BUMPED...cuz it's that time of year again...
a couple of guys have asked for the free advice i offered. i answered one via PMs, but it is obnoxious splitting them up to meet the PM size requirement. sooo, i'll post what i sent him on here. the thoughts are rambling, but there are some useful tidbits in there. hope it helps somebody.
If you have a suit, or sport coat and dress pants, get it out and ready for the trip, as it is the proper dress for the banquet. Wear it on the plane on your way down. It will save it from getting wrinkled in your luggage and may make a good first impression on the instructors when they pick you up at the airport. YES, those are instructors that pick you up from the airport. They won't identify themselves as instructors, cuz your evaluation as a person has already begun. There have been guys that have shot themselves in the foot before they even got to the hotel to check in. I speak from experience.
Expect a phone call at the airport to try and locate you. Have your phone on and handy. It is chaos on arrival day for the apprentice instructors as they scramble to get everyone picked up, so be patient! There are a ton of guys arriving and only 2 or 3 shuttles running to try and get everyone.
Be polite at the hotel. Again, those guys helping with the check in process are instructors. Don’t make a bad name for yourself. Be patient with this process, too. DON'T complain about your roommate. You share a room with your partner in A ball, and you don't get to pick him. Roommate quarrels will be a part of your evaluation if you have problems.
After you get settled, make friends with someone that has a car and go to Wal-Mart (this is also necessary to get yourself to class each day.) To get to the Wal-Mart, go out of the hotel to the right and keep going. It’s 4 or 5 miles down on the left. Get shoe cleaning stuff and some cheap towels or rags. If you use the hotel towels to clean your shoes they will charge you. Jimmy usually gives out some red rags for shoe cleaning, but they shed and leave red fuzz on your shoes and on the floor in your room. Get some of your own. Get a few gallons of drinking water, cuz the Florida water is not good.
Take note of stuff around you on your trip. Just past the Wal-Mart there is a laundry place on the left (near the Sonic) that will do your laundry for you or you can do it yourself. You’ll pass a Hess station that is good in the morning or after class for random stuff you may need. Also, if you don't have Firehouse Subs where you live, make a point to visit it while you're down there. They’re grrrrrrrreat. It’s located down near the Wal-Mart. (If you're feeling adventurous when it’s laundry time, there is another laundry place if you go out of the hotel to the left a few miles. It's behind the Walgreens. That place is my favorite cuz they have a huge talking parrot that lives inside.)
As for on the field stuff...do your best not to get down on yourself. Take everything the training has to offer in stride and use all of it to better yourself as an umpire. The instructors do not discriminate between those that are competing for a job and those that are just there to get better. The training is the same for everyone. They will get on you, and they will try to expose your weaknesses on the field and use them against you. It is very easy to get discouraged, but, it is much better to have your weaknesses exposed during the training than to have it happen out in the real world.
Everything that happens is done to make you a better umpire. Do not be afraid to make mistakes in the first few weeks. It is 100% true when Jim says that the discussion about who's going to PBUC doesn't start til the 4th week. It’s ok to screw things up. It’s expected and encouraged, as long as you learn from it. You will hear many times that guys are making day 2 mistakes on day 5 or something along those lines. Make day 2 mistakes on day 2, learn from them, then don't make them again.
Ask questions if you need to, but don't jump ahead of the training. Jim covers EVERYTHING and he has an order in which he does it. Most likely your question will be answered before you need to ask it, but it may get answered a couple of days down the road. Write your questions down and then ask them later if he doesn't answer it when you get to that section of the training.
Work on "proper use of eyes" starting right now. Take a balled up pair of socks, lie on your back, throw it up in the air and catch it. Track it the whole way up and down only moving your eyes. If you go out for a ride in the car with someone else driving, track stuff with your eyes and keep your head still. Track passing cars, passing signs, anything. Try to train your eyes to move independently from your head. Continue the sock training at night in the hotel. He won't start you on tracking until late in week 2 or early week 3, but you'll be way ahead of the game if you start exercising your eyes now.
