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Don,
Excellent lessons to have learned. Don't react - no matter what the provocation - and sometimes you just live with a call rather than screw your partner. I strongly suspect that every experienced and quality umpire could relate something very similar when we were near the stage you're at - first 5 yrs of umpiring. Remember those lessons. Here's a suggestion that I've made before and will keep on making. Start an umpiring diary/journal. List in this any call you've screwed the pooch on and what the ruling should have been. Include any rule interp that you found you were unsure of - and what the ruling should have been. As time goes by, you might well want to include those umps that you can count on to be very sound and those where you'd be better off working alone. As I look back at mine, I'm amazed at where I was and how I ever lasted. Like everyone else, I still get caught every now & then with a bad game - think I had 1, maybe 2 last year out of over 270 fastpitch games, but my knowledge is such that I don't make the same mistake twice and it's very seldom that I lose a rule discussion - wither on the field or as a uic. By the way, those first 5 years are the hardest, that's where you start to build the foundation that the rest of your umpiring will site & grow on.
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Steve M
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