at professional baseball umpires. I do recommend the book. It was a very enjoyable read. My two cents..........

This was another book containing interviews with older, retired MLB umpires. It was similar to The Men in Blue by Gerlach but instead of being written in first person so it reads as if the umpire being interviewed is telling the story, it was in third person with a lot of he said, he did...... Not as easy or enjoyable to read but still full of very interesting and informative stories. The umpires interviewed in this particular book were not all fat and happy and loved Major League Baseball. Some of them were let go for attempted union organizing, injured too greatly to continue, fired without explanation. It came across a bit more truthful and the facts were more raw and unpolished. I have noticed throughout my life that people tend to be more nostalgic about days gone by and wax poetic about "the good ole days" a lot. But, in reality, it seems to me that people and times were just as ruthless as it sometimes seems now but the manners and the tendency of the press and the general way of doing things required a certain level of restraint. Bad news and awful things just were not talked about publicly. Just my impression as I age and compare the news and writings of the first half century or so of the 1900's compared to now. I do recommend the book. It is a quick read and the end of every chapter contains box scores from the more historic and eventful games each of the umpires interviewed for the book had worked. Umpires interviewed were: John "Red" Flaherty, Bill Kinnamon (also in "The Men in Blue"), Bill Jackowski, John Rice, Dutch Rennert, John Kibler, Bill Valentine, Don Denkinger, Terry Cooney, Andy Olsen, Marty Springstead, Doug Harvey, Ken Burkhart, Bill Haller, Ed Runge, Hank Morganweck, Art Frantz, Jerry Neudecker, and a special chapter discussing Steamboat Johnson. There is also an appendix listing all of the umpires who also played in MLB, a chronology of major league umpiring and a roster of all MLB umpires from 1876 to the publication of the book in 1997.

I just finished it. Highly recommend it. Very entertaining. Lots of great stories, a bit of sage advice about game management being the key difference from the most successful umpires versus those who are not. A lot of inside information about the umpire strike of the 70's and how the league president has a lot of influence.

I had the original Davis-Wilson and then got the DaviShins. Love them. The originals were great but bulky. The new ones take care of that problem. http://www.gerrydavis.com/mm5/category/Leg_Shin_Guards/product/B17PR126575 Try what others have and decide what works best for you.

I was going to stay out of this one but after this last comment by UMP45 I was reminded of a time/story and I have to tell it: At my first NCAA Baseball Umpires Meeting in Atlanta about three years ago I went out to eat with my family at a restaurant near our hotel. The place was packed. We waited a while and I noticed a specifically "sports/Jock" oriented crowd- Ball team hats, sweatshirts from various colleges and professional teams in multiple sports. The language was a bit "salty" and the crowd was unusually loud. But, it WAS NOT a sports bar, per se. I normally don't notice things like that but it was just wild. I couldn't help but overhear some of the conversations due to the loud volume of the participants and the fact that the language was starting to concern me as I had my wife and ten year old daughter with me. I then noticed the conversation closest and thus loudest to us was about umpiring. But something didn't feel right. I didn't recognize any of the men nearby and the style of dress, personal physical appearance levels and general demeanor of most of them was definitely a much lower level than I had encountered at the Baseball event I was attending (We all wore coat and tie at baseball meetings and I was still in mine at dinner due to late running meetings that afternoon/evening and starving family). Eventually, I went to restroom and asked a couple of guys talking umpiring if they were at NCAA Baseball Umpire meetings and they said "No, NCAA Softball Umpire Meetings". Turns out that the Softball meetings were being conducted simultaneously at a neighboring hotel across the parking lot from our meeting at the Airport Marriott. Anyway, to add a long comment to UMP45s discussion-YES, I did notice, there was/is a definite difference to me- At least that weekend. End of story number one. Then, later that season, my high school association had ONE umpire-member who also worked softball and I drew a game with him. He was late to the game, had the wrong uniform shirt, (baby blue-wrinkled like he used it for pajamas-with red/white/blue and VERY faded numbers), excessive jewelry on the field (rings on both hands -big ones, gold bracelet and watch with short sleeve shirt, earrings, flashy "high fashion" style mirror/chrome frame sunglasses) and the single worst looking pair of pants (pinkish purple) and shoes (could have polished them with a Hershey Bar and a Brillo pad-to quote my Drill Sergeant from my Basic Training days in the Army) that I have ever seen on a certified umpire. Turns out he didn't take the level II exam for baseball either and got fired after our game and my report to our assigner afterwards. During the game he crossed me up on several signals, was out of position, didn't rotate to home and used an indicator on the bases. He umpired with a toothpick in his mouth and wore his hat back on his head like he was driving a tractor or a lawn mower. We had to pregame on the field after plate meeting...... I was so pissed. The only thing positive I can say about that particular experience with him was that he was in good physical shape. Thus my report to the assigner and the summarization stating that I would never work with him again. Just my personal rant about my limited experiences with "some" softball umpires. I know this characterization is not representative of all softball umpires but enough of an experience for me to state that I will never work that sport with guys like that. Sorry if this offends, not my intention but just my personal observations and experiences as honestly and detailed as I can share. My two cents.....

