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Not so fast,
It was noted somewhere above:
" . . . no pitch below the knees is a strike, period!"
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Then this umpire would never work serious baseball in my area. A pitch where the top of the ball catches the bottom of the knee and is caught and framed well by F2 is a strike when seen by upper level umpires.
Pretty simple.
As an umpire calls more of the defined strike zone players, coaches and even fans adjust to what is called.
When I first started as an umpire my first goal was to have a consistent strike zone for each individual hitter.
As my abilities increased through practice I increased that consistency to complete half innings. Soon that moved to full innings.
Somewhere along the way I noticed that calling balls and strikes was much easier than I had thought. It was simply good positioning, tracking the pitch and having good timing.
Somewhere in the late 70's my consistency had stretched to several innings (and now and then even a full game).
I never had an exact instant when working the dish for balls/strikes became "easy" -- it just did. But remember, in those days if a PU had 8 to 10 "questionable pitches" he was considered to have done a very good job.
So now we fast forward to today:
I seldom ever get must "harping" from anyone on balls/strikes. Being my own worst critic I work to keep under 2 Ups and 2 Downs (what we call strikes that are called balls and balls that you call strikes -- last night I was 0 ups and 1 down).
I also am considered a "pitcher's umpire." Do I "expand" the strike zone . . . nope, I just call more of it than some.
In closing I always post the same thing here over-and-over:
Umpires seldom, if ever, get in trouble for calling too many strikes (ignore Eric Gregg in this situation) or too many outs.
The "easy" calls and balls and safes.
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