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Plate Conf WTH?
2nd game of 2. New partner I've never met with hokey mechanics but made decent calls in game 1. I'm dish and we have 45 minutes between games. We head to the umpire room, talk a minute, and he leaves at about 30 minutes before game time to go to the bathroom.
20 min before game time I'm wondering what happened to my partner, but I head to the field anyway after looking around a bit. I get to the field about 15 min before gametime ... And there's my partner, with both coaches, at the plate. He'd already done the coin flip and was just wrapping up whatever speech he made as I make it to the plate - at which point he says, "Anything you want to add, partner?" WTF! |
Wouldn't be a female from OKC?:eek:
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Funny looking strike signals with fists extended straight out in front of the body, sweeping hand motions to indicate the location of pitches, safe signals that look like an airplane about to take of or a bird flapping it's wings, never leaving the plate to cover third or trail a batter-runner, lining up on the third base foul line as their version of the "C" position... And there are some with apparently no concept whatsoever of how a plate conference works. A couple of recent ones: - I'm on the bases. So we head out to do the plate conference. I walk out and stand on the "flat side" of the plate, facing the backstop. Plate guy comes out and stands...right next to me. Only there are the usual groups of coaches, captains and hanger-ons crowded around each side of the plate and there isn't much room where I'm standing. The plate guy has to kind of squeeze in, shoulder-to-shoulder with me. I guess he wants to be the center of attention, so as he starts his "conference"- which was more like some kind of good ol' boy comedy routine- he gradually nudges me aside until he's standing in front of me and I'm behind him! - Partner and I are standing together, right next to the opening to the field, waiting for warm-ups to finish (about five minutes before game time). I'm the plate guy this time. Warm-ups end and I say to partner, "Are you ready? Let's get the coaches together". He says, "Okay". I walk onto the field and take my spot at the point of the plate. I look over my shoulder and my partner is running over to his car (parked close to the field) to fumble around with something in the trunk! So I'm standing there alone, surrounded by coaches and captains. I figure he's coming right back, so I stall with a little small talk. I see my partner start to walk away from his car...and he heads right down to the first base fence/dugout area and starts chatting up fans along the fence! I yell his name to get his attention and wave him over. He finally comes over to the plate and stands...directly behind me! Next game, we are switching base and plate. I go to my car to change. I hurry back, only to see him behind the plate with a pitcher about ready to pitch! He just went ahead and had them flip a coin to see who was the home team and had them take the field. He didn't bother with taking line-ups or going over the ground rules. |
I worked a couple of games way out of town this weekend and my partner was obviously the "local hero". He knew everything about everybody and wasn't shy about telling me about each and every player on the field . When I was plate guy at the pre game he felt the need to interrupt every few seconds, joking with the coaches and basicly stepping on everything I was saying. And when he was working the plate for a later game, he came to the pre game conference eating an snowcone, crunching through the whole thing. He was still working on it right before the first pitch was thrown.
Of course all of these things may have been a local tradition. When in Rome... |
That's the other one that drives me batty. You're the plate umpire trying to do things the way you're supposed to, but the base umpire has to interject himself over top of every other word, usually with arcane rules references or silly glad-handing comments to the coaches.
Here is my routine for the plate conference when I'm the base umpire...stand there and shut up! The other one you get with some of these "local hero/legends in their own mind" types is the conference that starts off something like, "We don't want to hear any arguments today and this is your only warning...". Then it goes downhill from there... But I must admit...I have never had a partner show up at the plate conference with a snowcone! |
I'll second the comment about local hero umpires. It drives me nuts to have a partner who goes up to the players and coaches and chats 'em up like we're not even in uniform.
For cryin' out loud, could you possibly hold up an even bigger sign to the other team that says "you're not getting any calls today?" If you want friends, go on Facebook. |
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PU at the point, BU at the base (or BU's at the base) of the plate - toward pitcher's circle) Home coach (hopefully just 1) in or near batters box on his side of the field. Ditto visitor on the other side. |
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If it's a 3-umpire system, the two BUs stand side-by-side in the same aforementioned location with the 1BU on the 1B side and the 3BU on the 3B side. The PU always conducts the meeting, which is what (justifiably) chafed Mike's rear. |
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I could do nothing but stand and watch the fallout when he made his first close call against that team. |
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I had a jr high basketball game this last season that my partner started 25 minutes early because the coaches wanted to him. Considering I try to arrive to jr high games about 20 minutes before, this was not so good. :rolleyes:
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Interesting story from a fellow umpire this past weekend.
He overheard a pre-game between a LH or maybe an Local Anti-hero (LAH) and his travel partner at a recent 18U tournament on the East Coast. Apparently, it went on for 25 + minutes and includes a fair amount of war story-type situations. A few games later when this umpire was assigned to work with the LAH, the LAH approached him to have a pre-game and asked my friend what he would like to discuss. My friend's response was, "okay, everything by the book. If you are going to diviate, we will communicate". The LAH was dumbfounded and asked, "is that it?" and my friend said, "what else is there?" and headed to the field. :D |
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There is a local guy here who has probably had issues with every coach in the tri-county area at one time or another.
He always says at his plate conferences......."I don't care what has happened in the past, but this is your only warning for bad behavior". Sets the tone for the rest of the game.......sigh I try not to work with him, but he calls every night and every tournament. It is impossible to avoid him the whole year. There is another umpire who worked for me and I had to fire a number of years back.......I have been able to get the scheduler to avoid ever calling with him though. I still umpire with his wife from time to time. Joel |
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had to say :p |
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And if you were serious, he was not a Darryl... he did have a Mayberry name though - Cletus, Gomer, Goober - something like that. |
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Hi, I'm Larry. This is my brother, Darrel, and this is my other brother, Darryl. |
Dredging this one up because I had an iteresting one last weekend...
I'm on bases. The usual gaggle of coaches and players are standing at our sides as my partner begins his plate conference. "Okay, the first thing we need to do today is identify who our captains are (two kids raise their hands). Captains, before the game starts I have a special job for you. I want you to make sure that everybody on your team has their shirts tucked in." :eek: Huh!? "Now I know you girls like to cheer for your team, but this is your one warning. I better not hear any negative cheers today. We want good sportsmanship from everbody and I'd hate to have to eject somebody for negative cheering." No, that's never fun. :( It went downhill from there... |
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Must have been contagious. From last weekend:
PU: "Ladies, coaches....this is not my first year. I am not afraid of calling strikes. You better be prepared to swing. Pitchers and catchers like me a lot." Of course first time there is a pitch on the outside corner and he calls a ball, the coach remembers those words. :D Another game, different PU: "Ladies we are playing with the double base at first. Make sure on any play in the infield that the batter runner uses the orange base. And if there is no play, the first baseman must get out of there to avoid obstruction." Another game, same PU: "I don't mind you wanting to talk about a play. Call time and bring it up with whoever made the call by coming out and talking to them. I'll always give you an answer...you might not like it, but I don't always like my wife and I have to live with her. So live with my answer." |
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That one's funny:D:D:D But then again, my wife quit me in 1996 - and no one has taken her place since (except some nights) |
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She says I choose softball over her. I may have to deal with bickering coaches during a game, but when the game is over, the bickering goes away. And if it was really bad I can tell them to go away early. I wish I had that power at home. :D |
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