In the bottom of the 47th...

[RichMSN]

(Some of this copied from elsewhere, which is why the formatting is different...)

 

I was a complete whore yesterday.  A new USSSA all-turf complex opened in the area and they were having trouble filling umpiring slots.  I had the day off and am leaving Tuesday to visit some dear friends in Spokane and work a dozen or so baseball games in their July 4 wood bat Legion tourney, so the extra spending money for the trip would be nice.

 

So I worked.  7 games.  4 at the U13 level (54/80) and 3 at the U16 level (regulation diamond).

 

Put my plate gear on at 7:30AM.  First pitch was at 7:48AM (yes, I started early -- we had weather threatening all day) and I worked 4 plates.

 

1:38, 1:32, 1:24, 1:18.  All but the 1:32 game went a full 7 innings.  The teams were mostly swinging away and I was calling a lot of strikes when they weren't swinging.  And I kept them moving between innings.  Last plate game was 1:18 and finished at 3:12PM.  So I had my plate gear on for just under 8 hours.

 

Then 3 games on the bases.  Quite frankly, I was bored.

 

I didn't have a single visit all day, in seven games.  I heard one coach say I made a horrible call at third base, but he was sitting in the first base dugout and, well, he's entitled to his wrong opinion.

 

The last game ended at 10:24PM.  From when I pulled into the place until the time I pulled out, it was 15 hours and 15 minutes.

 

The final game looked like it was going to go extra innings.  R3 only, 2 outs, bottom of 7, 9-9 game.  One of the longer games of the day (it ended up going 1:54).  Then F1 steps to third and doesn't throw.  At that instant (which I was calling the balk and scoring the winning run), I felt that maybe, just maybe, the baseball gods were thanking me in some small way for the hard work I did all day.

 

One hilarious (to me) moment from the day:

 

We had weather in the area all day. Apparently, an umpire saw lightning in the distance and pulled the teams. I applaud that, actually. From there, they decided to have a sitewide delay. Again, I applaud that.

Of course, we didn't see anything and had kept playing. We did have a 4 minute delay for a cloudburst and apparently during this time was when they decided to delay sitewide. So when the rain slowed, we went and finished the half-inning. One pitch, K. (And yes, we needed to pull them with a 1-2 count -- the skies opened up.)

As we sat out the delay, someone in management came and told us we'd have to replay that last pitch as we started during a declared sitewide delay (which nobody knew about). I guess I made a face, cause the guy asked me what was wrong. I said, "Oh, nothing, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." 

When I went back to the field, I found the coach that had talked the site director into this idiotic decision. He had a sheepish grin on his face and I walked up and said, "How did you get them to agree to that?"

He said, "I have no idea. I didn't believe for a second they'd fall for that, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try."

Batter walked and ended up scoring the only run for about 4 innings.

 

That coach and I laughed about that decision during the game and I ran into the school's varsity head coach after the game -- a really nice, experienced (self-described: geezer) whose grandson played in the game. He and I had a laugh about that, too.

Have to say, it felt a bit like when the opposing rats talk about an umpire in an unflattering way...