Both! Emphatically, both! The key to commitment of learning to memory is REPETITION. My opinion. Both include a lot of situations that you may or may not encounter in some form on the diamond. The more opportunities you have to review and prepare for as many situations you may encounter and learn how to apply the rules in combination with your common sense and other game management methods and skills will make you as good as you can be. My two cents......

Gerry Davis Sports (www.gerrydavissports.com) has them on closeout for $8 each. 4/6/8 stitch in navy or black but ONLY if you are either a pinhead (6 3/4, 6 7/8) or a buckethead (7 7/8 or 8). Did you try Neweracap.com That might work too. Good luck in your quest.

Welcome and just remember, there are no stupid questions. But sometimes there are stupid replies. (grin)

Gentlemen (and ladies if there are any reading): This book was one excellent read. Quite simply, for me, the most entertaining and informative book on umpiring I have read to date (although I still have a few to go). It is, for a serious umpire, a MUST read. It is essentially a written summary of in-person interviews by the author, a history professor with a love for baseball like most of us, with twelve "old-time" 1920's to 1970's retired Major League Umpires. The umpires range from famous ones like "Beans" Reardon, "Shag" Crawford, Jim Honochick and Emmett Ashford, to some lesser known ones like Joe Rue, Ernie Stewart and Bill McKinley (at least to me they were largely unknown). I thoroughly enjoyed each chapter which all chapters/interviews essentially followed an obvious question and answer format without the questions being written. It was like sitting down with some older umpires and getting a personal, oral history lesson. Actually many lessons in everything from history of umpiring, mechanics, equipment, breaking in to the minor league and major leagues, the partners they worked with, pay, baseball administration, how they got into umpiring in the first place, essentially everything you might think of to ask an old-time umpire if you had the chance. I would love to do something like this with recently retired major league umpires to update the history of the profession (at least those who haven't written their own book). Some of the comments are quite candid and really interesting. There are tons of absolutely fantastic quotes. The author researched all of the anecdotal stories told by the umpires to insure accuracy and not just "tall tales" or "the older I get the better I was......" type stories and braggadocio from once great warriors of the diamond. I simply must recommend this book again as a "MUST READ" book for anyone serious about their umpiring history and learning a bit about the art of umpiring. Especially when it comes to game management. There are absolutely dozens if not hundreds of valid and relevant and time-tested hints on how to handle players and coaches. Read this book!

Pete said: " ....less of the impact forces are absorbed by the cage." That's why the harness should be loose so the mask moves and takes all that negative energy with it. Been hit dozens of times, some of them really strong, full on impact and with a loose mask, low-profile at that, never so much as felt a buzz or anything like a concussion, etc. That being said. I have occasion to look at the military version of the Zorbium on a daily basis (I got issued a crappy civilian tan, South African made helmet of inferior quality so I don't have them myself), but the Army and other branches guys have them. They seem nice and I would definitely try them. I would love to see them wrapped in doeskin. My two cents...

Wool is one of the best fabrics no matter what the weather.

Exactly!

