Very Nervous!!

[BretMan]

The first game I ever umpired was an 8U coach-pitch baseball game. I don't remember being especially nervous, probably because I had played and coached for over twenty five years so being on a field wasn't that big of a deal. But I'm sure I was a little bit nervous.

A couple of things I remember like it was yesterday...

There was one routine play at first base where I came out from behind the plate to make the call (working solo). Instead of just getting a good position and angle on the play, I ran full speed up the line, beat the batter to first by a mile and, while standing right next to the kid, gave my biggest loudest, punching the air, sell it hard "OUT!" call. The kid was so startled that he about jumped out of his shoes and started to cry! Right out of the box...I made an eight year old cry in my first game!

On another play, a runner was advancing to third base. Instead of stopping on the bag, he ran straight across it toward the coach's box. The coach grabbed him, spun him around and pushed him back toward third. The defense had thrown the ball to third by then and tried to put a tag on the runner as he jabbed his foot at the base. I called the runner out for being assisted by a coach. Kind of odd that I'd have to make that call in my first game! The next time I had to call that was several years and several hundred games later.

My wife had come to watch this game and was sitting at the edge of the parking lot along the first base side of the field. On the way home, she asks me why I called the kid out on this play. Then she says something like, "It looked to me like he beat the tag". So, in my very first game, I get grief about a call from my own wife who was sitting a couple of hundred feet away from the play!