Quote:
Originally Posted by Dakota
USA, Canada, Australia, and Japan generally have very high quality of play, certainly on par with similar levels of amateur baseball.
However, I think it is past time for major international sporting event organizers to recognize the third team on the field and quit assuming they can mix and match game officials however best meets their diversity or fairness objectives and allow a team of officials to work together over the course of the tournament. MLB (since you bring them up) has umpire teams that stay together the entire season (barring injuries and allowing for time off / vacations).
Since fastpitch softball is a developing sport in most countries, it is also should be recognized that officials from those "developing sport" countries see fewer games of elite play. It would improve the officiating if this was taken into account (how, I don't know... shutting out officials from those countries won't work, either).
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Well, I'm going to take this opportunity to promote ASA in this field. As much as many accuse ASA of demanding robotics (I don't believe they do), there is one thing a good ASA umpire can depend upon. I should, and have, walked onto the field with partners I have never met and the pregame was pretty much, "everything by the book" and we all had excellent games. One coach wanted to know why, at a NC, they put three local umpires together on the same game. One was from the SW coast of FL and the other from Columbus, OH area. Did not meet the PU until 15 minutes before the game. The umpire from FL didn't even know our names until after the game.
I would add that some of this does disappear at the local level because the cohesiveness of the staff seems to have become somewhat flexible with a fair amount of personal preference sneaking into some training.
And that is the problem with the ISF. You can send certain trainers all over the world to help train umpires and umpire trainers, but they cannot stay there and monitor how that training info is passed onto the local umpires. And, like it or not, each country develops their own umpires for international play and it isn't always the same as the next country.