[PeteBooth]

Boy no activity since November 18th. I realize individuals officiate different sports, but this is the longest stint among the message boards where there has been little or no activity. I'll attempt one more time to get this Board at least active and see what others think or want to do.

I'd like to recap my season and see what you take from each and every season to improve and give YOU Yourself and Honest evaluation.

One thing I've learned is that the strike zone is that which is accepted by the leagues in which we umpire. Also, there are book rules and rules that the League itself adopts like special ground rules.

We discuss many a ruling and varied issues here on the net but how does that apply in reality?

1. The strike zone - We can all talk about the book zone and have a heated debate on whether to extend it, shrink it or just plain ignore it, but the truth is: The leagues that pay us determine how we are to call the zone.

If you had numerous complaints about your zone this year (I'm not talking about that 2 or 3 bad games we all have but in general), in a particular league, change it and see for yourself the reaction you receive. Don't get me wrong you will still hear it on those punch out strike 3's, but experiment.

This year was my first year in umpiring a CWBL League. My first 3 games were just plain awful. In fact one of the batters (in a nice way) said Hey Blue this isn't JV baseball. I changed my zone (not a postage stamp - No-one that I know of likes a postage), to accomodate the league.

I watched my partner and what his zone was and starting with my 4th assignment I improved dramatically and started calling the game that suited them. Along those lines are the neighborhood play - again accepted practice for higher leagues.

In other words, the game is called the way it is expected for that league. That doesn't mean we will not have some difficult calls to make, but if a player is out and it is expected that he is out - He's out.

2. Base Awards - My suggestion - Do not get hung up on the book definition. I umpired in one field in which all base awards (from no matter where) was one base. RE: DBT was only about 5-6 ft on either side of first / third so just about every over-throw went into DBT. Again, these people are paying me so who cares.

All in all I learned (which I had an inkling anyhow), that the game belongs to The players Not us. Some of us had our day in the sun Now it's their turn.

No-one is going to say Hey that umpire made a great call (conversely they will remember the so called "bad" ones) on that play, but they surely will talk about so and so's HR blast that won the game.

Yes someone has to umpire, but do not get hung-up on yourself

What have you learned from your past season that you would like to improve on or share with others to aid them in their development. Common guys I know it's football / basketball and yes even Hockey season but there must be something you would like to talk about or share with others

COMMON BLUE!!

Pete Booth