Ground Rules/Pre-Game Coaches' Conference
 

Pretend you are teaching a new umpire what topics should be covered in the ground rules/pre-game coaches' conference (the term varies based on location). What exact will you instruct him/her to address? How long should it last? Who should do the talking?

Plate umpire leads the pregame conference.
Call the coaches in and introduce both yourself and your partner to both coaches.
In AZ we are required to cover the Victory with Honor program, basically good sportsmanship.
Ask home coach for lineup, review it, ask that if any changes need to be made and accept it.
Ask visiting coach for lineup, review, ask if any changes and accept.
Ask home coach about any particular ground rules they have for the field or any problems with field everyone should be aware of.
Go over any other information, run rules, time limits etc that may apply to the game.
Ask coaches if they have any questions.
Ask partner if they have anything to add.
Play ball.

What Irish said...except...

If a coin flip is necessary, I insert that right after introductions. Otherwise, how do you know which team is the home team so you can take their line-up first?

The only other thing I'll add, if necessary, is the mandatory "are all of your players properly equipped" question for each coach in an NFHS game. I'll do that right after ground rules/special rules.

And, if I was teaching this to a new umpire, the first step would be to show them the proper places to stand while conducting the conference (plate umpire at point of plate, etc.).

I wouldn't do that on a bet. Once you flip the coin, you lose their attention. And really, does it make a difference which line-up you accept in what order?
Yep, and NFHS is about the only place it has any value.

You mean you just don't meander around waving to your friends and talking to the spectators? :rolleyes:;):D

A pet peave
 

You never start the pre-game without your partner...unless he is arriving late and you're starting without him. If he's in the can you wait!!!!

Few more things.

I would switch two items in the order above. I would give any special rules prior to the ground rules.

Know what you are going to say before you start. Go over the ground rules with authority, dont be wish-washy.

Do not stop once you start. It is possible you will answer their question before you finish.

When you ask the coaches if there are any questions, give them time to respond. Look directly at each team coach/rep to acknowledge there are no questions. This could be a pivotal point in the pre-game especially if either of the teams are not familiar with the field. It is better they understand the ground rules up front and had the opportunity to address any clarifications before the game starts instead of when there is a dead ball or awarded bases that they may not understand.

I definitely want to highlight this portion here. It's important to give each coach equal opportunity to ask you questions about the field or special playing rules.

Just tossing out a "any questions? Good" shows that you don't respect the coaches enough to actually address their concerns. You're effectively telling them, "I don't care if you have questions, I'm just getting through this game and moving on."

A pet peeve; my partner should be ready to go, and have taken care of all necessaries, by game time. To me, pregame IS game time. :cool:

I don't disagree, but there are times/tournaments where one umpire may get things moving while the other is changing having just come off the field. It is an adjustment umpires have to make when TDs have a tight schedule and want to keep the games going.

IOW, while true, it cannot always be held as an absolute.

I don't disagree. I was thinking more of a NCAA/NFHS type of vein. Tournaments are always the exception.

I can only predict that you are referring to questions about the specific ground rules and not a free for all about rules interpretations right? After all, it called the ground rules / coaches' conference and not a clinic. ;)

I don't think that tournaments are always the exception: The best tournaments I've attended to do have a tight schedule. However, the ESF (the organizing body) has the pre-game conference in their time-schedule. Umpire's arrive 10 minutes before game time en will start the conference 5 minutes prior to game time. ESF even have 60 min before game time, start visiting team field practice, 20 minutes late for home team. The last 15 minutes, before plate conference, are for the ground crew field maintenance.

Other tournaments I've attended to, are the exceptions Skahtboi meant. The biggest and oldest annual men FP tournament at Zeist (the Netherland's) don't even have time for field practice in-between games. At the Indoor-cup (Schiedam) everything is an exception. It's indoor!:D

Then why make a sequential list that says to take the home team line-up first and the visitor's second, or to even differentiate between "home" or "visitor" at all in relation to taking the line-ups? ;)

Missed you this year at the cup, Sander

Actually, I don't. I am most likely take the first line-up offered. I will look to the home coach, but if s/he isn't ready to hand it to me and the other is, that is where I go. But someone wanted a list....... :rolleyes:

If I feel it's relevant to the specific game I'm about to call (and not baiting me into confirming that one of my fellow umpires screwed them on a call in their previous game), I'll answer the question. I'll give some leeway to the coaches, but I won't let it be a free-for-all.

One or two quick questions, in my opinion, do not hold up the plate conference enough that I should decline to answer them.

The original reason is that at one point, teams would occasionally want to dictate match-ups; either our #1 vs your #1 and #2 vs #2 because we think we can beat you both games, or our #1 vs your #2 because we DON'T think we match-up well. When that happened, someone had to be required to turn in the lineup first, since they were both waiting for the other team to go first.

So, to avoid the cat-and-mouse-game, the home team was required to turn in first.

With that understanding, when they plan to play based one what they plan to do, rather than wanting to see what the other team does first., the order makes no difference.

I've missed myself not only this year on the Cup:(
Since my son started playing rugby (he's 9yr old) 5 years ago, I have difficulty in winter time to make some time free for softball.
I shall not be surprised if my wife starts to make problems in summertime about me umpiring in softball...

I've seen some pic's on the site from our national teams: Dutch Women Softball Teams - Official Website
Looked like you had a good time as group of umpires. Jealous? Yes!!! For not being there.

