What a weekend
 

Worked an All-Star tournament this weekend. The league had enough fields for 54 teams but schedule 75. 1 hour and 20 minuets no new with start time 1 hour 30 minutes apart. Needless to say by the end of the 3rd game on Saturday most field were at least 20 minutes behind. One was over an hour. My last game should have started at 6:30 did not start until 7:20 and I had to call the game at 8:00 (no lights). Sunday the 14U championship started scheduled to start at 5 did not start until 7:30.

I should have asked for an additional game fee, but didn't because this is just the way things happen at times.

They should have seen that one coming.

Well, yeah, with TD's who are either incompetent, or complete newbies at this. No one who has done this more than once would expect games to start on time with a 1:20 time limit and a new game scheduled every 1:30. A competent TD would have shortened the time limit to no more than 1:10.

50 minutes... finish the batter! .. love it love it love it.

Then on top of that there is not any time allowed for umpires to switch out if your field is not crewed to have a plate umpire ready to go.

If you have limited bodies to work, the field can even get further behind.

There was no umpire rotation going on here. 4 tournament going on in our local area plus ASA. They went to drop dead later in the day on Saturday. That did not sit well with the team. Should have gone to 1 hour 10 minutes.

1:20 no new with 1:30 game times is a common thing for us here for our Saturday pool play games. We schedule the typical plate-base-off rotation on the field crews. The keys to this working is:

- The plate umpire has to be ready by 10-till game time,
- When you're the base umpire and you just completed your game, you have to start the next one and work until the plate umpire from your previous game goes and changes into his base uniform and comes to relieve you.

The other trick is having your TD schedule a 30-minute field prep every 3rd round of games.

Do you mean the clock or the umpires? :D

Thank God it was a nice cool almost rainy day here in Socal. I worked 12 games in two days. But I'm known to be a game _____.

I umpired a tournament in Ohio this past weekend, 14 games and worked rotations with two other umpires. Games were 1:20 NNI with 15 minutes between game times. We rotated plate, bases and off with the base umpire from the previous game covering the following game until the PU from the previous game changed into their base uniform. We finished about 20 minutes ahead of schedule each day.

Considering unless shorthanded with a 3ump/field rotation- at a 120 nni with 10 min between games rotation time - 6 games sat would be up 8 am start to 8pm start for last game..
and normally Sunday are short days...

Thats quite a long weekend. I dont envy you.

You must have been working to midnight or longer.

What are you boys whining about? That men's senior tournament I worked last week, had the most damning time "limit". It was 1 hour, but as soon as the clock expired, you announced that the inning would be completed and then play one more. I ended up doing the championship game, which started one hour late. Thank God there was no rubber match needed, them old boys were getting tired and cranky!

I believe we had the same time "limit" last year at the Nationals. Surprisingly, we didn't fall too far behind schedule.

However, we tried the same thing locally when we added a seniors league. It, uh... didn't work out so well.

I believe you on that, after what I experienced last week. What made it a little more "complicated" (for a lack of a better word) was that the teams were limited to 5 runs each inning, with the exception of the declared last innning, in which they could score unlimited runs. That's what bit me in the a$$ during the bracket play with those old codgers. Those boys must love putting us blues through some misery, even if they're very sportsmanlike about it. ;)

If my memory's accurate, that's exactly what we did in Burlington at the Nationals. That is also exactly what we did locally, and it was that "last inning" that ALWAYS bit us in the butt.

I called it the "buffet inning." All you can hit. :D