New Blue: Troubles and Triumphs of the Freshly Minted Umpire. Part II.
So now I have a doubleheader, a blowout, and a rainout under my belt. I’ve been studying the rules day and night, and I plan to score above a 90 on my
NFHS Part II test. I’m a veteran, right? I can call those AAAAA state playoff games, right? Heck, some guy from some company called PBUC left me a voicemail. I think he was selling time shares in Florida or something. Man, I know everything about being an umpire. Anybody want to slap me yet?
I am a pretty young guy, and I know I have a lot to learn, but I feel like I have learned one monumental truth since I actually played baseball in high school. A few weeks of experience can kick a year’s worth of book knowledge from here to Jupiter. A lot of my friends, real bookish types, don’t understand this universal law. Here’s something else about my background that didn’t come up in my introduction last week; I am a fourth year Physics undergraduate at a large university. The fact that I am in college, and majoring in a natural science that is all about deep thought, numbers, and stacks of books predisposes me to being one of those wonks. One of those geeky, type-B, excessively cerebral rocket scientist dudes that is lulled by the sound of pages turning and hangs on every word of the song that is the opus of recorded knowledge. Take that catchy tune on the field as an umpire and see how much dancing the coaches and players do on your still warm carcass!
In just three games, I’ve learned things that can ONLY be learned through experience. Sure, one can be told over and over, but until he’s there, a newbie cannot possibly appreciate the wisdom behind the words. Let us take a moment to list just a couple of the priceless things I have learned in the past week. Maybe other new guys can’t appreciate it, and veterans already know it, but this is an article about how the new blue handles life so I hope that somebody finds it instructive!
Sell the call, sell the call, SELL THE CALL! When the runner at second breaks for third after the catcher has to trap an almost passed ball, gets gunned for out number three, and the tag happens only milliseconds before said runner reaches the bag, the umpire can’t simply pause, read, and react as taught. He has to pause, read, REACT! Otherwise, there is probably going to be a third base coach passive-aggressively giving you hell for the rest of the game about how he definitely saw the tag too high, or too late. From that time on I’ve put style and aggressiveness into my close ones, and haven’t had much static since. Sell the call like your life depends on it and nobody will say too much.
The plate umpire needs to keep the count; balls, strikes, AND OUTS. Just the night before last, there was an inning with all kinds of goofiness on the base paths. The kind that keeps an umpire on his toes and his eyes on the ball the whole time. It didn’t go so far as the hidden ball trick, but there were a few times when it came close to that. Anyway, after these shenanigans, the scoreboard read two outs. My indicator has one. The batter strikes out looking, and I am proud and excited to use my newly practiced third strike mechanic; taking a step back and firing up my chain saw. The players, offensive and defensive all trot off the field to start the next half of the inning. I give my indicator an inquisitive look, and figure that I am the one that’s wrong. Things are flowing too naturally for my indicator to be right. Well, the visiting pitcher was three or four throws into his warmup before his coach calls me over and says there WERE only two outs! Well crap. I tried to give him a half hearted attempt at “all the defensive players were off the field, so he can’t appeal” but even as I said it, I knew I was sounding buffoonishly stupid. So I head over to the home dugout, and THANK GOD that the scorekeeper had already come down out of the press box and was fussing with the assistant coach about only having two outs in the book. That poor girl, probably all of 16, looked like she had a sunburn. I couldn’t tell if she was mad, or if she thought she had screwed up. It was all the same to me at that moment. All three scorebooks had two outs. It was all reconciled, and we reset the players on the field. This ALL could have been averted at my level had I really been confident in what my own indicator said. Score another one for experience.
Yes, I have learned that an umpire must perfect his craft by reading and having healthy arguments about whether a batter can hit a pitch from outside the box on a drag bunt or not, or whether you call on your partner on a banger at first for help on a pulled foot before or after you make your call. But nothing can prepare the new umpire for these situations like actually being on the field and having to do it. Or much more importantly, screwing it up and having to take heat from a cranky, ill-natured head coach that was coaching baseball when the umpire was still in middle school. I don’t think my rocket scientist friends could handle these little glorious situations. An umpire can’t just sulk and look at the ground trying to get all cerebral about what he’s supposed to do while players, coaches, and spectators stare intently waiting for a ruling or as he is getting lit up by a coach who apparently wants to leave early (I’m still waiting for my first ejection).
I need to hear things from you seasoned guys about what experience has taught you. Think back to your early days of umpiring at a competitive level and gimme some of your experiences of those “nonstandard” situations that there isn’t a line in the rulebook for. Go ahead and take the two minutes to impart your experiences upon the great unwashed among us. We can all learn something, and I need a good laugh before tonight’s mid-week JV double-header.
Semper fi,
Mike
New Blue: Troubles and Triumphs of the Freshly Minted Umpire. Part II.
