[cmcallm]

The one thing (besides building confidence) that Umpire School did for me was demonstrate through MANY setup situations the myriad of "odd" or "infrequent" plays/calls that many umpires won't even see in their career, and allow me to recognize and react properly to those situations. The good umpires are the ones who can recognize what they're looking at and deal with it as an arbitor. Inexperienced officials see something "odd", don't know what they just saw, and CAN'T rule on it because they don't know what it was.

As an experienced official, I will listen to more s*** if I believe I may have missed a call, but I will listen to very little if I know I got it right. What keeps the coach in the game is my ability to explain what I just did, and his ability to buy it. That is game management, and it only comes with experience.