Your Zone

[Al]

Originally Posted by canadaump6

I haven't had that happen before, but I have called a hitter out on strike three when the catcher stood up and the pitcher missed his glove so that the pitch happened to nick the outside corner of the plate at thigh level. Looked like a good pitch to me, and not a single person complained.

How about this one canadaump...Shortest kid on the team stands as far up in the batters box as possible. By the time two pitched balls passed over the plate they were only a few inches above it and were called strikes. I asked the umpire after the game (softball tournament F/P 11/U) why he called those pitches strikes. He said because they were at her knees when they passed her from where she was standing in the box. He said it didn't matter where the ball was when it actually passed over the plate! Lot's of people complained that those pitches were low. I suppose if the ball was at her eyes and settled in the strike zone when going over the plate he would have called it a ball because of where it passed her. Oh well!

[canadaump6]

Oh I had a good one in my second year umpiring. I noticed that the guy who was doing the plate missed a few pitches that were clearly over the outside part of the plate. Called them a ball when they were clearly a strike. Later that game, I come to him between innings, and in the course of our conversation he casually mentions that "the strikezone is not defined by the plate, it is defined by how far from the plate the batter is standing". So a pitch over the outside corner would be a ball with him if the hitter was standing almost out of the box, but if he was crowding the plate that pitch would be a strike.