speaking of MLB umpires
 

Took my son to the Astros/Red Sox Friday night - he's a huge Red Sox fan.

First time Red Sox are ever at Minute Maid Park and its a sellout and pretty good game.

Didn't know all of the umpires, Crawford I recognized at U1 but they did a great job.

Super hustle by U2 on every fly ball as well as U3 moving into the infield.

Ball down the line, U1 goes out and PU fills behind. On the way back U1 and U2 communicating about how well it was covered etc,

PU had a small zone but was very consistent, not much complaint.

But as much bad press as they get, these guys had everything covered.

Thanks
David

the 2b umpire was mike muchlinski, a AAA guy filling in. your PU for the night was tom hallion. he was one of the guys caught up in the havoc of the 99 thing. he had to (kinda) go back through the MiLB ranks and was just hired back a couple years ago.

And not to give the appearance of jock sniffing, but I have always really liked Tommy Hallion. He is a really good umpire with a great strike call. He is very well respect by those who know the game. He also does have a very consistent strike zone. He's fun to watch work the plate.

He makes it look almost effortless. Smooth and flowing.

He did get one big strike out.

Thanks
David

hallion is excellent, has a short fuse and doesn't take crap from anyone ... he and bobby cox used to have some rip snorters back in the day, pure fireworks. hallion got a raw deal but when they cleaned house (hendry, kosc, johnson, gregg, kaiser) why didn't they include bob "balk" davidson? a horseh*t umpire if i've ever seen one.

Your opinion aside, they did.

what's with the opinion crack? like you, i am entitled to mine - do you watch mlb games? do you know davidson is still umpiring mlb games? so what did they really do to him? make him ump in the bushes for 1 year - big friggin' deal???

If I recall, Davidson went back to proschool and was an honor grad. He went to PBUC and was given a job in short season A ball then worked to AAA vacation relief. He had been promised one of the first couple of openings as a result of union negotiations. I believe it took him three years.

I don't think he went thru Harry's or Jimmy's again. My recollection is that he went back to PBUC and started in the Short season-A Northwest League.

Lawrence

I'll just edit the whole thing, since it no longer makes any sense.

Bob Davidson certainly has a penchant for being overly officious, but I don't think any of us are in a position to consider him a terrible umpire. Now, Angel Hernandez......................;)


Tim.

I dunno. He's probably just the right amount of officious. :eek:

Im a very young umpire, and have been taught how to umpire since I was basically born. My dad umpired baseball for what seems like forever, and used to work with Todd Tichenor(AAA ump, vacation fill-in). I am thinking about attending umpire school after I graduate from college, and would like to know where I can get some more info on it. I would really appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks!!

Here's two links to the current pro schools.

Evans

Wendlestedt


Tim.

Psst, Steve....

It's Soul Asylum, not Tom Petty, on your song lyrics.