Positions B and C

[Carl Childress]

Originally Posted by Tim C

I have had the exact same conversation with both Jim Evans and Dave Yeast and they say just about exactly the same thing. Their thoughts, in my words are:

"We have developed umpire mechanics over many, many years. We have reviewed thousands of games and thousands of umpires.

"We have developed, modified and reviewed umpire mechanics for decades.

"We know what we are doing.

"We simply wish that umpires would use the mechanics that we request and not make up their own. The starting positions for BUs have been developed to help with the compromises necessary to cover the game.

"We wonder why umpires think they know more than we do and use their own mechanics and positions when we have tested these things and know what works best for all?"

Take what I say for what it is:

An umpire that claims he needs to start in "B" when official mechanics literature says to start in "C" to "get a better angle at the most likely play," simply isn't much of an umpire.

I can get to the exact position that that umpire claims he needs to start in "B" to get to (man is that a bad gammar) starting in the correct position of "C".

It is much like the umpire that says a base umpire working inside can't call the checked/unchecked swing. This is an umpire that either doesn't have enough guts to make a tough call or he doesn't understand the criteria of a checked/unchecked swing.

Same goes for starting from out of position.

It is lame.

Of course this is just my opinion.

Well, here's my opinion. When Nick Bremigan, Jim McKean, and Gerry Crawford created the current 3-man system, people like the ones you've guoted said: "Hell's wrong with them? We've been doing it this way for decades. We know what's best. They should just do what we've proved." The innovation: With runners on first and third, bring U3 into the infield so each half of a double play is called by a different umpire.

As late as the mid 80s, on ESPN I saw three-man crews in Florida positioning themselves this way: R1, R3: U3 in D, U1 in B. Now, anyone who would suggest that would be laughed at, just as the Umpire Schools laughed in 1973.

In 1988, I first suggested in Referee that the umpire belonged in B with R3, R3/R2, or R3/R2/R1. I've been practicing it every since. The outcome: I miss fewer plays, and coaches say: Hey, how'd you get so close to that play at first? I'm glad to see that in some states, this eminently sane positioning is catching on. I always knew it would. All that's required is for one or two powerful umpires in an association to try it out.

In the Childress library, there is a long article (Part II of Mechanics, 2000) that explains the geometry and dynamics involved.

Let me close with this: When I was at the 3-day Evans camp in Ft. Worth, I was told the Gerry Davis stance was a joke. Everybody knows there are but two positions: heel/toe and heel/toe/heel/toe.

You quoted someone as saying: "We wonder why umpires think they know more than we do and use their own mechanics and positions when we have tested these things and know what works best for all?" For "all"?

That's an amazing display of a closed mind.

Oh, those are the same guys who refuse to use my A, B, C designations and perfer: With a runner on first, move into the infield about 15-20 feet behind the rubber, with your right foot on a line drawn from the plate...."

Remember, the experts once thought the earth was flat. Edit comment: I have no idea what "throught" (my original word here) means. But Juulie Downs, one of my basketball writers, wrote about a "kerfuffle." In .12 seconds, Google found 1,050,000 mentions of that word on the world wide web. I was an ignorant of it as I was "throught."