hmmm, guess i am doing it waay differently than most here, although none of my evaluators ever had a problem with it, as it is clear and concise:
if there is no balls, i dont say anything...so just: 2 strikes
if there is no strikes, dont say a word either....so just 3 balls
as far as indicating goes, now this should be funny :-)
1 ball or strike: index finger
2 balls or strikes: index and pinkie
3 balls: index pinkie and....wait for it...thumb
on top of it, when its either 3 balls or 2 strikes, i ll rotate my hand around....kinda hard to explain, but trust me, its VERY easy to see and understand
never had an issues in HS, or college ball, and even my evaluators had only good things to say about it
there are even a couple of special motions for certain counts:
1-1: index fingers on both hands, facing backwards, coming together and back out
any 2 balls count: index and pinkie on leht hand facing forwards and up, before tilting to the right
i suppose a lot of these are idiosyncrasies that I adopted over 15 years of umpiring and only have gotten praise for, so I never saw any reason to change it.....if anything, i guess, its a huge part of my personality
Last year one of the national coaches for the Australian U16 team approached me after the game when they lost to japan and said:" you know, I have never quite seen this way of indicating certain counts, but we all liked it...it concise and clear"......even though his pitchers liked it better when i did the chainsaw for a close called 3rd strike :bang:
