First Game Coming Up

[mississippiump]

Garth,

I think that may be the motto for the entire USA!!!!!!

Congrats on your son by the way! I hope he's successful.

Jerry

[canadaump6]

Thanks for the help guys. I'll let you know how it goes. It is pretty frustrating that baseball season here only lasts 4 months. Still glad to see the season upon me though.

[mississippiump]

Canadaump,

In all seriousness, I was given some great advice by my assignor when we were talking about appearance. He said to make sure you look VERY sharp and professional when you umpire. If you do that, it'll be at least the 5th or
6th inning before they realize you're not any good!!!! And by that time, it's just about too late!!!

Jerry

[canadaump6]

I just did my first game. Things went okay, although one team ended up not happy with calls on the bases (this must be a very familiar situation to all umpires).

I let the pitcher go to his mouth with his hand, and decided not to say anything about it because he was on the edge of the dirt circle, basically almost off of it. This raises the question of a philosophy of umpiring; should you call things strictly by the book, or call things more in the spirit of the game? I am more in favour of going right by the rulebook, but I let it go today.

Also, how do you guys feel about only calling that if someone on the other team complains about it? I don't agree with this, as it results in the other team calling the game for you.

[Arnold A.]

Originally Posted by canadaump6

This raises the question of a philosophy of umpiring; should you call things strictly by the book, or call things more in the spirit of the game?

When this discussion was broached some months ago, the "strictly by-the-book" posters were the more prevelant and strident of the two sides from my own personal recollection.

I also believe that veracity and vitriol of their opinions fell under the categories of "thou doth protest too much" and "joining the popular crowd".

I may be mistaken, YMMV.

[RPatrino]

There are certain things that can't be overlooked. You can't overlook anything related to on field conduct. Ignore inappropriate behavior at your own risk, because it will escalate and you will have a big problem on your hands.

If you ignore something that within the rules you must react to, what does that tell the players and coach's? Why do we wait until one coach complains before we do anything? That tells the coach that you either don't know the rules, or don't care enough about the game to make the tough calls.

Which things can we ignore, in my opinion? No one cares if one base is too small, no one measures the correlational cooefficient of the baseballs, and I really don't care if all the players have the same color of undershirt. Yes, there are rules about all that, but it really doesn't effect the playing of the game.

[LMan]

Originally Posted by Arnold A.

When this discussion was broached some months ago, the "strictly by-the-book" posters were the more prevelant and strident of the two sides from my own personal recollection.

I also believe that veracity and vitriol of their opinions fell under the categories of "thou doth protest too much" and "joining the popular crowd".

I may be mistaken, YMMV.

Just let the Force flow though you, Luke.

[canadaump6]

The following is a list of things that I have heard umpires say they would only call if the coach complained about:

*Pitcher going to the mouth while on the dirt circle
*Pitcher not coming to a full stop with runners on base
*Shoulder turn towards first by the pitcher when there is a runner at first
*Interference due to running outside the 3-foot running lane
*Batter making contact while outside the batter's box
*Using a bat with a 5 point weight-length differential when a maximum 3 point differential was allowed
*Pine tar one inch beyond the 18 inch legal limit
*Third base coach tapping the runner on the shoulder to direct him to run to homeplate
*Tagging up on a foul ball
*12 second rule with no runners on base
*Suspending a game for less than 30 minutes during a rain delay

I could think of more but I think that is enough for now. What do you guys think? Which of these rules that I mentioned should one go about strictly enforcing as the rulebook states, and which ones should we call in the spirit of the game?