Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Finnerty
I tend to only call a strike when a strike is thrown, so only occasionally does a varsity game run less than two hours. I'm not out there to cheat 18 young hitters who work hard at this seven days a week.
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Of course, the opposite of this is true also" I tend to only call a ball when a ball is thrown, so only occasionally does a varsit game run more than two hours. I'm not out there to cheat 2 young pitchers who work hard at this seven days a week."
My guess is that all of the "experienced" umpires on the forum call about the same zone (or at least within the expected standard deviations).
Differences in game time come from local / regional "standards" on time to take the field, time to throw warm-ups, how quickly batters get in the box, whether batters tend to swing at the first good pitch or work the count, whether F2 calls the game or a coach does, number of pick-off attempts, lenght of signs given from F6 to the infield with R2 (we have one team here who gives about 15 seconds of signs on every pitch), etc.
Umpires can encourage the game to move along a bit on some of these, but on others we just need to live with it.