Moving the bat

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by IRISHMAFIA

You may not buy it, but the argument of damaging someone else's equipment is valid.

Heck, that can be argued when you accidentally kick or step on a bat while it's on the field. For that matter, someone could complain that I did something to the bat when I picked it up to inspect it during pre-game.

It's gotten to the point where umpires should do nothing but call the game like automatons and then leave. We cannot show emotion, we cannot engage in friendly conversation with anyone, we cannot touch the ball or bat or mask for fear of someone perceiving it as favoritism.

When did softball become so anal when it came to umpires being caring? When I umpired baseball my first ten years or so, we would do things that nobody would bat an eye about. During between-inning warm-ups, if the catcher missed a pitch, the plate umpire would reach into his/her bag and toss another ball to the catcher, not make the catcher go back to the backstop and get the loose ball. The same was the case on foul balls down the line; the plate umpire would give the catcher another ball, and the loose ball would eventually get tossed back in to the umpire. On a play where the catcher would toss his mask off, the plate umpire wouldn't think twice about picking it up after play ended and handing it to the catcher. Same with the bat on a foul ball when the batter would run down to first and then come back.

That kind of stuff is verboten on the softball field. And I really don't know why the powers-that-be make it that way. Do we really have to be less human than our baseball counterparts? Is it really that harmful to the game? Does it take that much away from the professionalism of the umpire? I just don't get it.