Little League umpire in the regionals

[Dave Hensley]

Originally Posted by Carl Childress

Ace: He replied to a private email. I sent him my comments about the umpire in the IA/MO game, which was the FIRST message in this thread. I said a friend of mine who should know say umpires at LLWS were instructed to call "Foul" every timie.

His reply was: "That's nonsense."

And I've been involved in baseball longer than you have. (grin)

Umpiring in general, and Little League umpiring in particular, has a very large component of mentoring in it. Rookies learn from vets, over and over. Given the historical lack of formal training available to Little League umpires (the regional schools are really only an invention of the last decade or so, at best), I think the "screaming foul" mechanic is, rather than being a formally taught mechanic, simply a learned mechanic from what was, just like so many of the other things we see such as "weird" strike call mechanics, a homegrown monkey-see, monkey-do situation that has perpetuated itself throughout the organization.