|
Jeff,
I will try to be polite here, but I can't help asking, "What?".
We don't care about labels or towering our mastery of the craft over newer umpires. Several of us have used the Big Dog reference simply to establish that veteran umpires sometimes act more important than they should. We know that each official is equal, that is not a phenomenon unique to baseball. I have witnessed poor officiating and communication skills between officials in many sports.
What we are talking about here is how to work together to get the right call made. No one has suggested that the protocol involves belittling one official and taking the glory as the senior partner. Look at the example that started this. MLB has set a larger than life example of how to get the call made correctly.
High school baseball has one or two umpires charged with watching many things. We certainly won't see every call the way we would with one or two more partners. However, we can and do see flagrantly inappropriate rulings and judgement calls. (Crawford's foul ball is a perfect example.) When this happens and we can get tgether and avoid making a mockery of our job, we should make every attempt to work together and accomplish this. That is all that this discussion is about.
If you don't feel that you can work this way, fine. If you have the opportunity to work at the next level, it will certainly be the way it is done. No one likes having their judgement questioned, it's humiliating. But we've all been in the car for the ride home, kicking ourselves because of a call we made. If I can do something about it on the field, I have saved myself from another drive of shame. I'm sure you are the same way...we are harder on ourselves that any guy with an evaluation form.
|