mac266

I drink very little, so I can afford the good stuff: Dalmore 18 years.

NFHS, varsity scrimmage. No one on; I was in position A. The batter hit a grounder to the short stop. I moved into position to make the call, observed the throw, and realized this one is going to be *close*. The 1st baseman knew it too, and stretched out super far, almost doing the splits. I had the ball hitting the glove a millisecond before the batter-runner's foot hit the bag, and a millisecond before the baseman's foot came off the bag. The baseman fell over, laid out on the ground, with his foot at least 8 inches off the bag. BUT, like I said, I had the ball hitting the glove BEFORE his foot came off. He maintained control of the ball and didn't bobble it. I pointed at the bag and yelled, "He held! OUT!" while following up with the out mechanic. The base coach disagreed with me, but he wasn't vocal. In fact, he didn't even address me; he just looked across the field at his head coach and gave the "he's off the bag" mechanic that we would use. No one asked me to get any help, so I didn't. I would have had they done so; this one was close. I'm about 90% certain I had all the events in the correct order -- ball to glove, runner's foot hitting the bag, baseman's foot falling off. An inning later, the base coach, who knew the first baseman, said something to the baseman about it. The baseman told him, "No, coach, my foot was on when the ball got there." I don't know if he was telling the truth or not, but an inning later he knows I'm not changing the call. I'm pretty sure I got it right. Since this was a scrimmage to open the season, we had about 6 umpires there; we were rotating in and out so we all got some repetitions in. Later, one of the other guys told me he would have called the batter-runner safe "just from the optics." When he hit the ground, his foot was clearly off the bag. But he doesn't have to keep his foot there; he just has to have the ball while his foot is touching the bag. The rule doesn't say it has to be in contact for a certain amount of time. I'm reasonably confident that he was out, so I called him out. What do you guys think? "Manage" the game on optics, or call it the way you think it happened?

It's no longer available (someone pulled it down), but I'm going to say a split-second decision made from a better angle than the camera is more likely to be right.

Since referees aren't carrying tasers and pepper spray, I'm going to say he's fine. And I'm not a physician; I'm repeating what I was told in training. We had a fellow officer walk in on a domestic where the male was on top of the female strangling her. The cop decided not to blow his head off, and cracked his skull instead. Rule justified by the court after the chickenSH*# brass tried to hang him on it. The brass even said shooting him would have been fine; they just didn't think it "looked good" to crack his skull.

I tried the socks and they were worse than tights. I'm sticking with tights. As to compression shorts with a deep cup pocket, everyone is a little bit different. I've never found any shorts or tights that put the cup in the right place. So I just put a jock over them.

My retired cop says this: If anyone has their hands around another person's throat, it takes approximately six seconds to kill them. DEADLY FORCE is justified to prevent this from happening. In most states, including where I live, if deadly force is justified, it is also justified in defense of another. In other words, the ref who punched the assailant was perfectly ok in doing so. This was a life-or-death situation and he should be given a heroism medal. I hope the ex-coach was also criminally prosecuted.

OP, a good rule of thumb is to always listen to this guy. I've learned more from him (never having met him) than I learned from my own trainers! I'm not joking, either. By the way, Maven, do you remember only 3 years ago I came on here because I was a brand new youth level umpire who received a whopping 2 hours of training before being fully blessed off as an umpire? Last year I did high school and moved up to Varsity in my first year. This year I'm doing high school again and was hired for the summer season to umpire an independent minor league!

I guess you didn't read my post...at all.

Prohibited in my HS association as well as my fall league.

I was taught, whether I am the plate umpire or base umpire, to point at a player committing an infraction (balk, obstruction, interference, etc.) with my LEFT hand while giving the audible ("THAT'S OBSTRUCTION!"). Then, at the proper time (whether the call is a delayed dead ball or immediate), award bases with my RIGHT hand -- "You, second base!" I went to a clinic where they told us to do just about everything with the right hand. It felt wrong. If I'm the plate umpire and I see a balk, under NFHS rules it's no big deal because it's an immediate dead ball -- "THAT'S A BALK! TIME! THAT'S A BALK! YOU, SECOND BASE!" But under OBR, it's a delayed dead ball -- "THAT'S A BALK!" Let the pitch happen and adjudicate afterwards. It may be a home run. The way I was taught, I would point at the pitcher with my LEFT hand and announce "That's a balk!" while letting the delivery continue. If I were to use my right hand as taught, it could be confused by anyone as a premature strike call, which would infuriate them. What are you guys using and why?

