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Originally Posted by GarthB
Perhaps you'll get a better response than I did. I'm in the San Diego area periodically and made the same offer.
Steve forgets why the offer was made. After coming on the forum and proclaiming himself good enough to have been a MLU, he was greeted with doubt and derision, and not just by me. The chorus was symphonic in size.
He was insulted about being judged by people who hadn't seen him work. I thought about that and figured he may have a point, so I offered to make arrangements to see him work. Then he seemed insulted that people wanted to see him work. He said something about how some ML umpires told him how could he was.
I figured then that he wouldn't want just little ol'me watching him work, so I suggested that he join me at the Desert Classic where he could be evaluated, and helped, by the staff who teaches at Jim Evans Academy. That didn't fly either.
You are obvioulsy a much nicer guy, Chris. Perhaps you'll have better luck.
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I didn't have any games for you to watch, and like I said, I wasn't about to go out to the hot desert and have a heart attack just for you.
I will be going to school from Jan 2007 to March of 2008, and will not have time for much, if any, umpiring. I have already explained my health situation and my impending educational situation to Chris in a private message. Of course, in his message, he did not mention that he was going to report his findings back to you. I'm not going to umpire with anyone just to be a guinea pig. Plus, anyone can drive down to San Diego, but you can't just schedule yourself a game whenever you want. It doesn't work that way here. If you're not in an association, you don't work here.
Why don't you just drop the subject. I am in nowhere near the great shape I was in when I started umpiring. At that time, I was completely healthy, except for the bad back due to a major car wreck. I was a Physical Education major at San Diego State, and was proficient in 12 different sports, and this is where I got the umpiring bug. And I was a natural at it, and worked very hard to get good at it.
These days, I'm battling Type II diabetes, right side heart failure (complete with heart attack in '98), irregular heartbeat/atrial fibrilation (just diagnosed last week, thank you), hiatal hernia, sleep apnea, underactive thyroid, obesity, and edema. That I worked 90 games last year is in itself miraculous.
My skills as an umpire have not diminished. My stamina has. My appearance has. My health definitely has.
I live in denial that I can still go out and umpire like I used to. It is very difficult to come to grips with the fact that perhaps I can no longer umpire, at least not the volume of games I used to.