[L.G. Dorsey]

Carl,

I appreciate the thorough response you gave to my concerns. I understand your position on the "history" of the jousting that has occurred here and I can appreciate your position. However, eventually someone has to to step up to the plate (pardon the poor pun) and stop the madness. I have read that you are a retired English teacher and it is obvious from your posts that you have a great command of the English language and your composition skills are quite good. It is that background and talent that I think gets you into trouble sometimes. I often read your posts and think "Man, that guy makes some good points" only to find extraneous jabs or comments that you may think nothing of but come across as offensive to unsuspecting posters (This does not include those who you have a prior history with).

Carl, I am a scientist by training. Science is full of criticism and some of the worst criticism I have seen has occurred in scientific journals and at scientific meetings. However, rarely does it become personal,particularly in written communication. In cases like these, you typically see the science criticized but not the scientist. But, if we use deductive reasoning we can logically equate bad scientists with bad science. You see my point is that I agree we all have the right to disagree and have our own opinions. We can do this in a constructive way without starting a war.

I do not mean to single you out. There are others who engage in this behavior as well. They need to take a step back and pull in the reins. I tend to brush off most of the snide remarks I see on these boards simply because I have more important things to do than come up with crafty comebacks. With that said, I do learn a tremendous amount from you and the other posters about umpiring. My whole premise for starting this discussion was to say "Hey, let's bring this back to what we are here for, umpiring!". It would be a lot easier to read through posts if the message was on target and not muddled with hyperbole and personal attacks.

I want you and others to stick to their guns about their beliefs. Umpires are no different from any other vocation. There is not one exact way to do things and there never will be. Your points about pro mechanics are dead on. Why do think everyone works the box coming out of PRO school, it has nothing to with it being the absolute best position for everyone (Jim Evans has a great diagram of an umpire in four different stances with his head in the exact same location). Instead, it puts every candidate on a level scale for evaluations. I agree that pro mechanics are the same way. Jim Evans and his staff preached to us at the FL CLassic this year that the base umpire should be able to call the DP and look for interference at 2nd without PU assistance. I don't think these guys have called a game with the FED slide rule. There will be times when a guy overslides 2nd or contact occurs immediately after the ball is gone and you (BU) have already turned to call the back end. Then what do you do? I don't pretend to have the right answer but it let me know that different times call for different approaches.

I'll end my post now and drift back out of the light. I just wanted to point out to everyone that we all paid good money for umpiring instruction through eumpire and if you're like me, money doesn't come easy. So why waste your time and money with petty in-fighting? Let's talk mechanics, rules, and theory without the verbal sparring....


Lawrence



[Edited by L.G. Dorsey on Feb 10th, 2001 at 09:45 PM]