Verbalizing the Count?

[BretMan]

Whatever you do, don't do what a guy I worked with last year did!

First inning, he is behind the plate. When he held up the count on his fingers, he made no verbal announcement. Okay, I can live with that. But for some reason, I kept having the wrong count- or, at least, a different count than he was showing. I'm scratching my head, trying to figure out how I'm missing pitches.

I decide to huddle up with him between innings, just to see if we're on the same page. As it turns out, we definitely were not!

As he explained it to me, he always shows the number of balls on the right hand, the number of strikes on the left hand. His explaination for why he did that: So the count would look the right way to the pitcher!

Don't be that guy...