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Old Wed May 15, 2002, 01:48pm
brandda brandda is offline
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Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 201
Our pleasure Danny. There are too few of us as it is.
I would recommend a couple of resources for you:

First, Carl Childress has written a couple of good books on field and plate mechanics that discuss not just the mechanics themselves, but also the practical and situational application of them. They are short and worth a read. Second, Gerry Davis has a series of umpiring videos out that are a little redundant, but they go through the basics pretty well on plate and field mechanics that allows you to see what you would otherwise probably only read in print. You can pick up both of these at gerrydavis.com for pretty reasonable prices. You might even want to see if your league wants to buy these as they are a good general resource for everyone.

As to the changeover issue, I would ask the coaches why they were not warming up their pitchers while their team was at bat? Unless the kid was on base, there is no reason, for them to walk in to start an inning cold. Unless they change pitchers during an inning in which case the pitcher gets as many warmups as they want, I keep pitchers to 2-3 throws max (usually 2) and a throwdown and that's it. I almost never have 6 inning games at any level go more than 1:40 minutes. Had one that went 1:15 the other night.

Think of it this way, if you give the pitchers say 6 throws at each changeover, those three extra throws translate to about a minute of time assuming the catcher does not allow the ball past him. If that happens at every changeover, you have added an extra 12 minutes to the game. You can see where it goes from here, as I have noticed that many of my colleagues give 2-3 minutes at the changeover and then wonder why the game goes so long.

If you think it will be an issue, just let the coaches know before the game that you intend to hold to 60 seconds between innings and that you expect their pitchers to come to the mound warm. They will adjust.
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