[Rich]

Originally posted by His High Holiness

Careful, Careful. Those that criticize Little League umpires during tournament time get burned by LL fanatics. I enjoy the fireworks, however, so keep at it.

This brings to mind a comment that I made in one of my articles that infuriated a LL fanatic. I said that one should consider that the best Little League umpires work the tournaments. From that, imagine how bad the umpires are that work the regular season.

Duck and cover;

Peter

Yup. all LL umpires are terrible. Blah, blah, blah. Last weekend I worked at Helfaer Field, a LL field built in the parking lot of Miller Park in Milwaukee on the site of old Milwaukee County Stadium (earlier this season I worked a college DH at Miller Park itself -- I wonder how many umpires have worked both fields in the same season). Next month we'll work a six man crew for the championship of our district staffed in the infield with college umpires.

We'll have a blast -- working with each other is some of the best fun we have at these tournaments.

Around here sometimes we'll even have a day off from umpiring and will throw a third and sometimes fourth umpire on the field during some of our adult amateur leagues. We enjoy ourselves and work on our 3- and 4-man mechanics, the players are impressed that we'll actually give some of our game fee to a third (or fourth) guy, and we'll all have a few after the game.

I'm pretty cynical in my everyday life, but next to you I'm a regular Pollyana, HHH. Thanks for filling that role for me.

BTW, I've worked at least a dozen regular season LL games on my nights off from Legion, adult amateur, and semipro games. And I've seen many good umpires working those games as well -- many of them are my friends. But if you want to keep the stereotype alive, go for it. Or you could work some of those games yourself instead of making fun of those that do.

--Rich

[Edited by Rich Fronheiser on Jun 29th, 2004 at 07:36 PM]