Quote:
Originally posted by sir_eldren
Very nice. You've just insulted about 80% of all baseball players and umpires out there. As you said, you have about the worst attitude on this board, and I agree with you whole-heartedly. You are a lame punk who has no true respect for this game or else you'd understand one of the basic tenets of officiating: EVERY game is important because it's the most important game to the players that day.
-Craig
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I never said anything about the game not being important. As a matter of fact, I teach umpires to treat every game as a learning experience and give it 100%. A crappy game with a score of 11-2 is a great time to sharpen your own game because usually no one yells at you. Usually!
I have been to numerous umpires camps and conferences. At every one, there is some jerk student who wants to argue with the Major League umpire/NCAA big dog that we have brought in to train us.
This board is exactly the same. There are a few people who really know what they are doing and bunch a Little League and Babe Ruth style umpires who want to argue with them. At the camps, the Major League bigs dogs politely engage the jerk students. Likewise, here on the forum most of the big dogs politely engage the apprentices. A few, like me, tell them to shut up and listen.
Notice that nothing in what I said should reflect negatively on what 90% of coaches and players in Little League are trying to accomplish. They are trying to have fun and learn something. They are being good sports and practice sportsmanship. If it weren't for the other 10% of morons and wannabes, they would not even need trained umpires.
To do this job right requires at least 30 hours of classroom training, 30 more hours of on-field training, and 10 hours per year of on-field refresher and mechanics checkups. That's the minimum to stay proficient. If you want to get better, a whole lot more is required.
The wannabes want to attend a two hour clinic and come to the forum and argue with me. They think that this will make them better and that they are now good umpires.
They suck, and they and their ilk are the only ones that don't know it. Real umpires know that they suck, and the coaches and players that suffer through their games know they suck. Most real umpires politely string them along in their delusion. That is the one thing that makes me different. In that regard, I am like the coaches and players who tell them that they suck.
Yesterday, I did a 16 year old Babe Ruth tournament with a three man crew. The plate umpire sucked. Between innings, I talked to the other base umpire about what I was going to say to the plate umpire after the game.
"Fortunately" for the plate umpire, he suffered from heat exhaustion and had to be carted away in an ambulance. He did not get to hear my critique which would have ruined his day more than the hospital visit. My other partner knew what I was going to say and opined that perhaps a hospital visit was better than my a$$ chewing.
Peter