Delay...but how long?

[His High Holiness]

............I have run a stopwatch on many umpires. The best ones have about 1.25 second delay. Anything under 1 second can cause errors as you have found out.

Likewise, anything over 1.5 seconds produces the catcalls that you are getting.

My advice; ignore them. If 2 seconds works for you, then f$$$ the rest of them for now. If, as a first year umpire, you have figured out that delayed calls are more accurate than fast calls, then you are way ahead of the game. Many umpires NEVER figure out any of this.

As you can better, you will be able to identify those situations where a faster call is beneficial to the game. At that time, you can speed up those 10% or so of calls that require quicker timing. For all the rest, you can keep a 2 second delay for your whole career if you like. I have seen a couple of MLB umpires with very slow timing.

Remember however, that delays of over 1.5 seconds, draw attention to the umpire. Drawing attention to yourself is not a good thing when you are an umpire. There is one thing worse though, and that is a bad call. That really draws attention to the umpire.

Peter