I use www.umpirebible.com I umpire in both NFHS and OBR rule books, so I'm constantly looking at the page which shows the differences.

This this upcoming year I'll be moving up to umpiring the Pecos League, an independent minor league. It's a summer league, so I'll still be doing high school in the spring season, and back to high school travel ball in the fall. The Pecos League is asking us to put numbers on our umpire uniforms, which I'm perfectly fine with. But I'm wondering about my plate coats. As you know, they are very expensive and I probably wouldn't be able to use them anywhere else, because I would be the only umpire wearing a number. My blue plate coat is a Fechheimer that was given to me by a retiring umpire, and is probably still worth a few hundred bucks. My black one is an Out West, which I bought for myself, and I've only used for two games. I think once I put numbers on them, the only place I'll ever be able to wear them is in the Pecos League. This is a summer league -- June, July, and August -- so it tends to be hot. But I will be umpiring in Colorado Springs, Trinidad (CO), and Roswell (NM). The elevation is so high that when the sun goes down, it cools off drastically and you need to wear a jacket in the evening, even during those months. All Pecos League games except for Sundays are in the evenings, so I do believe I will have plenty of opportunities to wear the plate coats. What bothers me is that once I put numbers on the plate coats, I won't be able to wear them anywhere else. Eeek. But then again, I'm moving up. What I'm thinking is this: Put numbers on the black Out West Officials plate coat, but preserve the blue Fechheimer in its unaltered state. What are your thoughts, please?

I know Umpire Empire has some affiliations with the MiLB academy, one of the two professional schools. So I'm wondering if it's ok to discuss some of the clinics who are not affiliated with them. If not, please delete this post. I just attended a 2-man clinic by the Umpire Training Institute in Phoenix, AZ. Several of the instructors are also instructors for some of the other famous clinics (Blue and Black, Mid-American, etc.). They are all big names, and have several college world series under their belts, etc. One MLB umpire showed up and signed a baseball for me. We had a good mix of students -- some of us were high school umpires looking to move up. Others were brand new to umpiring, never having worked a single game, and others were Little League umpires looking to go to high school. The instructors adjusted to the mix very well. For some folks, they had to teach them to take their mask off when the ball is hit. For others, we had those basics down so they were working with us to learn to read a play a little better and dial in our zone. If you follow college baseball, you know Arizona State University is the "New York Yankees" of division I baseball. Baseball is their official religion. They were having an intra-squad scrimmage, and about half of us were given the opportunity to umpire the plate and the bases (due to the number of students, we got to work either an inning on the plate or a half inning on the bases). I got to work the plate for an inning, and it was awesome. Do you know how you can tell when a batter or catcher disagrees with a ball/strike call based on their body language? I didn't get a single one of those. Not. One. I've been working this entire season on dialing in my strike zone, so apparently it's paid off. Of course it was only an inning, but I've never called pitches that fast (93 mph was the fastest, about 10 mph faster than what I've been seeing in high school ball). It was the most fun I've had in a long time. I highly recommend any umpire who cares to do a good job attend one of these clinics every now and then. I'm going to try for a 3-man clinic next year so I can work post-season in high school, or start getting my name out there for college Division II.

I just attended an umpire clinic in Arizona and they are year-round.

OP, by the way, my experience (and I think others will support me on this) is that baseball below the high school level has a ton of idiots like this coach. I experienced it several times before I moved up to the high school association. High school coaches usually know how to interact with umpires.

I'm not sure why so many people think their job is to keep a coach in the game. This dude ejected himself several times; you should have shown him the door. Now he, his assistant coaches, and the players all think that's the way they are supposed to interact with umpires, and he is going to become a problem for every umpire in your association.

The supply chain had nothing to do with my problem. Defective equipment did. Everything shipped in a timely manner; it was just missing critical pieces when it arrived -- three times -- and now the company has chosen to ignore my concerns. So I won't give them money anymore.