My old college association has a "senior member" with some physical problems that works as an association evaluator, showing up unannounced (usually) and watching you work then giving you an oral eval after the game (if he stays until the end) especially if he sees glaring problems. Then a day or two later you get a written eval emailed to you and you are required to read, discuss via email if you have questions and a phone call summary session after the written-your dime to call and chase him for a telephonic conference that you understand and what you are doing to fix it. This method/system works pretty well. Lots of D-1 conference officials and NCAA/NAIA/NJCAA post-season umpires in the association. Rich Fetchiet spoke highly of the association publicly to all the other guys in a CBUA meeting at NCAA meetings in Chicago a couple of years ago. Believe me, they don't sugarcoat the evaluations you get in person or in writing. IF you got a negative eval then you WILL get another look by the association evaluator sometime that season. They pay the guy. I think it is a full game fee for each eval he does, paid from our dues and game "surtax" we pay from each game we work. Don't know if he can get multiple game fees a day or not but he does well. I will tell you that. They also have certain senior assigned umpires working occasionally with the new/younger guys and they use the same evaluation form and have to e-mail it to the President, the Evaluations Chief and to you within 24 hours of the game. Not everyone you work with does an evaluation on you and until you get one you don' t know that you are being evaluated. I got an eval from my FIRST college game and didn't know I was being officially evaluated. Fortunately I got a good one. They still ding you on nit-picky stuff like strike calls and strike three calls ( I got several and the all want a different style- don't like the point on swings, want pointing, don't want pointing, like hammer, hammer higher, louder voice, quieter voice, step back farther..... It will drive you nuts when they nitpick style. At least it does me. My two cents.................. I did get better as a result of his evaluations but it was painful to be so directly criticized.

I should probably just leave it alone but I can't resist. I have had so much umpire equipment, especially chest protectors that I need to weigh in here. So far, in order, I have owned/worn the following Chest Protectors: 1. Diamond iX3-Did not protect me from high school level pitching-sold it before I ever worked a game in it. (tested it by letting high school players line up and throw at me from sixty or seventy feet away and felt EVERY one of the balls that hit me. Didn't hurt but I knew...... 2. Original West Vest (Basic one with adjustable plates-velcro)- very protective but it was used and smelled bad due to prior use so I shopped for new. Was a bit bulky. 3. +POS BB2000 (?) the plastic Samurai blocks on the front with rubber/naugahyde coated padding. Too bulky and too hot. Wore it one time, used when I got it. 4. Honig's K-1 (XL size in black and L size in silver)-very comfortable with nice coverage and optional 2 inch or 4 inch extension that flexes for stomach/lower ribcage extension. I quit wearing this style when I got punked by a foul ball and felt it during a D-1 college fall scrimmage. 5. +POS AU21/BB3000- zip in the front style. Very cool looking and easy to put on but too bulky and would have required me to buy all new shirts to fit over it. 6. West Vest Platinum-Another one that looks great, fit well but too bulky for me. I couldn't even get a shirt over it. Never wore it in a game but I had no doubt it would give the protection I wanted. 7. West Vest Gold (small, baby-sized). I absolutely love this CP. I first saw one on Rob Drake's blog. He was approximately my size and he raved on and on about it. I saw it listed on Ump-Attire website and called Jim Kirk, talked umpiring, business, equipment, etc. (Jim bought Ump-Attire from it's founder. She was a former client of mine when I was a practicing attorney and I often advised her to take on some professional business advisers or partners and to find a good marketing/internet expert to help her with the marketing of her products.) Jim and I had never spoken up to that point but he obviously saw a good thing and put his money where his mouth was. And here we are. I love my Baby WV Gold. It protects what I need protected. I feel absolutely safe and completely comfortable wearing it in any game from LL 10yo "all-stars" to Division I NCAA. I don't plan on buying anything else but you never know........ My point here is to keep on trying and looking for what works for you. There are a lot of choices and the same size does not fit all in equipment. My two cents.......

From The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires by Larry R. Gerlach, interviewing Beans Reardon, NL Umpire 1926-1949. "When you see an umpire answer a player's squawk before the player can get it out of his mouth, you know the umpire knows he is right and is willing to go ten rounds. But if you see an umpire backing away and acting like he wasn't invited to the party, it's a sure sign he is admitting to himself that he might have missed one." True, true........

