A New City, a New Sport

[IowaMike]

I did lower level baseball for a few years before I started doing basketball. I love all sports but baseball has always been my favorite and also the sport I played all through high school. By far, I now enjoy officiating basketball more than baseball, and actually gave up baseball for about five years until picking it back up this past summer.

I don't think you can say one sport is easier than the other, they are just different. Every official is essentially doing the same thing in a basketball game, but in baseball you have to make many more decisions when working the dish. The hardest thing for me in baseball is maintaining my focus in the field at times. Baseball is all about positioning and distance and I also think it is more rules intensive. Basketball in my opinion is more free flowing and allows more room for interpretation because we are taught to see things from an advantage/disadvantage viewpoint. I felt more comfortable on a baseball diamond for my first game than I did on the court. I felt like I was seeing about a three square foot area at one time when I officiated my first basketball game. I feel like I get more abuse in baseball, partly because the coaches are out there on the field, and also because you don't move much and are kind of a sitting target. Crowd noise can also be a beautiful thing in basketball.

If you have officiated any sport for awhile, it will help you when you take up another. The game management skills and ability to handle coaches and players are invaluable skills that will translate over to any other sport you work. I know that when I went back to baseball after five more years of varsity experience on the basketball court, I was much more effective at dealing with disputes and unpleasant coaches. Those skills were strengthened working basketball. I too have been kicking around the idea of taking up football next year; it looks like it would be a blast.