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Old Tue Jun 28, 2011, 12:52pm
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Rich Rich is offline
Get away from me, Steve.
 
Join Date: Aug 2000
Posts: 15,785
Quote:
Originally Posted by ozzy6900 View Post
Ed is a good friend and old partner so I can't really rank on him too much. It's obvious that he "fell asleep" and took the $hitty end of the stick to boot.

Good learning opportunity here for rookies. You made a bad call and you know you did. You go for help and your partner tells you what he as (the opposite of what you called). You then change the call "to get it right" and you endure the wrath of the coach affected by the call. You let him vent for a while as it was your screw up that caused the whole problem. But when the coach animates what you do, he has to go. If Leyland didn't do that, he could have jawed at Ed for another hour and Ed would have kept agreeing with him.

See how it goes - they cry when we stick with our calls and they cry when we have "board meetings". If I have to eat $hit, I'd rather stick with my call and get chewed on. It's a personal preference so don't try to change my mind - after almost 40 years, it ain't gonna happen!
This play, IMO, is an exception to the rule of getting your own on this play.

It's clear from Ed's delay that, for whatever reason, he had nothing and simply guessed at it. And then realized immediately he f*#$ed the call.

I've gone for help from the plate umpire on a play at first exactly twice in 24 years. Both of those were exceptions to the rule, too -- one was as a result of an F4 running right in front of me as the play happened at first base.

It could be another 12 years before I seek help again, it could be next week, or it might be never. No absolutes from me, but when people ask me in clinics about getting help, I (first) tell them to get the right angle in the first place and stop worrying about using another umpire to make your calls. Then I tell them how to go about doing it and mention that if they're doing it more than once every couple of years, they aren't working hard enough to get into position.
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