Amen to what he (osgood30) said. Based on what this "instructor" has told you so far I would recommend doing what I did when I coached, whatever my high school baseball coach did back in the day, do the opposite and it will be right on most occasions. Sounds like a half-smitty at least, maybe a full-smitty but you be the judge. I had similar issues with most of the leadership in my first association.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It follows the National League Umpiring Crew of Doug Harvey a/k/a "GOD" (Crew Chief), Harry Wendelstedt, Nick Colosi (First half of the season then re-assigned to another crew), Jerry Dale (newly assigned during the second half of the season) and Art Williams, the first black umpire in the National League and the only Black Major League Umpire at the time due to the retirement of Emmett Ashford from the American League. The story chronicles the thoughts, commentary, struggles and trials of the crew through the 1974 season. A tough season as the NL West (I loved it when there were only two divisions and it always seemed like the Reds and the Dodgers were struggling to win that pennant all through my childhood) was a relatively close division with four or more teams in the running all the way through and the NL East, which was a battle of who could be the best of the worst as almost all of the teams were losing and blaming their troubles on the umpires and anybody else but themselves. This was a very good read with a great historical perspective on pay, mechanics, racial issues, treatment of umpires by the National League and the players, coaches and managers. I admittedly, once again, did not follow umpires back then but I have learned the names of the bigger named/better reputation/long serving ones, especially Wendelstedt and Harvey, They essentially don't pull any punches about each other, others in baseball, the forced integration of the National League Umpire stable by a good but not really ready or good enough black umpire with only two or three years of minor league umpiring before being promoted to the majors in 1973. The commentary is brutal, profane (and for someone like me who grew up from first grade on being completely integrated and not really seeing color or racism in my life), a little difficult to handle. I had many, many black friends growing up in the 70's. My schools in Lexington, Kentucky were largely racially integrated at a near equal percentage without forced busing. I played all sports with many black friends and teammates and was even the only white kid on two or three teams and never thought a thing of it. To read the words these guys said either about Art Williams or to him sometimes were hard to read for me. But, it comes across as very earnest and realistic for the time. Some interesting facts I learned is that the starting and top salaries for umpires in 1974 were $15,500 and $30,000 respectively with per diem of $42 per day. Wow! The pay has exponentially increased since then. There were almost no benefits, pension contribution were only $200 to $500 per year and there were no back up AAA umpires they called up consistently like they do now when umpires got sick or hurt or had an emergency. The crews just went short. In August this crew had to do 19 games, all with pennant implications, with a three man crew. Harry Wendelstedt had an inner ear infection and missed three weeks or so while on bed rest and Doug Harvey suffered all season from a serious health problem. It appears that the author, Lee Gutkind, was able to gain the trust of the crew and, if all of his writing is true, got the unfiltered, unedited dose of their thoughts and beliefs about umpiring, other umpires, the league brass, fans, players, coaches and families. It is not pretty and not sugar coated. The author admits to being within earshot of conversations and essentially eavesdropping when they didn't think he was listening, especially Wendelstedt (the most unfiltered and roughest language, most opinionated of the five umpires discussed in the book) and not really taking notes in the presence of the subjects so they often did not think of him as a writer. He ate and drank and traveled with them. He was given full access throughout the whole season and took significant advantage of it. It was reported that Harry Wendelstedt would not and did not ever speak to Gutkind again after the book was published. I wonder if the commentary he offers to the author or what was reported in the book affected Harry's career in any way. At the time he was rated the number 2 umpire in the NL, after Doug Harvey, a perennial choice as number one for many years. In summary, this book is a must read, in my opinion, it is obvious to me that Bruce Weber was influenced by this book to some extent before he wrote "As They See 'Em". The chapters read similarly and the stories have some relation to each other. The book ties together well with "As They See 'Em" and with Tom Gorman's Memoir, "Three and Two" both of which I have reviewed here in other threads/topics. I think I find the books written by non-umpires about umpires a better read than the autobiographical books from the umpires themselves but when reading several books back-to-back like I have been doing here lately I see that they also compliment each other and give the reader a more full-spectrum view of the umpires, the history and this "condition" we call umpiring. Thanks for reading this. I hope you will get a copy of this book and enjoy the historical perspective it offers. I have even more respect for the lesser known umpires now and an even greater appreciation of the struggles that umpires have endured in the past.

Is this a Football Ref's Forum now? Just sayin'! (grin)

Warren, I recommend you make this list a sticky if possible. Dave