Quote:
Originally posted by His High Holiness
All;
I do not do much FED ball, (only 3 games this year so far and none of those were plates) so I do not know what new trends are being enforced and how to interpret them.
For example, for the last few years, players have worn wrist bands of either tape or cloth. This year, I have started to see Lance Armstrong yellow plastic on wrists, and sometimes white or black plastic although I do not know what they stand for. No one seems to be enforcing the jewelry rule with regard to them, except for pitchers and that is a different rule. In any case, how does one differentiate between white or black tape, white or block cloth, and white, black, or yellow plastic. Quote the rule please if you have a different standard for each.
I do not want to be the only umpire enforcing a rule that everyone else is ignoring for political correctness reasons. How are other areas of the country handling this?
Same question for the gorilla arm. We were told by our state interpreter to enforce it but in two of the three games where I worked, the pitchers where imitating gorillas with no consequence from the PU or shouts from the other coach. However, both were left hand pitchers and I cannot see any advantage gained by a gorilla left hander.
Peter
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I work a lot of Fed games in Peter's area and regularly call the "gorilla arm." Can't say I call it every time. I've worked a couple of pitiful games where I called it early but after the score got to be in the 20-1 neighborhood, there didn't seem to be much point anymore. Finish five and get out.
The way I see it, cloth wristbands are equipment and plastic wristbands are jewelry and I go from there. Never had an argument.
My main equipment issues this year have been with helmets. The NOCSAE helmets that were new two or three years ago have been bounced too many times and are developing cracks in the area of the sharp curve near the earpiece. Also, a lot of pads are coming loose, need to be reattached/reglued.