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Originally Posted by AtlUmpSteve
The GD stance has several weaknesses in softball, in my opinion. The first is that it leaves the umpire's head very high looking down through the zone, forcing a judgment on the top of the zone, and making the judgment more difficult at the knees; compared to setting your eyes at the top of the zone, and making anything above your eyes a ball, and anything below your eyes a possible strike. That can be overlooked with consistency, but it still requires more judgment than necessary.
The second issue is much more problematic. In the softball game, the batter is most often in the front of the batters box, and the catcher then moves up to a point almost directly behind the plate. If you, as an umpire, set up 3' behind the catcher, the last time you will see the ball is 3' in front of the plate, because the catcher's body will take that space in front of her away from you. This is not an issue in baseball, when batters universally stand in the back of a box that is 4' behind the plate; it is a huge and insurmountable problem when the batter is 4' in front of the plate.
If you claim to see the ball across the plate into the catchers glove with that stance with the catcher directly behind home plate, you are only fooling yourself.
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I have not experienced the problems with the upper & lower zone you write about. I watch the ball and easily see where it goes in the GD stance. In fact as I said before, I get a better (longer) view of the ball. I have found the GD stance to be the best stance I have used in 30 years of umpiring.
I could go into a long, but probably futile, discussion with you on the how your experiences with the GD stance are probably due to you not knowing how to work the stance properly.
Just MHO