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Bob, as usual, has his finger on the pulse of umpiring. Regional and level differences likely account for the disagreements in this thread. In a HS varsity contest I personally would not call "Time" to clean the plate unless (1) it was completely covered, or (2) I was working solo (occasionally we have this around here due to weather-related issues, e.g. one nice day during the week and 4,000 baseball games scheduled that day).
Of course, the other solution to this issue not mentioned so far is: don't clean the plate, except between innings or after a slide covers it. That's my usual strategy.
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Cheers,
mb
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