Sorry it took so long to introduce myself!

[JHSump]

I joined umpire-empire about a year ago, but didn’t think to introduce myself. Sorry! So, here it is:

I started umpiring when I was 16-17, about 38 years ago. I umpired summers for about 4 years while a college student, mostly 13-15 year-old games in a local town league (Babe Ruth Baseball) on Long Island. I had played through HS and various summer leagues (e.g., Senior Babe Ruth), so I guess they considered me “qualified.†There was no training. I used a balloon. I also played four years of Division III baseball and in the summers I played Stan Musial Baseball (unlimited age, mainly college or ex-college players).

When I went to graduate school baseball stopped for me for about 24 years. I ended up in southwest Virginia where I am a professor of physics (astrophysics) at a large state university. You have to be a bit obsessed with the “rules†of how things work to be a physicist --- so I like understanding the rules of baseball. Always have. Much more so than any of my teammates, for example.

Then I had kids of my own: coaching softball (girls), and baseball (the boy). Just to make sure you know: I never argued a judgment call as a coach, and only occasionally did I ask to discuss a rule. I knew things from the umpire side and never thought it warranted to argue a judgment of any kind. Gee, as a player I never even considered questioning a call.

One day, about 10 years ago, the local town baseball league president asked me if I had any experience umpiring, since he needed someone to fill in at an upper level game (beyond where I was coaching at the time) that afternoon, 13-14 year-olds. I worked that game solo and used a catcher’s chest protector under a shirt, catcher’s shin guards and a catcher’s mask. I was amazed at how much easier it was to get a good close look at the strike zone compared to what I had remembered from my teenage balloon days!

After the game the league president said he was surprised at how well I did. He had just wanted someone to cover the game. But now he wanted to book me for more games. So started my second career as an umpire. Coaching ended quite a while ago, but I’ve been umpiring ever since. Love every minute. (Also, I play adult softball --- I am friends with all the umpires.)

I umpire local “rec†league games (Dixie Youth Baseball, 10U and 12U), travel baseball tournaments (9U up to 16U), and I just started doing middle school and HS this spring season. HS seems so much smoother than anything else; I should have started doing HS earlier but I was concerned about the time commitment.

This site is absolutely great! I visit it everyday during the baseball season and enjoy all the discussions and topics!

[Umpire in Chief]

Welcome back to the fold!

Now we have a physicist and a rocket scientist among our members. Who said umpires weren't smart. I have a feeling I'm bringing down the collective IQ here.

[JHSump]

Well, you have to remember that physicists tend to be smart in a certain way, and not other ways. If you've watched the TV comedy "The Big Bang Theory" you'll know what I'm talking about. We don't tend to be so smart about interacting with people --- hahaha, which is a big part of umpiring. So, I've learned much about game management from this site, combined with experience on the field.

Funny thing is I now find what I've learned as an umpire spilling into my interactions during my real job. Once when a colleague was going overboard complaining to me, and starting to get personal, almost automatically I raised my hand and basically said, "That's enough," and walked away. It worked like a charm!

[cyclonehokiece]

Funny thing is I now find what I've learned as an umpire spilling into my interactions during my real job. Once when a colleague was going overboard complaining to me, and starting to get personal, almost automatically I raised my hand and basically said, "That's enough," and walked away. It worked like a charm!

However, ejecting your colleagues doesn't seem to be as effective as on the ballfield.

[Jocko]

Wow. An astrophysicist. So do you believe that hubble can "see back in time?" I can't wrap my head around that one.

[Rich Ives]

Wow. An astrophysicist. So do you believe that hubble can "see back in time?" I can't wrap my head around that one.

Pretty simple. If the light source is 50 light years away then what you are seeing happened 50 years ago because it took the light that long to get here.

[mjr_2013]

Wow. An astrophysicist. So do you believe that hubble can "see back in time?" I can't wrap my head around that one.

Pretty simple. If the light source is 50 light years away then what you are seeing happened 50 years ago because it took the light that long to get here.

Just the concept of a light year is mind boggling to me... 5,878,625,373,183.61 (that's nearly 6 trillion) miles is... a very long way away.

[Jocko]

It's hard for me to think in terms of distance=time. 186,000'@sec light speed traveling billions of miles, so the star we see in the sky may have become a supernova 10,000+ years ago and what we percieve is not what is, but what WAS. Hard to get ahold of. Black holes. Galactic anomolies. Scientific law. I like the idea, but don't agree with the concept. It's LAW until it's DISproven? How about PROVE it and I'll buy it.

[JHSump]

Well, in answer to various comments...

I haven't yet had to eject a colleague, cyclonehokiece! I guess they have taken the "warnings" seriously --- better behavior than some coaches, I'll say! Another umpire thing I've done is just calmly ignore look through someone when they go ballistic. Eventually, when they realize I'm not reacting, they stop! haha Another trick from umpiring: answer argumentative questions with simple short answers.

Rich is right, of course --- telescopes are "time machines." While you don't get to go back in time, you get to see what things looked like back in time, but only far away. Still when you look very far away (with a telescope) you can see what the conditions were like earlier in the universe. But you don't need a telescope to look back in time. Most bright stars in the night sky are 10's to 100's of light years away. You see now the light they emitted back then. If you can find the Andromeda Galaxy in the sky (you need a dark sky), you see the light from that galaxy that was emitted about 2 million years ago.

Those long times are mind boggling even to astrophysicists. But short, understandable times are readily at hand: light takes about 1 second to get here from the Moon, about eight light-minutes from the Sun. Roughly an hour elapses for light coming from the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn (the exact time depending on where they are in their orbits, where Earth is in its orbit)

And yes, mjr, a light-year is a hard-to-imagine large number of miles. Light travels very fast, of course. Here's an easy distance to remember: light travels about 1 foot in a time of 1 nanosecond (1 billionth of a second). So, one foot = a "light nanosecond." But, then 1 biillionth of a second is hard to imagine!

Ok, now you've got me started --- professors like to give lectures. :)

[JHSump]

Trout78, you make good points. Skepticism is at the heart of all science.

Proving something (with a capital P) is actually impossible. One can disprove a "law." But not prove it correct. Newton's laws work very very well, but were shown (proven) to not be correct under all circumstances. Relativity and quantum mechanics work better than Newton's laws under certain circumstances, yet reduce to Newton's laws under the conditions that Newton envisioned --- everyday life. Newton's laws don't work when things move at speeds which are a major fraction of the speed of light (relativity is needed then). Newton's laws don't work for small length and time scales involving small energies (for example, in atoms) --- then quantum mechanics is needed.

So, all our laws are just approximations we have gradually discovered which work under certain circumstances. We don't know everything --- by a long shot --- which makes it all the more interesting in my mind!

But aren't the rules of baseball gradually evolving also? Changed due to the results of the constant practical experimentation that games provide. :)

[Jocko]

Believe it or not, I do believe in quantum theory and all that. It's just so grand in scale its hard to compartmentalize in my small world mind. I hope someday my subscription to Scientific American will shed some light and provide the insight I seek.

[Jocko]

That and listening to George Noory. Lol