kylehutson

Putting my mind into FED (and I keep in mind I was once a pretty clueless FED umpire)... It seems to me the way to go would be to just make a balk a delayed dead ball. Once all action has relaxed, we enforce the balk or let the DHC take the result of the play. Yes, this might lead to the defense doing silly things (e.g. R2 is coached to just round 3rd and go home, because who cares if he gets out - the same as a "free play" in football when a defender jumps offsides), but I'll take that silliness over a batter getting robbed of a triple off the outfield fence after a no-stop balk (as a real-life example that happened to me).

Interesting - in my part of the state (I've heard its different around the metro areas), we generally have varsity doubleheaders on Tuesdays and Fridays and JV doubleheaders on Mondays and Thursdays. Wednesday is "family night" (formerly "church night", but they moved away from that a few decades ago). And Saturdays and Sundays are left open.

Kansas: same pay for both

...OR you could keep from having rules clinic at the plate meeting and just KISS. 😁

Duh. We don't play on a "baseball square". 😁

Just saw this and knew I had to insert it into this conversation... https://babylonbee.com/news/to-increase-excitement-mlb-to-allow-each-team-to-call-in-one-tactical-air-strike-on-outfield-per-game/

Any live runner can physically assist other runners. However, a trailing runner cannot pass a preceding runner. So if the Batter-Runner (BR) pushes the runner that started on 1st (R1), that's fine. If BR clearly passes (i.e., closer to 2nd than R1 is), then BR is out (even if it's because R1 was running backwards toward 1st).

But here's the difference. How many of those "party favors" did they make in that batch? 100,000? 1,000,000? What's RefSmart's total possible market? 20k? Certainly not enough to get any real economy of scale.

There is software on them - on an EEPROM chip most likely. The dipswitches just tell the EEPROM what mode it's in. There SHOULD be an updatable firmware. I still have the skills to do this. What I lack is the time and gumption. If those two things ever coincide, there will be an open-source refsmart-like device available.

Further - if it hits me, that means the catcher missed it. I hope it bounces to the dugout and the runners all advance.

Or if you do, be sure to enunciate so the grandma in the back of the bleachers can hear. And make it "I don't have any balls!" (I've never done this, but I've been sorely tempted a couple of times with teams that I knew would know I said it on purpose.) I do have one guy I regularly work with that does exactly this. He's never gotten any pushback from it that I've seen. As for the original question. I've had the "dead ball" coached out of me by others (but also when I started, I also got so much training that I wore my hat backwards and tapped my fists together on a full count). Honestly, I now do what my evaluators ask of me. I'm just a soldier in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Welcome aboard! I got my start pretty much the same way, except my son was 10 when he started (my small town's rec league only requires umpires to be 2 years older than the age they're umpiring, so at 10 he could umpire 8U). He gave it up by the time he graduated high school (and never worked anything beyond our rec league), but I took a liking to it and stuck with it. You've found the best online resource for umpires on the Internet. I promise that if you read here for awhile, you'll be a much better umpire for it. You'll actually get correct, rulebook answers (as opposed to the online arguing and know-nothings elsewhere). I just looked at a map, and apparently I just drove through there last month - I drove I-70 to Denver for work. Dang. I'm going to have to start using this now.

My sentiments exactly. I wear an F3 mask with the Skully - best protection money can buy from what I can tell. I took a foul ball of the top of my mask a few days ago that I'm sure would have completely rocked me without the Skully. I just grabbed a new ball from my bag and handed it to the catcher. Play on! I do think it is a little hotter than a regular cap, but as others have mentioned, that doesn't mean as much sweat dripping down your face, since it has the built-in sweatband. Oh, and the other downside is that if you are out in blistering heat, it can take a couple of days for that sweatband to dry out. If you're working plates on back-to-back days, sometimes it will still feel a little damp on the second day. I'm not going back. YMMV.

Not a book, but if you're a visual learner, Take a look at ump-app.com - very comprehensive and well researched and produced.

You're assuming that a runner would keep the team in mind over his own personal ego. Not completely unheard of in MLB, but certainly rare. And if they're that smart, and also selfless... Cool, let them do that. Are you going to tell your speedster to try to hit an IFF so you can trade an out for speedier runners? Let's face it - the IFF/INT situation is even more rare than the selfless MLB player, and this would just help avoid arguments and ejections in these cases. Obviously (or should be for this forum, anyway).