For all those thinking you DON'T need to have an indicator on the bases

[Jay R]

Originally Posted by ASA/NYSSOBLUE

Sam Holbrook, Rob Drake and Cowboy Joe show why you need one - even in the bigs

All because Andy Fletcher broke his wrist working the plate yesterday

Nice to see Cowboy Joe uses the small metal clicker...

So Joe West has an indicator and he loses the count. Even if all 4 umpires had one, you would still have the possibility of loses the count.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Jay R

So Joe West has an indicator and he loses the count. Even if all 4 umpires had one, you would still have the possibility of loses the count.

He lost the count because the scoreboard was wrong and that put doubt in his mind. It's happened to me before and will happen to me again. I would still never want the base umpire to carry around an indicator.

Long time ago I was working a junior college game and the third base coach (unbeknownst to me) asked the base umpire the count. The base umpire gave him the *wrong* count (3-0, it was 2-1). The next pitch was Ball 3, the base coach and the base umpire thought it was Ball 4. It *was not* (I did verify with the scorer). The base coach ended up getting ejected after he asked the base umpire (after being told to let it go), "Can't you count to 4?"

If that had been me out there, I would've gotten the count from the plate guy and when the coach asked me why I didn't have the count, I would've told him that "I have a count, but we give the official count to plate umpire and that way we're always on the same page".