Little League World Series Umps

[Mrumpiresir]

There's a lot of talk here about volunteers Vs higher quality umpires.

Bottom line is the vast majority of umpires I've seen have demonstrated a complete lack of training. There are, of course, exceptions but I would not trust most of these guys in a HS JV game.

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by Mrumpiresir

There's a lot of talk here about volunteers Vs higher quality umpires.

Bottom line is the vast majority of umpires I've seen have demonstrated a complete lack of training. There are, of course, exceptions but I would not trust most of these guys in a HS JV game.

That's because you're mostly seeing untrained volunteers, or 20 year guys who have one year of experience repeated 20 times, rather than 20 years of experience. It's a monkey show, but who cares - they can replay everything.

[RPatrino]

I will say this, I took pride in my work when I volunteered for little league, and I take pride in my work when I get paid. It makes no difference to me. The little league umpires who I know and worked with all thought the same way. At the district level, we took pride in the clinics we ran and I will put any of our volunteer umpires up against any of these LLWS umpires across the board.

It is insulting to me that Little League would let things get so bad, and then hide behind the "they are only volunteer's" excuse and put in instant replay to fix the mistakes of the umpires they use. It's a sad state of affairs, in my opinion.

[Sco53]

The plate umpire on the Panama-Chinese Taipae game was wearing the +POS chest protector with all the plastic studs that show through the shirt. Great protection but boy was that thing heavy! He did a nice job with the strike zone, even though Nomar accused him of tightening up in the 6th inning.

[grunewar]

Originally Posted by Sco53

He did a nice job with the strike zone, even though Nomar accused him of tightening up in the 6th inning.

Agree. From what I saw he was pretty consistant in his strike zone.

Some finish to this game......poor Taipea third basemen.

I did appreciate the sportsmanship at the end as the team from Chinese-Taipae bowed to the crowd in thanking them.

[CVLLBlue]

MLB now will have instant replay challenges. Joe Torre says that there is an average of 3 blown calls for every 15 daily games or 20% of the games played. 89 reviewable plays vs 11 non-reviewable.
Does that make it a monkey show?
Is the difference is money for the teams and players when Little League only pays for transportation and housing for either to the show?
ABC pays 10's of millions of dollars to broadcast Little League every year. They and their sponsors obviously like the product because of the ratings it gets.
Granted, there is too much politics involved in the assignments, but Volunteer Umpires are part of Little League's overall program.
The only poor officiating analogy I can see make is why, unless a NBA Team is more down by more than 20 points with 5 minutes to go in a game, why do they end up so close? Did the players "dog it" until then or do the referees have poorer judgment?
JMHO

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by CVLLBlue

MLB now will have instant replay challenges. Joe Torre says that there is an average of 3 blown calls for every 15 daily games or 20% of the games played. 89 reviewable plays vs 11 non-reviewable.
Does that make it a monkey show?

No. Having crappy umpires makes it a monkey show.

[aceholleran]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

That's because you're mostly seeing untrained volunteers, or 20 year guys who have one year of experience repeated 20 times, rather than 20 years of experience.

VERY well put! Spot on.

Ace