Quote:
Originally Posted by kylejt
It's a function of how many baseballs you have available to you, isn't it?
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It sure is, but from what I have seen in the last soon to be 5 years of umpiring is that we, as a whole, do not throw the ball out enough at the amateur level.
A lot of this has to do with whiney coaches. I throw the ball out more than the majority of my partners have, and often times coaches are even puzzled by it. Even at a Sr. Babe level, coaches are perplexed as to why a ball is unfit.
At the Legion level (akin to JV or V), the coaches are baseball people, and complain if you give their pitcher a bad ball, or the other pitcher a good ball. It is really incredible the amount of complaining I've had over this issue. I'm sure if I kept every ball in my bag and never inspected them, it wouldn't be an issue. But because I take 2 seconds when I get a ball back to give it a glance and toss a ball into the home dugout every 2 or 3 innings (depending on the level), it is an issue to them.
Lastly, does anyone else hate hearing at the plate meeting "Here are 6 balls and my pitcher has one too." Every single game that first warm-up that comes in, I flip him a ball and take the one that I haven't seen.
Am I making to big of a deal about this? When I do this, I try my damnest not to be OOO, but when nobody else in our association does it, it makes me look like an OOO I guess.