Kind of sounds like what I have been doing for 25 years. "Two more pitch, two more catch. "Batter!" "lets go guys".

The problem in HS is the different levels of play, even at Varsity, sometimes its difficult without looking like a nitpicking ahole. The good teams are never the problem and the bad teams well!!!. I have seen some Varsity ball this year that you had to end in two hours because they weren't going to make it to the 4th inning.

Its great to be consistent from game to game in the enforcemnet of rules but sometimes you just have to umpire. Did about 28 Var. games ths year and maybe half were decent baseball. To try to enforce time penalties consistently would be next to impossible.

I understand it has worked good at the College level which I think has more reasonable allowances. Too bad some officials let it get out of hand.

Done college ball, done HS ball and they are completely different games. So much more organization in college ball. And, they have pitchers who can actually throw strikes.

Now we have good HS ball here and the players usually are always ready to go quickly as they should; however, you get a runaway game or two HS teams that can't throw a strike, its going to be a long night no matter what you do between innings.

But, I agree its a big problem. Baseball is a slow game and much of that is magnified due to the lack of diligence by the umpires on the field.

Thanks
David

Saw this recently:

If you play 7 full innings, that's 14 half innings and 13 changes in a game. If you're allowing 1 minute for warmups, that's 13 minutes.

If you allow 4 minutes instead — just 3 more minutes per change — you're adding 40 minutes to the length of the game!

If you allow 2 minutes, you're still adding nearly a quarter of an hour. Your 2 hour game should take just 1:47 to play.

Enforcing this rule (and it IS a rule, at every level, 60 or 90 seconds) will make your game much faster without seeming to rush it.

:mad:What kills me is this pompous jerk trying to tell us these mechanics that no one else has heard of and no one else in our area does!!!! He constantly is trying to interject NCAA mechanics into NFHS ball.
I really like to learn and am always striving to get better I just want to make sure what I'm learning is actually right!!!!!:confused:

High School or College (or lower levels) I keep the game moving.

I have one of my partners (or partner) give me a signal when we are 50 seconds into the warm-up pitches so that I can get things 'wrapped up'. If the pitcher is warming up quickly I always indicate to the batter when there are 2 pitches left and then I indicate when there is 1 pitch left because I want him to get into the batters box ASAP.

While I love to be on the field officiating I am a 'stickler' for keeping the game moving. If you don't keep the game moving it makes for a sloppy looking game.

Where in PA?

I am also a PIAA official in western PA. We don't use, nor ever discussed a stopwatch. I can give you the name of a PIAA official and interpreter for District 10 so you can get the ammo you need.

PM me.

When I think the pitcher should be about wrapping up his warmups, I go from short right back to A. I always expect the PU to react to my going to stand on the line as a hint to have F2 send the ball down. Thanks to this new advice, I am going to include it in my pregame from now on, as I have never thought to do it before. Usually, the PU is on top of things in my games, but sometimes I'm standing on the line and the PU is dicking around not paying attention or yapping with somebody and lets the pitcher get 10-12 warmups in before thinking, "oh, maybe we should play now." Always infuriates me, but then I rationalize that he's the one that has to work the plate for a longer game because of it. When I have the plate, I keep things rolling along, and try to cut as much time of my games as possible.