My amazing partner

[Justme]

The God's of Baseball must have accepted my offering to them and are once again smiling upon me. Three umpire error free games with two good partners. Baseball doesn't get much better than this.......I just hope that my neighbors won't miss their cat too much

[LMan]

Just my opinion, but you are spending too much time trying to cover the rumps of your incompetent partners. "Calming the coach down" on calls you DIDNT blow and all these side-meetings....remember, you can't fix stupid.

Fix obvious errors that affect the game (if you can), but otherwise let these bozos take the ***-chewings...they bought and paid for them, let them enjoy the pain.

[Justme]

Originally Posted by LMan

Just my opinion, but you are spending too much time trying to cover the rumps of your incompetent partners. "Calming the coach down" on calls you DIDNT blow and all these side-meetings....remember, you can't fix stupid.

Fix obvious errors that affect the game (if you can), but otherwise let these bozos take the ***-chewings...they bought and paid for them, let them enjoy the pain.

There was a time when I would have agreed with you. But not anymore because right or wrong, good or bad we are a team. As a team we all suffer for the mistakes of our partners. I want to restore order as quickly as possible, understand the facts, and get things right.

In my second situation my partner was 70 something years old. Once a fine umpire but now clearly not as sharp as he once was. Both coaches were on him hard and he was only getting more confused.

[LMan]

ah, now you are adding previously-unknown info I'll take my mulligan on the second sitch, then

I agree that we all suffer for partner's mistakes. I know I cause my partner (s) to suffer when I make a mistake. I make far too many for my liking, but I promise myself that no one will outhustle or outwork me to improve. Whether I actually improve or not, well....I leave that to my evalutor to decide But my assoc has umpires that could not possibly care less about improving, as long as they get that check. I know your assoc has them also.

There's a difference between honest mistakes and those caused by laziness or willful indifference to basic rules. I kill myself sometimes trying to keep coaches off the back of brand-new umpires I work with, when I know they are overwhelmed and just too new to know better. But I draw a distinction between them and the 10-year guy who stunk when he started and still hasn't cracked a rulebook YET. Why reward deliberate incompetence?

Should I draw such a distinction? I honestly don't know. I don't know that some rump-chewings will make them try to improve, but I can say with confidence that completely shielding them from the consequences of their calls doesn't seem to have the desired effect!

I didnt mean let the game go down the toilet just to spite your partner. The game is the most important thing here. I think we are in general agreement here, but its hard to show shades of grey on an internet forum....

[RPatrino]

I did a USSSA tourny, 6 games in one day, 4 dish's. Championship game ended at 10:30 pm, and the day started at 8:30 am. Got to love it!!

I have worked with an 80+ year old partner. He was slow, but steady. He is a fixture in our association, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. The game we did was an experience that I will relate at a future date.

Bob P.

[UMP25]

80 years old??? They shoot horses well before that, don't they?

[UMP25]

I've worked with partners with big heads before, but this one takes the cake...

A few weeks ago I do a D-III game with a guy who's a D-I umpire (working games for Rich Fetchiet) and reminds everyone of this fact. (Never mind that I don't go around telling people that I do D-I games as well--what's the point?) Disclosure: both my partner and I are CBUA members and work for Fetch, though my schedule severely limits me from doing nearly as many D-I games as regularly as my partner in question.

I'll skip all the irritating stuff he said and did before the game and jump right to what happened (exception: in an Email to me earlier in the day he tells me: "it's a conference game, so I should do the plate." F--- him!)--an incident that I believe would have gotten him fired had Yeast or Fetch seen it. Sadly, the guy was frickin' proud of what he did.

We're in the top of the 9th inning with the home team leading 10-0 (NCAA rules, so no 10-run rule) and one out and no runners on. The second batter comes up and ends up being called out on a check swing by my partner. Did he go? Heck, I'm in the "A" position with a lefty up! Anyway, the head coach for the visiting team--he's coaching third base--starts to ***** about the call. The dugout wasn't happy either, but it was nothing that could have realistically been ignored with 1 out left to go in the game. My partner chirps back, the coach chirps back, then my partner walks toward the coach still squawking to him. My partner yells to him, "Control your dugout!"

So, he gets back behind the plate and the first pitch to the next batter is at the top of his head. No exaggeration. It's up there pure and simple. My partner pauses to call it, turns toward the head coach, looks at him, and bangs, "Strike!" The dugout is yelling and the head coach starts screaming, to which my partner replies, "Control your f-----g dugout or the next pitch will be a strike, too!"

The first base coach turns to me (I'm still in the "A" position, of course) and asks quite emphatically, "Did he just call that pitch a strike intentionally? Did he just call that f-----g pitch a strike?!? What the hell was that?" Having no problem throwing my partner under the bus at this point (many other things occurred prior to this that made me adopt this attitude), I replied, "It appears so, but you'll have to ask HIM to find out."

"What, you guys don't talk to each other?" asks the 1B coach.
"Not after each pitch. Besides, talking to 'Bob' (not his real name) isn't going to help me one bit today," I explain.

Nobody gets ejected, thank God, and the batter hits the next pitch to the infield. It's bobbled, B1 is safe at first but trips over the bag and dislocates his ankle (it was not a pretty site to see--ouch!). The home team trainer comes out to take care of the batter. The head coach comes over, and we're huddled around seeing how the kid's doing. My partner is thankfully back by the plate when the head coach turns to me and asks, "'John,' (not my real name), what the hell was that with that strike? What the hell is he trying to prove?" I replied: "Don't ask me, Eric. I've given up trying to figure out what 'Bob' is doing, and it's no use talking to him. His head's so big he'd never hear me."

Eric shook his head in disgust but understood what I meant. A few minutes later my partner came down to join us and I tried to walk away. After a 20-minute delay that included the arrival of an ambulance, we were done. (BTW, even with the delay, we sailed through 9 in 2:01.)

We're on the way back to the parking lot and 'Bob' pats me on the chest and says, "Hey, how did you like that strike call there in the 9th? That'll serve to teach them, huh? If they'd control their f-----g dugout they wouldn't have this problem."

I shook my head and said, "How did I like it? I didn't. It was bush; it was unprofessional."

And this guy's a regular D-I umpire? In all honestly, if it's guys like this who get such games, there's a serious problem.

In my almost three decades of umpiring, I seriously doubt I have ever witnessed a more unprofessional display of umpiring and arrogance in general.

[Justme]

UMP25:

I think that we've all worked with partners that have used their strike zone as a weapon.

I haven't had this happen for several years but it was in a college game also. My partner on the plate spent a lot of the game arguing with coaches and using his strike zone to punish the coaches. He even said things like, "If you didn't like that call, wait until you see the next call." Unlike you I refused to comment on my partner when the coaches attempted to engage me. I did attempt to talk to my partner once between the inning but I really shouldn't have. He got upset at me and 'ordered' me back to my position.

Several days later I was contatced by our assignor and asked to submit a report on what happened during the game. My partner did not umpire another game for our association but did continue to work HS games. Luckily I never had to work another game with him.