Tracking the pitch

[Tru_in_Blu]

Hi Canump,

I'm in my third year umpiring. I've asked about evaluations from a couple of different UICs but I've been told there's nothing formal. I get a "no complaints" comment when I've asked a couple of times. I occasionally get some unsolicited positive feedback from tournaments. A couple of coaches remarked that they hadn't seen me doing any HS games and wondered why because I had good game management skills [at least on that day!]. But I'm only certified as an ASA ump. Maybe I'll look into HS in the future, but it does conflict with regular day jobs.

I did attend the ASA National Umpire School this spring in the Boston-Metro area. I thought it was pretty good, particularly for someone like myself who is relatively inexperienced as far as umpiring goes. Although I played for almost 30 years, I now find that I'm not young enough to know it all. Kevin Ryan, Supervisor of Umpires, was one of the instructors. He told everyone that "if you can't get inside the diamond on a base hit to the outfield...RETIRE!" I think some of those retirees re-located to New Hampshire.

Anyhoos, at the training, they did some exercises on tracking the pitch and the instructions were:
"Move your eyes and head "slightly" toward the pitch as tracking the ball."

The instructors didn't want a lot of head movement followed by body movement. Some trainees would track the ball with head and body from the slot position to the outside and low part of the plate and almost lose their balance.

So other than the biased evaluations I get from parents sitting in bleachers, I really haven't had much in-game feedback. I'd like to...

Ted