Keep you uniform neat. Press your pants in your room once a week or more. Clean your shoes. Shave. If you don't have a pair of real umpire pants, buy a pair now. Have them shipped to the school in you need to. You only really need one if you go on Sunday and wash them. You just shelled out 3 grand, another 50 bucks isn't going to break the bank, and you should look the part. While we're on that subject, get a real belt, too, if you don't alreay have one. Wear black socks, black shoes, and wear a navy blue undershirt if you are an undershirt type of person.
Help your group out as much as you can. After a while it will start to become obvious to you who the likely front runners for jobs are. If you have a likely candidate in your cage group, do whatever you can to help him without badgering him in the process.
Learn from everything. Watching the drills can be even more beneficial than doing them. Use the time waiting in line for your turn to see what other guys do right and wrong. By the time your turn comes, you will have seen 50 reps of the same thing. Ask the apprentice instructors questions while you are waiting in line, that's what they are there for. Do not, however, corner them and try to trick them with strange situations. They WILL talk about it with senior staff and it will come back to haunt you.
STRETCH! Stretch in the morning, at lunch, when you get home, and before going to bed. Sitting in the classroom will tighten your muscles up without you even realizing it. There is time built in for stretching before beginning the outdoor activities, but extra will benefit you as the weeks wear on.
Buy stuff from the store in the classroom! The apprentice instructors run that store and the profits from it make up about half of their pay. They really are “apprentices” and are only paid about 800 bucks for the month. They do all of the grunt work. Help them out by buying their stuff, and spread the word to other students!
Bring a cheap VCR if you have one, or split the cost of a cheapo from Wal-Mart with your roommate. There is a video review room (which you should make use of cuz it's staffed with instructors to answer questions and give advice) but it's only open a couple of hours each night. It’s great to be able to watch your video whenever you want, and you can have your whole cage group come over and watch them together.
Do not expect much, if any, positive reinforcement. "Not bad" means you're probably doing a good job. Jimmy’s philosophy is tough love. The instructors are not there to coddle you. Also, if they tell a guy "good job" a bunch of times and he ends up not going to PBUC, that may result in issues. You won't hear them say good job very often, though it does slip out every now and then.
Learn the instructors' names. They don't wear name tags. After a couple of days their pictures will be posted in the back of the classroom. You won't be quizzed on it, but you should study it a couple of minutes each day. Don’t call them sir, or Mr. _____, or any nickname you may hear them calling each other. Use their first name.
Do not ask questions during breaks. Breaks are breaks and the instructors need them! The apprentices have to set up their snack bar and the older guys have to use the bathroom, get a drink, or plan the next activity. They are only 10 or 15 minutes long and they need every minute of it.
For those of you that have heard the instruction compared to basic training...there are some similarities, but there really isn't any comparison. The mechanics and positioning are really the only things that are totally broken down to be cookie cutter. It’s the easiest way to evaluate guys…make everyone look the same and then evaluate performance instead of style. It works at school and it's what PBUC wants the first couple of years. There will be time near the end of the 5 weeks where you will work a little bit on style.
If you go out at night, do not get in trouble. Everybody in the area knows who you are. The school goes on every year and there is an influx of guys that have "the look." People in the area know who you are and where you're from and if crap happens it will get back to Jimmy.
If you go into a bar and see instructors, leave. If you go to a specific destination (Howl at the Moon, Cowboys, Church St., etc) and there are instructors, stay and have fun, but stay away from them. Don’t buy them drinks, don't go hang out with them. If you must pass them, a simple hello will suffice.
Don’t hang out in the hotel bar if you want a job. Do hang out in the hotel bar if you want to hear war stories from Jimmy and you are not looking for a job.
Sorry that this was all over the place, thoughts just kept popping into my head. Feel free to ask any specific questions you may have and I will answer them to the best of my ability. For those of you that are headed down there, you will have the time of your life! Have a blast.