Good Luck
 

Good luck to everyone with the remainder of their season's and in their various playoff assignments at evey level. Finish strong!

it is that time...good luck

Kenny, did you get any regionals...super regionals??

Finish strong? We haven't even started the high school season yet here in Iowa.:) I know, we're kind of the odd man out here. I personally wish they would start the season earlier.

Mike-

I think it has it's good and bad points though. We don't have to deal with as much cold with summer baseball....

-Josh

hmm...so high school ball is in the summer huh? they don't have legion baseball then huh? they're contemplating moving the high school season into later spring...which ultimately would impact the american legion season.

how do the coaches/kids like playing in the summer? are there lots of conflicts with families taking vacations? are there more tournaments?

I realize that as umps, we don't really need to care about some of that...but I'm just curious

Given that the baseball season has been moved de facto into later spring the past few years, I hope they make it permanent. I can't tell you how many early-June Legion tournaments I've done in which pitchers were being rested from the amount of throwing they had to do in May because of make-up games.

I think umps generally like summer ball, but I do also care as a parent; I have a son who is a senior this year and have two older boys who both played varsity ball as well. I just got back into umpiring this year and work in a few games around my kids schedule. American Legion ball is non existent in Iowa as far as I know. Right across the river from me in Illinois, they are finishing up their high school season right now and those kids will then go on and play Legion ball. There has been a lot of discussion about how this puts Iowa kids at a bit of a disadvantage concerning college recruiting. They primarily have to rely on their junior year performance, or pay to go to showcase events.

As I said, I think umpires like it and many of them around here work Illinois games in the spring and Iowa games in the summer. All of our games here are doubleheaders, so that can be a negative sometimes in July heat, but it beats 30 degrees and snow flurries in my opinion. I would just like to see them start a few weeks earlier, maybe the first week of May. It does impact vacations because our state tournament generally runs into the first few days of August.

There actually is Legion ball in Iowa , but it plays second fiddle to the High School season. Usually after the high school season ends, a few teams form and they actually have a Legion state tournament. Season is pretty short.

There is legion baseball in the summer as well.

There are definitely ups and downs to having baseball in the summer though. For the players, some feel that it's not worth it to spend their last summer before college playing baseball so some decide not to participate their senior year. It also conflicts with summer vacations for others.

I personally loved it when I was in high school because the only thing I had to worry about in the summers was practice and playing baseball. We often would get together as a team before games and hang out all day. It was always nice to not have to deal with frigid temps.

From the umpires standpoint, I like summer ball because I can do as much baseball as I want for as long as I want. There are youth leagues from March onward and high school starts the beginning of May. I can stay as busy as I want to be.

-Josh