[cowbyfan1]

I hear ya Garth on the broad stroke. As the "little dog" refered to in the article, I am getting brushed over with that because I had an opinion on an issue. I neither consider myself a big dog or little dog really. I am an umpire period. I have called NAIA and D3 teams, I have no problem calling freshman and JV ball tho I limit as much as possible to the top schools in the area. I have called state playoffs in my 3rd year of calling varsity ball and am going again this year (my 4th). I also coordinate for a pre-K to 5th grade REC ball league and have no problems stepping on a field to call coach pitch or tee ball if needed. I currently have about 23 umpires that call for me and all but 4 are teenagers. I try to take time to not just assign, but to actually teach them how to umpire so that they will be excited about it and look to move up to higher level ball, especially when they graduate high school.

Am I big dog? Could care less. One thing I will never be is so cocky that I think I have nothing left to learn. I went to 3 clinics this year and plan on the same thing next year. But I walk on to any field with confidence and always call as good a game as possible. Do I call perfect games? No because no ever does. (Sorry Tim and Garth, it is true, you don't either. 8-) ) Oh and by the way, I have found myself not cleaning off pitching rubbers except 1 time, and I think it was a habit thing, since the discussion thread 8-o.


I also have a quote from Peter's article:
Why won't he help out?
Baseball is a complicated game of politics. The umpires and coaches are jockeying for position and status, like so many wolves in a wolf pack; big dogs, if you will. It's not just the professionals. I rarely see a high school head coach with a shovel, or any other groundskeeping instrument, in his hand. Ahhhh!

I mentioned this to a couple coaches in my area. They want to know where there are openings for baseball coaches in your area are. We have one of the largest schools in the nation in Broken Arrow, OK. The head coach there works on his field, as does pretty much every other coach in the area. They want to get in on this cushy life that those coaches up there have.

[Edited by cowbyfan1 on Apr 17th, 2005 at 03:21 AM]