Umpire "Etiquette"

[MikeStrybel]

1. Shake hands when one of you is leaving for home from the parking lot or locker room. It's as good a time as any and cannot be miscontrued.

2. I prefer to have collegiate minders hand me game balls. They are usually bringing three or four out. Varsity ball is a different story. I want the game to move along and have no problem with a coach or player tossing a ball my way, if I'm looking that is.

As an aside, I stopped letting coaches throw balls in to the mound from the dugout last year. Illinois has an official baseball for playoff contests. The pitcher for the home team had a big hook and after repeated foul balls out of play, I was out of baseballs. The HC tossed one in from his dugout and the kid cracked off a nasty deuce for the third out. The catcher rolled it back out to the mound. The HC told the AC to pick it up on his way to the 1B box. He was beat to the punch by the HC from the visiting team who saw it was a high raised seam ball, that is not allowed in HS ball. I am pretty vigilant now.

It was a pretty rotten Spring for baseball this year. We went through a bunch of balls due to the wet conditions. I had coaches toweling them off during many games. With tighter budgets, it was unlikely that we would see a coach crack open a new dozen late in the game. Get me a game ball and let's get the game finished.