New Balance Umpire Plate Shoes PSA

[JimKirk]

New Balance Umpire Plate Shoes PSA

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[MadMax]

No offense to Ty whatsoever... 

"These are high-performance athletic footwear, not work boots, let's treat them as such" (paraphrased)

Sure. We'll treat them as high-performance athletic footwear when schools, tournaments, and municipal leagues treat their baseball fields like high-performance athletic facilities, instead of sandy, muddy pits of misery and woe. I sometimes think that the wastelands of Hell have better groundskeeping.

 

 

On a related note, I've actually extended the condition of my NB plate shoes by doing three important things:

1. As Ty & U-A state, refrain from knocking shoes upon the ground or each other without securing the metatarsal guard.
2. Put black duct tape on the upper edge, where the foot enters, especially on the instep side. This prevents the chafing of the shinguards from weakening and tearing the shoe fabric.
3. If extensively dirty / sandy / muddy, don't clean the shoes onsite. Instead, place them in a plastic shopping bag, bring them home, and then blow most of the dust / sand / mud off using my (new) air compressor. This way, I'm not grinding dirt into the pleather, damaging it. This is especially useful for the ventilated tongue and the underside of the metatarsal guard.

[JimKirk]

On 2/24/2020 at 8:48 PM, MadMax said:

No offense to Ty whatsoever... 

"These are high-performance athletic footwear, not work boots, let's treat them as such" (paraphrased)

Sure. We'll treat them as high-performance athletic footwear when schools, tournaments, and municipal leagues treat their baseball fields like high-performance athletic facilities, instead of sandy, muddy pits of misery and woe. I sometimes think that the wastelands of Hell have better groundskeeping.

 

 

On a related note, I've actually extended the condition of my NB plate shoes by doing three important things:

1. As Ty & U-A state, refrain from knocking shoes upon the ground or each other without securing the metatarsal guard.
2. Put black duct tape on the upper edge, where the foot enters, especially on the instep side. This prevents the chafing of the shinguards from weakening and tearing the shoe fabric.
3. If extensively dirty / sandy / muddy, don't clean the shoes onsite. Instead, place them in a plastic shopping bag, bring them home, and then blow most of the dust / sand / mud off using my (new) air compressor. This way, I'm not grinding dirt into the pleather, damaging it. This is especially useful for the ventilated tongue and the underside of the metatarsal guard.

None taken. I do know that someone shared somewhere, and I’m paraphrasing, that “if I buy $150 shoes, I shouldn’t have to try so hard to take care of them”. So his comment was an emphasis on the opposite: “you paid that much, so please take care of them.”

No. 3 is a great tip. I know this was one cause @Razzer also discussed with me in a phone conversation. I think he ultimately referenced it in a video on his UMPLIFE page.

Can you provide more details (maybe a pic or 2) explaining No. 2? I am intrigued.

[kylejt]

Oh these kids.

They never knew how hard we had to work to keep our +POS low tops looking good. Get your Zippo close to these new shoes, and they'll melt.

[MadMax]

 

On 2/25/2020 at 10:48 PM, JimKirk said:

Can you provide more details (maybe a pic or 2) explaining No. 2? I am intrigued.

So, I put black duct tape on/around the upper edge of the shoe to hinder or prevent the shinguards from rubbing, wearing thru, and eventually tearing that apart.