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Sorry for the late post. First I would like to say I had a great time. My uncle and I stayed at Holiday Express in Portage Indiana. It was about a 23 min drive to the Fields. Which I think we were very lucky because a few guys had about a 50 minute drive to our site in Michigan City. Hotel rooms were actually $119 per night so they wernt cheap.Thanks N.S.A! Typicall hotel breakfast all your breads and cold cereal, juices. This hotel actually had biscuits n gravy , eggs and sausage. Which I thought was different but in a good way. But enough about the great hotel. We arrived sunday afternoon just in time for the umpire meeting. They told us what was expected of us and stressed who has the right to the orange bag. It seems as if coaches and some umpires had lot of questions about this. They also said the shiney hairclips were illegal. Those have become very popular this year.And also the sliding pant must be worn the proper way. Meaning not rolled down because of the neon yellow had that looks like a ball. We met our U.I.C for the week and he was great. Thanks Mike.O ! They had pizza and salad waiting for us after the 40 minute meeting. We worked in 3-man crews per day and rotated umps and fields everyday so we could all work with different people. Mike did a great job of whizzing us around in the golf cart from fields,to our cars,and to the pressboxes which the umpires used to rest and change clothes in. We had plenty of water and snacks handy. Monday and Tuesday was a breeze. Those 2 days all the games were pool play. On Wednsday we ran into trouble.We had good weather until about my 3 o clock game. Thats when we saw the lighting. So we started a 30 minute delay. In the pressbox the U.I.C had a laptop to update scores and checked the weather. We had a bad storm that lasted about 4 1/2 hrs. After the storm passed the infields were muddy. The grounds crew got 6 of the 7 fields playable. One at a time they finished them. They did an excellent job !! My 3pm game didnt start until about 830pm. I ended up losing 2 games because of the delay and never made them up. It rained Thursday morning and all games were delayed until noon. I did 3 games that day. Again I lost a couple of games. Some guys were disappointed because they could have made more money at home. They were paying $27.50 per game. And they paid us by check at the end of the week. Which kinda sucked because I only took $100 cash with me thinking we were going to get paid cash at the end of the day. And yep I didnt bring any debit or credit cards with me. But I made it through.We got 1/2 off at the concession stand as well. The intensity picked up in the middle of the week. As some teams were facing elimination. There was only one real problem that I heard about and that was a fan was upset with a call that the ump made and told him he would meet him in the parking lot. Im not sure what happened after this but our U.I.C told us if we ever get threatend or feel we are in danger to stop the game and contact him right away, With no regard to the clock. You could tell he had our back 100%. He also told us if we had a question about a rule to ask him. He told us he back our call even if we are right or wrong, but also explain the rule. Which I felt was really cool. Overall I did 14 games as we left Friday afternoon back to Ohio. Overall I had a great time and would encourage any umpire who did not have a great time in the past to try it again. The umpires were treated with respect and coaches always seemed to say Good Job Blue or Thank You! Even the losing coaches. Im sure there is alot of this that I missed or did not cover. But if you would like to know anything just let me know! Thanks for reading!
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