[His High Holiness]

I agree with the Rut. Perhaps I am sick. Let me take a few minutes to take my temperature.

I am back after a quick medical checkup. I am OK. It turns out that the Rut wrote something intelligent after all.

On to Pete's question:

When one does a game that is abysmally played, a good umpire takes this opportunity to experiment with his mechanics and/or have some fun. You can bet that in a 14-1 game, no one is looking at the umpires. They just want to get out of there.

When I first started umpiring, I could not get the hang of listening for the ball and watching the bag for plays at first base. I backed off and looked at the whole play and blew a lot of calls as a result, Nothing really disgusting, mind you, but I missed more calls than I should have had I been using the proper technique. I even advanced to varsity ball with this method.

Finally, I decided that I had to learn how to do it right. Whenever I got in a blowout game or did 13-15 year old baseball, I started practicing listening for the ball and watching the bag. I made some horrendously awful calls in the learning process but I still remember the first time that it finally clicked. (It took the better part of a year to learn to do this consistently. I took a lot of s$$$ from coaches of 14 year olds over the course of that year. I set a personal record for ejections that year, too.)

Another thing that one can do in bad baseball is practice game management skills. Experiment with various types of interaction with the coaches and players. You may be surprised at the results.

For me, FED baseball is low level. I have nothing to prove there so I have made it my playground this year. In a long post on McGriffs recently, I outlined some of my more outrageous acts on FED fields. If you are primarily a FED umpire, you could do the same thing on Babe Ruth fields or LL fields. On the other hand, if you are Rut and T-ball is your specialty, try out your ideas on a s****r field.

Peter