A while back, I posted about some problems I had ordering a Force 3 hockey style helmet through Dick’s Sporting Goods. Short version: it arrived with no chin pad. Returned and a new one shipped, no chin pad. Returned again and the third one had no chin pad. Not willing to deal with this again, I returned it for a refund and bought an All Star. I’m quite happy with it. I figured the problem was with Dick’s, and I wanted Force 3 to know about the issue because they are losing sales due to what I believed were the actions of a very large retailer. So I emailed them asking someone to call me. The auto response said they would. No call. I emailed a second time, still no response other than the auto email promising contact. So I called them twice, no response. So I sent a message to their Facebook page and got nothing but an auto response. I contacted a well-known online umpire equipment retailer and asked if they were going to carry this helmet. I was told they have no plans to even though they carry a lot of Force 3’s equipment. Hmmmmm…. Then I read their reviews on their Facebook page. Every review for the past six months is horrible, and talks about how their customer service refuses to contact anyone, the products have become shoddy, and reviews of that helmet talk about the crappy chin pad that always falls out and is poorly designed. I’m thinking Force 3 isn’t what it used to be.

Video cameras. See #2 and #3.

I'm 100% against it for a number of reasons: 1- The research currently shows MLB umpires are MORE ACCURATE than the electronic strike zones. Not the rest of us, but MLB for sure. 2- The box drawn in TV is always the same regardless of the batter's height. This is not how the rule book defines the zone, so what they are showing you on TV is inaccurate before the pitcher even gets his sign. 3- The strike zone is THREE DIMENSIONAL, but electronic zones are only calling strikes at the front edge of the plate (see #1 and #2). 4- While an MLB umpire is more accurate than the electronic zones, I fully admit that I'm not, and neither are other high school umpires. But you should see the difference in my skill in the two years I've been umpiring. I get consistently strong reviews from evaluators and even coaches about the consistency of my zone. So why impose that cost on a high school, whose priority for sporting equipment will almost 100% of the time NOT be for baseball? 5- Framing pitches is a genuine part of the game. Excellent or even good framing will buy the pitcher a strike. Crappy framing may give him a ball when it wouldn't have. But it's part of the game. I've called behind some outstanding catchers at the 18U and adult league level, and I've called behind some catchers who think sliding their mitt into the center of the zone after making the catch is framing. Why would we want to do anything that changes the importance of a player???

A thrown ball hitting the base is NOT a force out. A batted ball hitting a base is FAIR, regardless of where it flies after hitting the base.

Obstruction, NOT interference, and it guarantees the batter-runner or runner the base he would have gotten to, in the umpire's judgement, had he not been obstructed. USUALLY this means one additional base from where they stopped, or if they were thrown out at a base, they get that base. In other words, since he scored, the run counts and the penalty is not assessed.

The world according to mac266: Buy equipment that you'll use for varsity level high school baseball. I went cheap the first time around (the package from Champro that includes a chest protector, mask, shin guards, ball bag, indicator, and plate brush). In my second season I replaced everything except the plate brush. Now I'm wearing: Wilson West Vest gold chest protector, Force 3 shin guards, an All-Star hockey style helmet. My ball bags are higher quality, and I went with a 3-dial indicator. Oh, and my cup will withstand a thermonuclear blast. This year I also added some tights made by Force 3 that have some kevlar pads on the inner thigh. I've taken a few fouls there, and they deaden it a little. But wearing the tights helps prevent chafing from the shin guards. Of course, these are what I'm using, and your mileage may vary. But I still hold to my original point: Buy equipment that you could wear for varsity level baseball. As you move up, you won't have to buy all your gear again. It worked out for me, because I gave all that starter gear to my 15 year-old, who also plays, but who got hired to umpire Triple Crown tournaments with me.

DON'T QUIT! Kylehutson's advice was spot on. I guarantee, given your experience level, that you're calling too fast. See it, replay it in your head, look for the ball (is there a "voluntary and intentional release?") and then make the call.

It's an 8-day course. I guess graduates of one of the two pro schools go there for final selection, but it's open to the rest of us schmucks, too. According to the web site, they use it to hire folks into college summer leagues like the American Association and others. I spoke with a mentor about it, and he says those college summer leagues are great, but not for a family guy like me -- 90 days away from my regular (and well paying, especially compared to umpiring!) job and family. But an 8-day course is much more palatable than a 30-day course, just from a pocket book and burning vacation time perspective. This is especially true because I could never afford to be an MiLB umpire. Sure, if they stuck me in the MLB on day 1 and paid me the MLB rate, it would be great. But it doesn't work like that. Do you suppose it would open up other opportunities? We have a Pecos league team locally and the umpires are all local. I'd love to get into that.