Shadow
 

I had the bases today. The assignor put a new guy on with me as a shadow.

Have any of you ever done anything like that?

Rita

I believe so, yes. I know it was done in basketball.

You should be flattered. I don't think they would do that unless you were a good example to follow.

I agree with Dash, your assigner thinks a lot of your abilities if he put a shadow with you. I hope you gave him a good "post game".

I had a shadow once - for a little while. Then it got cloudy and I had to send him to the parking lot!! :eek:

Morning Rita,

Was he actually on the field with you? Was he next, or behind you? Or were you working three man?

I've never heard of such a thing.

I've have guys observe a good crew from a bull pen, where I'm explaining to them what's going on out there. Their next move is working with a three or four man crew, to get their feet wet.

Kyle

No. But you should be honored. It's a great compliment to your abilities as both an umpire and a mentor/teacher by your assignor. I'm sure the new guy learned a great deal watching you and your P work the game and in your post game.

Rita as others mentioned your assignor thinks a lot of your abilities which is the reason why you had a shadow.

Pete Booth

I have never heard of such of a thing. I have only heard of someone going to watch an umpire work, but not be on the field with them.

Sounds weird if both of you were on the field together. I could see a lot of things going wrong with that. And someone said it happens in basketball, but it is not on the court at the same time. They might be out of play or at a point off the court where someone might be able to talk to you, but this is not the same as working baseball. Baseball has a lot of dead ball area where things can happen. Basketball does not have any out of bounds area that is still live.

Peace

We sometimes do this in preseason scrimmages with one- and two-year guys, but only after we explain to the teams what we are trying to accomplish. And with that, we only do it for a couple of innings, mainly teaching positioning and primary responsibilities for various situations.

We do the same thing at our field test for new umpires. It's always a varsity scrimmage and the teams know what's going on. The experienced ump is the shadow. It's more of a learning experience than a test.

Not in a game that counted. I've done this in pre-season scrimmages only.

Only in a scrimmage when the coaches of both teams know what we are doing, which is training. We might have 2 or 3 umps at each position with 1 one the field and the others watching on foul line. The 1 on the field is the ump receiving the training and the veteran ump is giving instructions as game proceeds. It works great for all.

I really like this idea. I've never heard of it before. Scrimmages are a great place to try this.

Never been done around here, even pre-season. New umps watch and then do.

Yes he was on the field with me. The complete story is that this was high school softball on a 60' diamond. So when I had to bust in he didn't follow but moved toward where action wasn't happening. But still he was right behind me a few feet so that I could talk to him about what I was watching on the pitcher and so on. So he was seeing what I was seeing.

And thank you for the complements everyone.

Rita