Participants Survey Responses On "Caring about How we are Dressed"

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I found Pete Booths question about whether or not the participants care about how we are dressed interesting and wondered what parents, players and coaches felt about the question.

I post on a HS Baseball site and put up a poll using the wording from Pete Booths inital post.. (thanks Pete!)

"In a recent post at an UMPIRE ONLY website, an Umpire I respect greatly came up with this question. Other than our umpire peers and umpire association mandates regarding dress apparel ie; HS, College etc.

"Do people really care how we look out there?"

All of higher level baseball has an Umpire dress code. And a good segment of our evaluations are attached to how well we keep a professional appearance.

For example: Matching Jerseys, Pressed pants, Shined shoes and Correct caps..

So let's take away umpire associations for a minute in which we are mandated to dress a certain way. Is apparel that important of an issue for the fans and participants or is it more of an umpire vs. umpire issue?

I thought that the HSBBW website may be just the place to come for a thoroughly experienced opinion. The number of programs, travel leagues, tourneys you all have gone to, allows you to have seen a wide variety of umpires....good and bad, well dressed and not, to have formed an opinion...."

As of now there has been 312 views of the poll..

18 responses....
16 voted yes
2 voted no..

86% voted yes so far...


Here are some of the responses.....I think there are some interesting responses and so far, I would say that the answer is YES they do care.....

If the players are wearing shorts and mis-matching shirts then the ump could do the same. If players are dressed for the game, so should the ump.

Does it affect your performance or capability - not really. You can look like a slob and still know what's going on but it's bad business.

Imagine you need an attorney for some reason and you go into their office and they are wearing cut off jeans and a wife beater with bar b que stains. I would guess most will not use this person's services. It is called professionalism - not only do you have to know something but you have to project an appearance of you know what's going on.

You look good, you play good. You look good, you work good (yes I teach history and not english).

I vote yes. First impressions matter! If an umpire takes the time and effort to be uniformed correctly, I would think that he or she would also take the time to learn and apply the rules... I also appreciate umpires that show up BEFORE game time, inspect the field and talk to the coaches before things get going. I hate seeing the car come peeling into the lot at the last minute.

I personally love the professional way an umpire looks. one of my favorite things is seeing the impires walk in with their matching shirts and their caps,I think it of course doesnt effect their calling the game but I think it adds to the overall atmosphere. I love the uniforms in baseball on the players and I like seeing the umpires dressed in unis as well.

The umpires we use at our events come to each game in different attire---you will see the umpire teams all in the same attire in each game but each game the color may be different--I think it looks great

Why would an umpire choose to look bad? It increases the chances of being yelled at over every call if you look like you don't know what you are doing.

But I guess some people like the abuse.

I don't really notice an umpire's appearance. As far as I'm concerned, he could show up looking horrible and I wouldn't think anything bad about it unless he royally screwed up a call. There's really only two times I'm going to get upset at an umpire. First, if he blatantly and I mean BLANTANTLY misses a call. As in everyone else in the ballpark (both teams) thought he was wrong. Or when he half-a$$es through a call that is a close call.

Doing one of those two things will cause me to find things "unprofessional" about the umpire's appearance.

The appearance of the umpire tells me something of how he respects himself. I figure if he respects himself, he respects the game and has done as much as possible to become a good umpire. The handful of umpires I've experienced who looked like slobs left me with the same impression when the game ended.

Someone a few posts back mentioned looking sharp to lead and be in charge. I feel the same way.

Appearance may be 10% of who you are but it's 100% of what I see.


89% say the uniform appearance effects the opinion of the official..Not scientific by any means, but insightful dont you think?

Your thoughts?

Here are the 2 comments that stuck out to me....

The appearance of the umpire tells me something of how he respects himself. I figure if he respects himself, he respects the game and has done as much as possible to become a good umpire. The handful of umpires I've experienced who looked like slobs left me with the same impression when the game ended.

Appearance may be 10% of who you are but it's 100% of what I see.