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Old Mon Jun 23, 2003, 10:13pm
KentuckyBlue KentuckyBlue is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 28
keep your strike zone consistent

I've heard rational umpires argue that there is, and should be, one strike zone for social play, another for tournament play; one for the kids, another for the grownups; one for the men, the women, and the co-eds; and so on. And if PU calls a strike zone differently than the players for that particular league/tournament/age group/gender expect, he/she is in for a tournament full of strife and hurt.

These are intelligent umpires, but on this point I think they're mistaken.

Like Mike says, the strike zone is defined and that should be it. I haven't got time to sort politics, player skill levels, the directly conflicting desires of both teams, and their many varied expectations through my calling filter; hell, I'm doing good to keep it consistent to my own standards.

It took me five years to get my slow-pitch strike zone consistent to the point I was comfortable and confident with it. During that time I acquired a rep for calling strikes on so-called "deep" pitches (those whose arc doesn't come down until behind the strike zone, and I know the purists will howl at me for using the forbidden term "deep"). It wasn't long in most games before my batters were all back in the catchers' box with me and using garden implements and bass fiddles instead of bats to reach up and try to smack the so-called 'strikes' sailing over their heads. And of course the pitchers, once they knew I'd let them get away with this out of my inexperience, lobbed high-arching mortar rounds the likes of which haven't been seen since the siege of Kosovo.

Well, everybody's gotta be a rook sometime, but in my more experienced years I may have gone the other way. My serviceable strike zone in social leagues gets criticized by these same mortar-lobbing pitchers during tournaments. They don't like to put a pitch where Crusher can hit it.

I don't care. Part of the game for a pitcher is finding out how to pitch the game that will get the best calls and adapting to the umpire's style. We've had fun here in my city having switched from ASA to NSA and taken two feet off the max arc height for pitches. Many of the local hurlers unduly smitten with their own so-called superior technique were already pitching too high even by ASA standards. It tickles me when they don't get why their 13-foot-arc pitches are balls even when they plunk perfectly down an inch behind the point of the plate. (In NSA, we don't have to say "illegal", don't have to hold the left fist out, and don't even have to say why the pitch is a ball unless they ask.)

And, the heck with catchers pulling a ball into the zone; when I see this I call a ball automatically. (Moose wouldn't have to pull it in unless it was out to begin with.) No umpire I know who's been calling for more than two weeks is taken in by this corrupt little catchers' game.

One exception to my unchanging strike zone: In social situations only, when a team is holding back on an inexperienced or less-skilled pitcher to draw walks, I will give the pitcher an unearned strike now and then on a near miss, just to get the bats swinging. It's embarrassing and unenjoyable for players to trot around the bases while some poor pitcher dies of embarrassment in the middle of the carousel.

But there are 100 ways to feel. Evolve a philosophy that works for you and be consistent in its application.

__________________
"The only person who knows the location of the 'strike zone' is the 'umpire', and he refuses to reveal it...the umpire communicates solely by making ambiguous hand gestures and shouting something that sounds like 'HROOOOT!' which he refuses to explain." -- Dave Barry
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