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Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve
I case you haven't looked around the country at baseball umpires, there are a great many fat, overweight, heavy umpires out there that are damn fine officials. The guy made a mistake, but that doesn't mean that he is untrained. He called a pretty decent game, and other than his pratfall (which was pretty damn funny), he did a good job of umpiring.
The are many big umpires out there, like Ozzy, BigUmp56 and myself that can out-umpire many a younger, skinnier umpire. I'm getting really sick of listening to fat people getting ragged on all the time. John McSherry was a damn good umpire despite his heavy girth. He had a great MLB career and was responsible for training many umpires in pro school when he was the chief instructor.
There a thousands of other great examples of big guys that can umpire some ball, and that's what really counts...can ya umpire or can't ya? Size is way overrated. There are a lot of skinny guys out there umpiring that still couldn't carry my mask out to me.
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Yup, I am big - 5'11" @260 lbs with a heart condition, and I
still get up the 3rd base line when I'm on the plate or
back to cover the plate when I go out from the "A" position! It's the training and the experience and not the size that makes you a good umpire. I've seen skinny young bucks loose their footing. I've seen skinny umpires get into trouble with F2's and F3's - size has no bearing here. On the other side of the coin, I've seen overweight umpires that look like crap on the field and others that look as sharp as a Marine (and likewise for the skinny ones).
Anyway, the PU in this video was dead wrong as many of you have stated in watching the ball. Now whether he was trained properly or not is something we do not know. We only know that he provided us with a great "what-not-to-do" training video!