At our State H.S. rules meeting last night (Kansas) we were instructed to record the number of bats we inspected before the game. At the home plate conference we are to advise the coach of how many bats we checked and ask him/her if that is correct. "Coach we checked 10 bats is that all of them?" With the increased penalty for players using illegal bats (player AND coach ejection) they want to be sure the coach has an opportunity to let us know if we got them all.

Yeah, but too many coaches/players have figured that out. They bring out 12 bats for inspection, pull out 3 hot bats when you leave the dugout, and put 3 other bats back in the bags.

I'm all for telling the coaches to take EVERY bat out of EVERY bag found in the dugout. I won't reach into the bags to verify, but all I have to do is tap the back of the bag to tell if there's something else inside.

I don't buy that "oh, we won't use that bat today" crap. Just wait until the 4th or 5th inning when they're down by 5, and it magically appears. :rolleyes:

But that's a whole different topic for another thread.

I believe this college mechanic to be a waste of time and effort. A courtesy check is more of a passive deterent, but has minimal effect on anyone who wants to cheat. Counting and recounting is like throwing good money after bad.

And I'm all for doing what Fed baseball is doing beginning this year - no inspection. The responsibility belongs entirely to the team. Use an illegal bat? OK, I have a book rule to handle that. ASA and all the other sanctioning bodies want us to inspect the bats - it's a worthless as background checks.

Well, NFHS is a different animal as the coaches are acting in loco parentis and do have the authority to speak for the minor.

The bat check is a bit of preventive maintenance, but as noted before, if someone really wants to cheat, there isn't much that can be done about it.

It won't prevent the real cheaters from getting those bats into the game, but it's a good procedure to help keep bad equipment off of the field. And by "bad equipment," I mean bats that have cracks in them or bats that aren't on the Approved Bat List.

OK, I'll ask further - why is it my job to do that. It's like a lock - it may keep those who are honest honest - but there's no guarantee. Once the game starts, my eyes are on the field, not looking for equipment changes in the dugout/bench area.
Don't misunderstand, I do the inspections, as completely and thouroughly as possible - but I disagree that it should be my job in the game. Especially since I have a book rule that covers violations

Because ASA says it's our job as part of the pre-game equipment inspection. :)

In FP, the bats aren't nearly as big an issue as they are in SP. SP just seems to have a lot more problems with players trying to sneak in equipment that doesn't belong, so we check 'em before the game.

Slow pitch is worse than fastpitch for illegal/altered bats. It's also much worse than high school baseball. The funny thing is there was never much talk at all about bat doctoring in HS baseball- until recently when they tightened up their bat specs to make them less lively. In all of the baseball pre-game equipment inspections I've done over the years, I have tossed two bats. One had a big dent and the other had tape forming a cone grip flush with the knob.

Last night at our first HS baseball meeting, in discussing the new bat rules the rules interpreter asked if anyone knew what a "rolled bat" was. Of the two hundred umpires in attendance, maybe 25 raised a hand. Obviously, 25 guys who have been around the game of softball for awhile! The instuctor went on to talk about bat rolling as if it was some new-fangled invention.

Another funny thing- HS baseball has updated the "Equipment" section of their rule book to include a definition of each separate part of the bat- the handle, the grip, the taper, the barrel, etc. Sound familiar? I think that they should be paying ASA a royalty for swiping their rule format.

Last night, when our interpreter mentioned that baseball has eliminated the pre-game equipment inspection, it actually invoked applause. THANK YOU NFHS for getting rid of this silly requirement, keeping the umpires out of the dugouts and putting the responsibility for legal equipment where it belongs- with the coaches.

In AZ, we request that the team have all of their bats and helmets put outside the dugout for inspection. It is not required, but most teams do it. Umpires are instructed not to enter dugouts to inspect equipment, if a bat or helmet is seen inside the dugout, we politely ask the coach to bring it out for us. If the response is "Oh, we don't use that bat", we let it go.

Personally - I'm with Steve...this is the coach's responsibility and I have a rule book that tells me what to do if the rule concerning bats is violated.

Here is the ultimate solution. And a money maker for somebody.
Require that all bats have a bar code, and the umpire with a bar code scanner. Not sure that bat was checked? Just scan it. Illegal bats would immediately be flagged.

Won't solve a thing. Bar codes can easily be faked, and I'm not scanning each and every bat at each at-bat.

Actually, there was an attempt a few years ago to have tamper-proof sensors installed in the bat that could be read by a scanner which would would give the specs of the bat. It was attached in a way the bat could not be shaven. It could probably be rolled, but would probably disconnect if done improperly.

But it could not guarantee the compression and would have been costly, so I think it was just dropped. But still someone was at least thinking of a way to make things better.

True, but I can't tell you how many times the "does anyone have any questions" was answered with, "Last week in our game..." followed by something they didn't understand or some complaint about the previous umpires. Love league ball, don'tcha?

That's why the question should be, "Are there any questions on the ground rules?"

Yes ... but to a coach, "ground rules" includes anything the dastardly umpire he had last week might have done wrong (in his mind, of course).

Well let's help coaches better understand what "ground rules" means by not entertaining those questions.

It's also outright improper. Vary rarely do coaches call me as the rule interpreter, despite having my number and email. Let them use the proper method to get answers.

Stop entertaining the questions and they might stop asking (at least as often).