I never claimed my training was "better" than anyone else's. I have mentioned my extensive training, but so what? It's not the same thing. I have only mentioned these things when my ability was being called into question, not as the focus of every post. I state it only to establish my credentials, not to lord it over people.

The pitch was in the dirt, the catcher gave the PU the ball and decided to act like a Class 1 arsehole when he ignored the PU after he tried to give him the new ball back. He finally stood up and walked forward the 6 feet you referred to.

A copy of the home game then was appropriately awarded to said catcher.

Then again, maybe applying the principles of chapter 6 of Verbal Judo would have avoided this....

Can anyone summarize this 7 page thread for me in one sentence?

A waste of bandwidth.

I even did it in less than 5 words.

That's exactly right.

This 153 guy--the finest umpire of all of us--constantly places himself above virtually all others by degrading the work, status, or mere place in this world of many other umpires. He even takes citations of one's experience and distorts it into boasting, and then makes up boastful remarks and puts them into quotes, like they were ever said.

It's okay when someone is first enjoying familiarity with something, and then immediately portrays himself as an accomplished member of that field. People do it all the time. It's no surprise that this guy would do it also. But as we've seen time and time again, he'll condescend and degrade and disrespect until he runs out of words to misspell. Good heavens, this time he's even taken to starting another screen name character (runem) to ride the high horse with him and agree with everything he posts. That's where it gets a little ridiculous.

More than a just a couple qualified voices here have taken exception to the manner in which pros and 153 blindly support the mistakes of other professionals. It's a poor way to gain from those mistakes, but gaining isn't always the goal for some.

Kevin,

I know you are smart enough to ignore someone on the web that won't put their name to it. Have a great season and will see some of you at the clinic this weekend in LA.

... ;)

May have on the Internet, on some far away political blog...or sports blog. The real me was known to have lived in Upstate NY(Rome) in a world and time far away...but that was 1970-73 during my last days in the Air Force and the year after.

Thanks for the Welcome